BOB DYLAN’S DEAL WITH THE DEVIL: Is it for Real?
Thanks to the recent biopic about his rise to fame, Bob Dylan is more popular now than ever. But did that fame really come, as some say, from a dark deal in blood?
I’ve never really been a fan of Bob Dylan. He was one of the people I just “never got into" for whatever reason, despite my love for early ‘60s music while growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, long after the original wave. When we ran the Chicago ghost tours, one of our regular tour guides loved Dylan and even, as I recall, sang his songs with a local band he’d joined. But even then, I never really listened.
So when my husband said he wanted to see this new movie about Dylan, “A Complete Unknown,” I only said yes to be nice. As it turned out, we went to the movie together with our daughters, both in their ‘20s, and we really enjoyed it. But more than the entertainment, some of the script led me to start looking more into Dylan’s faith.
More than once, the Dylan character in the film had mentioned God. As a folklorist, I knew that Dylan had reportedly “made a deal with the devil” to obtain his immense fame and worldly success, and I wondered now if there was more to this story than just intriguing cultural legend. As I started to look at some articles about Dylan’s faith, I found to my shock that many of his comments could have been said by me.
One of the first things I read referenced a post-pandemic-interview in which Dylan said he not only binge-watched old British dramas and The Twilight Zone but also shunned any media that was “disgusting” and fully believed squarely Catholic tenets such as the Communion of Saints. I started to like this Bob Dylan.
I was also quickly finding out what anyone with a passing interest in the artist has long known: that Dylan’s religion and spirituality is a perennially hot topic — and an impossible nut to crack.
A Complete Unknown
In fact, I was discovering that Dylan is famously elusive in pretty much every way—mysterious, vague and impossible to figure out. It’s a fact which his fans have come to accept as just part of the package and something, they say, he enjoys. I personally haven’t seen in Dylan any such enjoyment of his mysterious nature. It doesn’t seem to bring him any happiness—quite the contrary. But I’m just getting to know him—or not know him, as it seems to go.
Despite his confounding personality, in the pantheon of American music few figures loom as large as Bob Dylan. A cultural icon, poet, and prophet of his time, Dylan’s influence spans generations, his lyrics speaking to the struggles and triumphs of the human condition. But alongside his undeniable genius, a shadowy rumor persists—one that ties his meteoric rise to fame to a chilling Faustian bargain.
Did Bob Dylan, as some claim, sell his soul to the devil?
The rumor, woven into the ever-enigmatic tapestry of his persona, offers a fascinating lens through which to explore the intersection of art, myth, and spirituality that is Bob Dylan.
The Origins of the Rumor
The idea that Bob Dylan might have “sold his soul” to achieve success continues a part of folklore as old as Western civilization. The concept of a Faustian bargain—a pact with the devil in exchange for worldly power or talent—has long captivated the human imagination. Stories of such deals weave through history— like that of Dr. Faustus, who traded his soul for knowledge and power, or blues legend Robert Johnson, who, talentless, supposedly met the devil at a dark crossroads of the Mississippi Delta one night and returned home in the morning one of the greatest guitar players the world would ever know. Such legends (or are they?) carry a recurring question—and one that has seemed particularly urgent for artists:
What is the cost of greatness?
Why Bob Dylan?
The idea of Dylan making a deal with the devil might seem preposterous at first glance. After all, Dylan was no overnight sensation, as Robert Johnson was, literally, purported to be. His early years were marked by struggle and relentless work as he honed his craft in Greenwich Village folk clubs. However, the sheer magnitude of his influence—coupled with the almost otherworldly quality of his songwriting—leaves even skeptics wondering if something extraordinary was at play.
In the early 1960s, Dylan’s rapid evolution from a Woody Guthrie-inspired troubadour to a cultural oracle seemed almost superhuman. Within just a few years, he penned songs like "Blowin’ in the Wind," "The Times They Are a-Changin’," and "Like a Rolling Stone": works that transcended music to become anthems of societal change. To some, his talent seemed to come from another realm entirely, and to hold a power to sway and influence beyond that of other music. For many, alarmed rather than uplifted by the “changin’” of the times, that power was seen as less than holy.
