Interesting Bob Dylan Facts You May Not Know

While Dylan doesn't seem like a man who has many regrets, he will cop to one. Andy Warhol once gave him a painting of Elvis Presley that would have been worth millions today. Instead, Dylan traded it... for a couch.

He later confessed to Spin in 1985, "I always wanted to tell Andy what a stupid thing [I'd] done, and if he had another painting he would give me, I'd never do it again."

Dylan was ejected from his high school talent show for being too shocking for sensitive '50s ears. The principal closed the curtain on Dylan and his band, the Golden Chords, during their raucous cover of the Danny & the Juniors song "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay."

According to Howard Sounes in Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan:

Principal Pederson was appalled. "He and the others were carrying on in a terrible way, right on the stage, and it got out of hand," he says. "I couldn't tolerate it." He cut Bob's microphone and, when Bob persisted in hollering, he pulled the curtain. It was not so much the noise, it was the way Bob was behaving. "He got so crazy."

When Dylan signed his first recording contract with Columbia Records, he was only 20 and technically still a minor at the time under New York law. The young singer had lost communication with his parents since dropping out of college a year earlier. Rather than have his parents co-sign the contract, he instead lied to the label and told them he was an orphan. Legendary producer John Hammond waived the clause and allowed Dylan to sign the contract himself.

In the bio he submitted to Columbia Records for his debut album, he claimed to be an orphan from New Mexico who hopped a train to New York City.

One thing that can be said about Dylan after decades of icon status is that he definitely spreads the wealth. A list of artists he's toured and played with over the years reads less like a "Who's Who" and more like a "Wha? Really?"

Some of the famous names he's shared the stage with include Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Mavis Staples, Ani DiFranco, My Morning Jacket, Wilco, and the Foo Fighters.

Todd Haynes's 2007 film I'm Not There played with Dylan's chameleon-like evolution by casting six different actors - including Christian Bale, Ben Whishaw, and Cate Blanchett - to portray characters inspired by pivotal moments in the singer's life.

But Haynes didn't stop there - he also called in a variety of influential voices to sing as Dylan, including former X frontman John Doe and Pavement's Stephen Malkmus.

According to legend, the Beatles weren't big pot smokers early on. They had some encounters, but didn't take to it... until they met Bob Dylan at the Delmonico Hotel in New York City in August 1964.

As the story goes, Dylan assumed the Fab Four were already into smoking after he misheard the lyrics to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - Dylan mistook the line "I can't hide" for "I get high." Dylan allegedly rolled a joint and passed the Dutchie to the link in the chain most likely to break (that would be Ringo), and the Beatles decided they liked this skunky stuff.

John Lennon later told Playboy magazine:

The Beatles had gone beyond comprehension. We were smoking marijuana for breakfast. We were well into marijuana and nobody could communicate with us, because we were just glazed eyes, giggling all the time.