Bob Dylan could have ditched music for coveted acting gig before first album was released

Bob Dylan could have ditched his music career before it truly began after he was tipped for a coveted acting role.

The musician, now 84, has enjoyed a career spanning more than six decades and is now best-known for hits such as Blowin’ In The Wind, Mr Tambourine Man and All Along The Watchtower. But these much-loved tracks may never have been recorded had Dylan taken a role he was earmarked for at the age of 20, before he released his very first album. In 1962, film production firm MCA offered Dylan the chance to play the defiant Holden Caulfield in an adaptation of JD Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye. According to Far Out Magazine, the offer came after Dylan had moved to New York and was beginning to establish himself in Greenwich Village. There, he found himself rubbing shoulders with the likes of Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Odetta and the New Lost City Ramblers.

Dylan eventually signed with Columbia Records who tried to drum up enthusiasm for their rising star. Word soon got out, and MCA became interested in Dylan’s promising career.

“I’ve got two possible things for him,” an MCA executive said. “I want him to audition for the Ed Sullivan Show, and I want to see if he can play Holden Caulfield. We own the rights to Catcher in the Rye and we think maybe we finally found Holden Caufield in your boy.”

Despite some initial reluctance, the musician was brought to the CBS TV studios to hear the offer before being shown to a studio where he performed for half a dozen executives from the network. But the visit didn’t impress Dylan who, upon returning to Greenwich Village, is thought to have told friends over a glass of wine that there was no way that he was “going up there again”.

The exec’s plans for the Ed Sullivan show didn’t pan out, either. The musician heard nothing from producers for a year, before bosses from the show tried to tell him what to sing – something that wasn’t well-received by the young star (and probably wouldn’t have sat well with Holden Caulfield, either).

Dylan would go on to release his self-titled debut album in 1962, featuring the songs he had performed to the executives in that studio only months prior. Published just over a decade prior in 1951, The Catcher In The Rye is still loved by readers to this day – particularly among rebellious teens who resonate with Caulfield and his disdain for ‘phonies’.

It has inspired countless writers, directors and musicians, including the punk band Green Day, who released the song Who Wrote Holden Caulfield? some 40 years after the book hit shelves. But despite its ongoing popularity, the book never made it to the big screen.

While the likes of Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Tobey Maguire, Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio have all tried to turn the book into a film, Far Out reports Salinger – protective of his work – never approved of any of the proposed adaptations.