"The Chief Commander"
The most frequently cited “evidence” for Dylan’s alleged deal with the devil is a 2004 60 Minutes interview with Ed Bradley in which the journalist asked Dylan how he managed to sustain his success and influence over decades. Dylan replied, “It’s a destiny thing. I made a bargain a long time ago, and I’m holding up my end.”
Bradley pressed him to elaborate: “Can I ask who you made the bargain with?”
Dylan, with his characteristic smirk, answered, “With the chief commander—on this earth and in a world we can’t see.”
For some, this was an admission that Dylan had, indeed, made that fatal pact-and quite purposefully, with definite intent. After all, Christians were swift to point out, the ruler of this world is not God but the devil, as the Bible clearly states.
For others, Dylan’s remark was something else: a poignant and unhappy recognition that he had given up his life for what had come to him in the spotlight and on the stage.
For still others, it was simply Dylan being Dylan: opaque, poetic and always enigmatic.
The Devil in the Details
The rumors of a Faustian Dylan deal gained further traction when fans began to reflect on his past work, which had taken on an increasingly mystical and cryptic—and religious—quality. Lyrics from songs like "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Man of Peace" seemed to flirt with themes of temptation, sin, and spiritual warfare. His 1979 album Slow Train Coming had seemed to mark a period of intense spiritual struggle, during which Dylan explicitly warned against the devil’s deceptions in songs like "Gotta Serve Somebody,” in which Dylan proclaimed:
Might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief
They may call you doctor or they may call you chiefBut you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes, you are
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Dylan never seemed to say who he himself had chosen to serve, but it was obvious that the devil and the Lord were at the forefront of his thought, and increasingly.
It wasn’t just his music that kept the rumors of a diabolic deal alive. Dylan’s aloof personality, vagaries in interviews, and willingness to play into his own mythos all seemed, in retrospect, to have contributed to his image as a figure hiding some dark secret. His 1967 disappearance from public life following a motorcycle accident further added to the mystique and the legend of the pact, with some suggesting that his retreat may have been part of the price he paid for his bargain. Even now, years after that strange and sensationalized interview with Ed Bradley, Dylan has not done much to dispel the rumors of his diabolic pact. But has that been on purpose or because he has always spoken in riddles and mysteries?
The Power of Myth
Dylan’s music hasn’t intrigued only Protestant Christians who saw in his (at the time surprising) “gospel period” a familiar American story of a sinner longing for Christ. The themes in many of his songs have been interpreted as particularly Catholic ones.
Certainly, from a Catholic standpoint, the notion of selling one’s soul to the devil is not merely the stuff of legend but a a grave and sobering reality. Scripture warns against the allure of worldly power and the consequences of turning away from God. In Matthew 16:26, Jesus asks, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul?” Dylan’s music often grapples with these very themes, suggesting a deep awareness of the spiritual stakes.
In more recent years, I was surprised to hear the “bishop of the Internet,” Bishop Robert Barron, singing Dylan’s praises—quite literally—, picking up a guitar and strumming and crooning some of Dylan’s tunes. Looking further into this I found it wasn’t the only time Barron had spoken publicly about Dylan. He’d commented on the songwriter’s “All Along the Watchtower” (based on the 21st chapter of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah), and he’d done yet another video talking about his love for the revolutionary writer and musician.
Nicholas Sparks has written of what he calls Dylan’s “Eucharistic longing” in songs like “Boots of Spanish Leather,” which Dylan wrote when he was 22. Sparks calls the song a “hymn. . . replete with theological undertones and resonances,” and he points out numerous New Testament references that mirror the song’s themes. Sparks also recalls that, in 2012, talking about his near-death in a motorcycle crash, Dylan told Rolling Stone:
“Transfiguration: You can go and learn about it from the Catholic Church, you can learn about it in some old mystical books, but it’s a real concept.”
