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Gallery
Sep 21, 2010 6:40 PM EDT
On last night’s episode of Pawn Stars, Chumlee, the shop’s lovable buffoon, was sent on a seemingly impossible mission: go to Caesar’s Palace and get Bob Dylan to autograph a vinyl copy of Self Portrait before a gig. Shockingly enough, he pulled it off — and Dylan even appeared on camera, signing the LP, “To Chumlee, Bob Dylan.” Dylan’s usually not one to appear on reality shows — or sign autographs — so the scene seemed like it was staged. But Chumlee swears it wasn’t planned. “I could see why people would assume that,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I didn’t even realize at the time that Bob Dylan was a really hard person to track down or even see. I guess he doesn’t come out very much.” (A source close to the show said that securing use of the footage was “difficult.”)
When Chumlee first arrived at Caesar’s, he hoped there would be a formal Dylan autograph signing there. “I found out he didn’t do that, so I scouted the grounds for about four hours,” he says. “Eventually I noticed there were some big tour buses parked by the venue.” After thirty minutes, Dylan walked off a bus and Chumlee made his move, followed by a single cameraman. “I was forty or fifty feet away so I ran up to him. He was shocked, but he signed the album for me. We talked for a minute and I told him I was a big fan of his work and my boss Rick would be really psyched if I got his autograph. I thought to myself, ‘I’ll probably never track down Bob Dylan again, so why not have him make it out to Chumlee and deal with Rick later?’”
Rick was horrified that Chumlee had Dylan personalize the autograph, but he let him keep it. “It’s at the framing shop now,” says Chumlee. “Hands down, he’s the coolest person I’ve gotten to meet because of the show. He represents rock and roll. I mean, he’s been an icon for twenty years. He’s not just overnight.” Chumlee does admit, however, that he can’t name any of his songs. “I’m horrible with names,” he says. “But I’m a big Jimi Hendrix fan, and he did a few remakes of his songs, and that’s where I first heard them. I’m going to remember meeting him forever though. That’s probably the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life — and I’ve done a lot of cool things.”
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