Bob Dylan Just Found Out Bob Newhart Died, and He’s Heartbroken About It
We regret to inform any living rock legends that comedy icon Bob Newhart died peacefully in his Los Angeles home at the age of 94. Ten weeks ago.
Starting in the early 1960s, the Chicago-based stand-up Newhart worked his way up the ladder of TV comedy, launching his NBC variety show called The Bob Newhart Show in 1961 before beginning a sitcom by the same name in 1972. The second The Bob Newhart Show would carry Newhart’s career nearly through the end of the 1970s, then the comic and actor came back in 1982 with another sitcom, simply titled Newhart, which maintained his comforting, sarcastic, deadpan presence on TV for another eight years before it ended with the most iconic crossover episode in comedy history.
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While Newhart was busy establishing himself as one of the most prolific and influential comedians of the second half of the 20th century, another Robert was doing something strikingly similar in the field of folk and rock music. In many ways, Bob Dylan was the Bob Newhart of guitar-and-harmonica tunes, and upon learning of the passing of his artistic twin soul, Dylan paid tribute to Newhart yesterday — more than two months after the latter’s passing:
Looking at Dylan’s Twitter feed, it’s not all that surprising that he was just a few months late to mourn Newhart’s passing. Clearly, the official Bob Dylan Twitter account is mostly just a notice board for different show announcements and box set releases that’s run by someone in Dylan’s no doubt robust PR department. In fact, Dylan’s touching tweet about his admiration for Newhart seems to be the first tweet fully penned and posted by Dylan himself in over two years — even when Dylan’s old guitarist Robbie Robertson died in August 2023, Dylan’s statement was transcribed rather than typed by the man himself.
But, for Newhart, Dylan busted out what I have to assume was an iPhone 4, dusted it off, charged it up with that ludicrous extra wide plug and published his post-mortem appreciation for a fellow giant of culture. Then, he tumbled off Twitter like a rolling stone.