In the fall of 2022, Catholic journalist Karl Gustel Wärnberg wrote in a concert review for Catholic Herald UK, point blank:
“The concert indicated to me that Bob Dylan may now be a Roman Catholic.
. . . (A)lmost every song on the setlist contained some reference to Catholicism: Rome, Jerome, St Peter, Holy Grail, Catholic Church, the Apocalypse, St John, and the Lord Himself. He speaks about the saints and the Church in a way that only someone who is intimately acquainted with the Church could.”
It shouldn’t surprise anyone (though it did me) to discover that, as early as 1997, Dylan had performed at the Eucharistic Congress in Bologna, or that then Pope John Paul II felt confident in interpreting the singer’s most famous tune for all listeners:
‘How many roads must a man walk before he becomes a man’? I answer you, One! There is only one road for man and it is Christ.’ And what is the answer ‘blowing in the wind’? ‘The breath and voice of the Spirit,’ John Paul insisted, ‘a voice that calls and says, ‘Come’ ’
But that same performance—indeed, Dylan’s mere presence at the Congress—incensed the future Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, who called Dylan a “false prophet.”
It seems that, even for popes, Dylan’s true identity rests in the eye of the beholder.
The Mystery of Grace
Ultimately, the rumor that Bob Dylan sold his soul to the devil may be less about literal truth and more about the power of myth. Dylan himself has long been a master of shaping his own legend, blurring the lines between reality and fiction. The idea of a Faustian bargain fits neatly into the archetype of the artist who sacrifices everything for greatness, whether willingly or under duress. It’s also a handy explanation for the deep and heartfelt loss Dylan has suffered. Was it really by his own hand, or was it payment for riches and fame?
When I look at the circumstances of Dylan’s rumored deal with the devil . . . when I watch his face in the video as he admits to a pact with the mysterious “commander in chief,” . . . I see something much different than the memory of a book signed in blood. I hear a man anguished because he lost the knowledge of the man God made him to be as he tried to grasp something else. He lost a life with the woman he called his one true love. He lost the bits of ourselves we always lose when we engage in sex outside of marriage to that one true love. He lost home and family. As many have recognized, he lost the ability to know himself. Instead, he’s a puzzle, a mystery, and the one true solution to his longing is still an “answer . . . blowin’ in the wind.”
At one point, the girl Dylan was living with became a Christian and moved out, no longer willing to cohabit in violation of her new faith. Dylan came to see this moment as the moment that he realized he was lost, immortalizing the girl in a song, “Precious Angel.”
For Catholics, folkloric tales of deals with the devil remind us not only of the dangers of idolizing worldly success but of constantly changing, searching and seeking, never finding the answer. Saint John Paul II saw clearly the “answer . . . blowin’ in the wind” of which Dylan sang at the Eucharistic Congress so long ago now: that true greatness lies not in fame or fortune, but in humility, service, and fidelity to God and one’s given personhood in His image. As Bishop Barron has often said: What makes life exciting is finding one’s place in the “theodrama” that God is writing—not the “egodrama” that I’m writing, directing and starring in.
Dylan’s career, with all its twists and turns, invites us to reflect on our own choices and the ultimate question—Dylan’s own question—: Who will I serve? And whose story do I want to star in?
What do you think about the Bob Dylan “deal with the devil” rumor? Is it just a myth, or does it hold a kernel of truth about the nature of art, fame, and the spiritual struggles we all face? Share your thoughts below; I’d love to hear them.
Before we part until next time, I want to pray the Saint Michael prayer together:
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.
And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
The name of the father and of the son and of the Holy spirit. Amen.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, I'll see you around the World of the Supernatural.
Until then, remember to #prayforghosts. God bless you!
Ursula Bielski
If you liked this story, you may enjoy my books on true ghosts and hauntings, including my bestselling Haunted Bachelors Grove, about one of the world’s most haunted cemeteries. Click below to learn more and get your copy.
