At the moment, this story doesn’t seem to be anywhere but on the Ireland Online news service, and no specific information is provided as to when or to whom Paula Abdul made the remarks, but here it is:

Legendary rocker Bob Dylan twice tried to sneak into tapings of ‘American Idol’ in disguise, according to the talent show’s co-judge Paula Abdul.

The ‘Hurricane’ singer donned a fake beard in a bid to try and go unnoticed during the recording of the reality TV hit’s fourth season in 2005 - but Abdul spotted him.

The ‘Straight Up’ singer says: “He (Dylan) had a beard and tried to be in disguise. But I knew it was him.”

It would be easy to dismiss this as some kind of bizarre hallucination on Abdul’s part. However, I distinctly remember rumors in the press back around 2004 that Bob Dylan might appear as a guest judge on American Idol. As these things go, it seemed relatively legitimate. Stars like Barry Manilow were going on the show, coaching the contestants, having their songs performed, doing some guest judging, and seeing big boosts in CD sales (remember CDs?). As much as the show is largely ridiculous, and the standards of singing generally perverse (huge over-singing gets rewarded all the time), you could see Bob being amused by it and intrigued at the idea of throwing his stuff into the mix. It would’ve also given him a platform to talk about what he most likes to talk about: music. So, if the preceding is true, it’s conceivable that Dylan would have tried to sneak into tapings in order to make up his mind whether it was something he really wanted to do or not. Who knows? We do know that he was worn a fake beard on a number of occasions (like Newport in 2002).

Of-course, that was a long time ago. Now he has “Theme Time Radio Hour,” giving him complete freedom and the ideal context to talk about music.

And in other water that has passed under the bridge, American Idol’s signature personality, Simon Cowell, put down Bob Dylan in widely published remarks in January of 2007, saying that he believed Kelly Clarkson was a superior artist. Time will tell on that, I suppose.

…

Addendum: The same exact story is also at ContactMusic.com, but still without specifics as to the context of Ms. Abdul’s remarks.

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