Dylan and women part 2

'I have looked through all of the records and the marriage to Carolyn Dennis is the only other marriage for Dylan. I find no record of any other births, either.’ Says Bob Dylan’s biographer.

'He does have a thing about black girls and when you look at his art - which is terrible, by the way - there are a lot of studies of naked voluptuous black women in various hotel rooms. 

'There have been a string of dalliances, for sure. He had affairs with three women pretty much at the same time as Carolyn Dennis. He is a bit of a womaniser.' 

Dylan himself says mildly: 'I'm just not the kind of person who seems to be able to settle down.' 

As the man himself sings, like a Rolling Stone...

Bob Dylan and women

Susan Ross believed there were many other women in Dylan’s life - including another secret marriage to another backup vocalist, named Clydie King. They were certainly close: Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood recalls Dylan sitting on King's knee and nibbling at the edges of a hamburger she was eating. 

But Ross believes they were more than close, claiming: 'Clydie was Bob's second wife. She had two of his kids.'

Ross continues to say that Dylan also had yet another wife, Carol Woods, a backing singer, and also claims Woods 'had one of his children'. 

If true, this would, chronologically, make Carolyn Dennis his fourth wife, rather than his second, as is commonly believed. This isn't as ridiculous as you might think - Dylan is, after all, very good at covering his tracks. Don't forget he kept Carolyn Dennis secret for a whole 15 years before anyone noticed their relationship. 

Dylan was Christian - for a while

Dylan's conversion to Christianity had its origins in a sexual affair - while having a fling with backing singer Helena Springs he became infatuated with Mary Alice Artes, a black actress who was part of a group of religious fundamentalists. 

It was one of several times when Dylan indulged in overlapping affairs - seemingly without much conscience. 

At the time that he was involved with Carolyn Dennis, later his second wife, he was also seeing Ruth Tyrangiel (their affair ran from 1974 to 1991, and he ended up paying her alimony as she was legally considered his common-law wife). 

He also simultaneously romanced Susan Ross, a legal assistant, who later condemned him as an emotional miser, a horrible lover and a recovering alcoholic. 

Bob Dylan’s love affairs

Dylan has also been known to be ruthlessness in his love affairs. His on-off relationship with Susan Rotolo, who was famously pictured with Dylan on the cover of his second album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, ran into trouble when he went to stay at the home of fellow singer Joan Baez in the mid-Sixties. 

This sparked a two-year romance that ended when Baez found another woman answering the door of his hotel room.

His first marriage to former Playboy model Sara Lowndes came when she was pregnant with their son, Jesse, in 1965. The union seems to have been undermined by Dylan's drug-taking and womanizing, which became worse as he toured.

The final straw came one morning in 1977 when Sara went down to breakfast at their New York home and discovered her husband sitting at the table with their children - and a woman called Malka, a poetess who had apparently spent the night with her husband. 

In the argument which followed, Sara claimed that Dylan hit her and told her to leave the house. Sara won custody of the children and Dylan hit back by having an affair with Faridi McFree, a therapist whom she hired to help the children cope with the upheaval of the divorce. It was all quite ugly. 

Dylan, the chameleon

Dylan is quite deliberately rootless, living an adaptable existence. He was a sensitive poet, a protest singer and, for a time, a heavy drug user (John Lennon spoke of nights out on heroin and amphetamines with Dylan).

He was a country singer, then a born-again Christian and then a devout Jew. Now he is mostly a scrawny figure in scruffy clothes. 

Paul McCartney once said that he encountered Dylan at Heathrow in the early Nineties. Dylan, hooded, 'was really like a kind of bagman,' said the former Beatle, who did not recognize him for a few seconds. 

There has always been mythologising around Dylan, mostly self-perpetuated- -  he once said that he was an orphan, did not know his parents and that he had been travelling with a carnival from the age of 13. In 1963, he said he had lost contact with his parents for years. This was far from the truth - in reality they were always close. 

Bob Dylan’s house

Visitors to any of Dylan’s homes are routinely told that they are at the wrong address. 'Like all famous people, I would like to be left alone,' he once sighed. 

What is the house like inside? The 6,000-square foot property has six bedrooms and seven bathrooms. 

He has a car suspended from the ceiling in the living room, which was one of his first cars. And although there are 11 rooms, he lives in only one of them.

Susan Ross, who only got to visit the Malibu house after they

had been together for five years, says it is like a ski chalet in decor. When she went for her one and only visit, Dylan would not allow her to sleep in his bedroom and sent her - alone - to a guest room instead. 

He has almost a dozen properties - most recently reported is a mansion in the Scottish Highlands bought for £10million. In each house he hires a caretaker who lives there and keeps the place, but he does not actually live in any of them. He will visit from time to time instead. 

The every day life of Bob Dylan

'Dylan really does live a most weird life. Mostly on the road, doing around 100 appearances a year, and travels for ten out of 12 months. 

'He has a month of Summer break, which he spends with his children and grandchildren in Malibu. In the mid-winter he likes to go to his home in Minnesota and spend Winter there. It's a country house and his brother lives next door. It's about 100 miles away from where he was born, near to the border with Canada. 

'When the children were young he would put them in an old pick-up truck and they would go to the movies or go skating, so they did live a fairly regular life. 

'He's not a recluse,  but he is certainly not part of the main stream. I think in his entire career he has only ever done one chat show.' 

Dylan's main home is near Malibu and was built to his specifications in the Seventies. At the centre of the house is a circular room beneath a copper dome. 

The house is built on a large piece of land and, over the years, Dylan has bought up the land around it, which gives him an enormous amount of privacy. He is alone there - aside from his security men - most of the time when he isn't touring. 

One lover, Susan Ross, who was with him for a dozen years from the mid-Eighties, asked him why they could not live together. 'Because I can barely live with myself,' he replied.