How many children does Bob Dylan have? Officially, he has six, five biological and one adopted. He got four children with Sara Lownds, Jesse Byron, Anna Lea, Samuel Isaac Abraham, and Jakob Luke (who formed the band The Wallflowers), but has also adopted Sara’s daughter from a prior marriage, Maria Lownds. After divorcing Sara, he also remarried his longtime backup singer Carolyn Dennis, and the couple got a daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, whom I had the pleasure to have in class when she was in sixth grade!
However, there may be more children,… according to Carolyn Dennis and other sources (ex-girlfriend Susan Ross), Dylan would have fathered 9 or 10 children…. Dylan has always been hiding stuff, and you’re gonna say, it’s not our business,… well, yes and no, and whatever you think, fans are interested, that’s why we read biographies and watch biopics!
Anyway, a new son may have surfaced according to Citypages, a 48-year-old Rhode Island resident, William DeVogue, is now claiming to be the son that Dylan fathered with his mother Anita ‘Tina’ DeVogue.
This is how it goes, Tina was a folk singer living in Greenwich Village in the 60s, she befriended Dylan and eventually got impregnated by him in 1963. She also was poor and a drug addict and so gave up her son for adoption when he was 10 months old. William DeVogue, as the majority of adopted children, spent a lot of time researching for his biological parents, and in 2009, thanks to the magic of facebook, he found a man who had known Tina during the 60s. He then found his mother, living in Boston, and she told him his father was Dylan.
His reaction toward Dylan and his music is interesting, as he explained:
‘Before I found my mother, I was indifferent to his music, I loved a few of his songs like 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'The Times They are a Changin'. More so for 'Blowin' in the Wind, because I could connect those lyrics to the frustrations of not being able to find my mother and hoping my answers would be caught blowin' in the wind. It wasn't until after I found my mother and learned greater detail of her life in the Village that I really studied the '60s/Dylan scene. It was then that I had a greater appreciation for his words and (I am gonna do what I want with my music) attitude. It was also then that I discovered that things were not making sense in other areas.’
De Vogue has been in contact with Dylan’s manager Jeff Rosen, but Dylan declared he has ‘no recollection’ of fathering a child with Tina, and he has refused to take a paternity test. DeVogue, who told Rosen that he 'would have to resort to plan B', thinks that he should have been sued a long time ago. But he said that ‘to this day I have received no calls from any lawyer or anything telling me to watch my step. Why? It's because he knows something and his counsel knows something and that if this ends up in court everything will come out.’
He also declared that he is ‘as sure as I can be without a DNA test’ that Dylan is his father, adding ‘I have been trying to find any reason to say he's not. But with everything that I have, including all of the information my mother gave me, it all points to [Dylan].’
DeVogue's plan B is actually the preparation of a book (‘Not Forgetting Tina’) and a documentary about his story, but he also pretends he doesn’t want any money from Dylan, just the truth.
Why is Dylan refusing to take the test? May be because he thinks the story is true, may be because Dylan has been behaving like an asshole with a lot of women and children. When he was with Carolyn Dennis, he may have fathered at the time, up to four other secret children by other back-up singers. He probably had more marriages than he is willing to admit (he kept his marriage with Carolyn Dennis a secret for 15 years), and had more liaisons than we can count. His biographer, Sounes, said that ‘he had affairs with three women pretty much at the same time as Carolyn Dennis. He is a bit of a womaniser.’
Sleeping around is one thing but producing all these children along without taking any responsibility is another one. Dylan should take this DNA paternity test.
my mother used to say “the reason people go into family history is they want to find something that makes them better than others”. The other thing she said on the subject was “and they usually find out something they’d have been better off not knowing.” I mean what joy could there be in finding out your papa was a philandering jerk? The interesting story is his mother’s. It could be many girls, not just someone who got inconveniently pregnant to a guy who was on the cusp of fame and fortune. William mightn’t want fortune or fame but, just assuming for a split second there’s something in this, whatever was done, given or said to make this little girl shut up and go away, get rid of the child and try not to live too long, might be mud still sticking to some living persons shoes. There might even be laws against bribery, blackmail and deceit? But it doesn’t feel real. An ambit claim with nothing put up to lose because William doesn’t seem to have put a lot of work into learning about this putative papa and other subjects.
I don’t want to be negative. It sounds a plausible enough thing to imagine might’ve happened back then, but this visual story does nothing to convince me it did.
Well, I’m willing to believe it because of what happened to me, even though William hung up on me and refuses to answer anymore.
Because my story is similar, only I had no idea until my mom filled a lawsuit in 2021.
I want looking, and found out that what my in-father told me in 1976 about being adopted was not just him being cruel -which he enjoys doing to me – but actual fact. And I found this out while working for the attorney handling my real mom’s father’s estate.
Evidently Grandpa Joe who let me comb gelt it of his hair is my real grandpa.
Until 2021 I had absolutely no hope of finding my real father until my real mom filed her lawsuit in New York
So until something says William isn’t via a clinical test, I will continue to believe he’s my big brother.
Will should inter his DNA results into that database (23 and me). Anybody close he will be informed.