The WIN Entertainment Centre staff might need to find another green leather armchair for Bob Dylan.
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The legendary singer is heading to town for a show on August 20.
It’s not the first time Dylan has been in front of Wollongong audiences before.
He was the first to grace the WIN Entertainment Centre stage on the venue’s opening night.
That was back on September 5, 1998, when the place was still called the Wollongong Entertainment Centre (for the trivia buffs: he opened with Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat).
And on that night, one of Dylan’s requests was that he have a green recliner in his backstage dressing room.
That chair had been borrowed for the night from Waters Furniture One and was returned. Legend has it the chair sold at a higher price because the Dylan backside had touched it.
There's no word on whether a similar chair will be required for Dylan’s show in August – his third visit to the city (he also played the entertainment centre in 2011).
READ MORE: Dylan's recliner puts WEC in box seat
Dylan is playing just seven Australian shows on what has come to be referred to as his Never Ending Tour – though not by the man himself.
For despite being a 76-year-old man (he turns 77 on May 24), Dylan has been touring regularly since 1988, albeit with an ever-changing back-up band.
Last year alone he played 83 shows across Europe, the United States and Canada.
Dylan is a celebrated singer-songwriter, who first broke through in the 1960s as a folk musician and reluctant voice of a generation.
Songs like Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times They Are a-Changing became anthems for the anti-war movement and the fight for civil rights.
In the mid-1960s he created controversy when he ditched the folk sound for electric guitars on albums like Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited.
Despite the changing times, Dylan has continued to write and record, releasing more than 35 albums over six decades.
This doesn’t include his bootleg series – an ongoing collection of live recordings which have now reached volume 13.
Bob Dylan performs at the WIN Entertainment Centre on Monday, August 20. Tickets will go on sale on Wednesday May 23.
The Mercury will be running a ticket giveaway for Dylan’s Wollongong show in the coming weeks.
Glen Humphries
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
