And then there's Dead Beat who will swear he passed him on the street twice!
SAINT JOHN - With many businesses closed for Victoria Day, it might seem like Bob Dylan picked a heck of a day to come to town.
But it's likely that the prolific, chameleon-like folk-rock pioneer, who performed at Harbour Station on Monday night, wasn't even affected by the holiday. In the city's uptown on Monday afternoon, no one could answer affirmatively to the query, "Have you seen Bob?"
Evans McGee, who was strumming away on an acoustic guitar at a table at Reggie's, had a guess as to how Dylan, creator of such iconic songs as Blowin' in the Wind and The Times They are a-Changin', would be spending his afternoon in town.
"I'd be in my hotel room, practising," he said. "That's what I do before a show."
But after 45 years of playing concerts, would a musician still feel the need to practise every day?
"I'd probably have spent a lot of my life practising," McGee said.
Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, harbours a well-known love of pseudonyms. Staff at the Delta Brunswick hotel or the Saint John Hilton in Market Square said no one had checked in under the names "Zimmerman" or "Wilbury" (the latter stemming from the Traveling Wilburys, the supergroup Dylan shared with George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne).
Adam Donnelly, who was having a smoke break on King Street, had a different approach. "Try the bars," he said. "That's what Dylan in the old days would be doing right about now."
Indeed, a tip to try Vito's Dining Room and Lounge proved not to be too far off the mark.
"I know they're taking out from here," said Denise Loiser of Vito's. The staff of the restaurant, which often gets takeout requests from Harbour Station, was expecting an order to come in around 10 p.m, after the show was over.
"You could pretend to be the delivery girl," suggested Tara Warner, from behind the bar.
As concert-goers trickled into the parking lot of Harbour Station, one fan said he'd been the closest to a sighting of anyone that afternoon.
"We were coming out of a restaurant, and we saw his bus," said Lesly Duppassé, who drove in from Clare, N.S., to see Dylan for the 12th time. "His bodyguard was coming out of the bus, and they were loading luggage in outside the Delta.
"I think he was making funny faces at us through the window," he added. "I couldn't see him through the tinted windows, but I had a feeling he was in there going, like, 'Nyeah, nyeah.' "
The famously elusive Dylan remained so even within Harbour Station. A quartet of teenagers hoping to hear the sound check were promptly discovered by the venue staff. "They kicked us out," said a boy in a baseball cap as he and his friends made for the exit. "The one guard said, 'God loves a trier.' "
Venue staff by the buses weren't sure what Dylan had done during his afternoon in Saint John. After playing an estimated 2,000 concerts since 1988, it's likely that Dylan's desire to see the sights in each town might be somewhat diminished.
But Tom Davis, who came from Philadelphia to catch the show, said he would have been surprised if Dylan had risked venturing out around town. "He's like Michael Jackson. He can't just mingle around," he said.
Davis hadn't seen Dylan either. In fact, he said, he's never met the singer, despite having seen him play about 20 times since the mid-1980s.
"I don't know what I'd say to him - except maybe, 'Keep playing these great shows,' " Davis said.
"I mean, what else can you say?"
