FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Bob Dylan fan Eric Donnelly panicked after a classic rock station played three Dylan songs in a row, leading him to assume that the groundbreaking artist had passed away, eyewitnesses confirmed.
Donnelly was in the waiting room of a Long Island auto shop when he heard the Dylan mini-marathon during DJ Timmy “Mad Dog” Schwartz’s afternoon show.
“Oh, yeah — there was a skinny little wimp in here earlier, all bent-out-of-shape thinking Dylan died. He was tearing up, and asked us if we heard anything about it,” said lead mechanic Dale Andrews. “He must have freaked out about Jimmy Page, then, too, when Mad Dog did all those Zeppelin blocks for ‘Zeptember.’”
Donnelly admitted he’s been particularly on edge since Tom Petty’s untimely death.
“I mostly stream music. I figured, if a radio station was doing this, it could only mean one thing,” said Donnelly, still shaking. “I was agonizing, waiting for the DJ to break the news. The songs felt like they went on forever… which, yeah, is normal for Bob Dylan. But this time, it felt much worse. I don’t think I could handle losing two Traveling Wilburys in one year.”
After several minutes without an update from the DJ, Donnelly turned to the Internet for help.
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“I found nothing on Twitter, and nothing on Reddit, either, so I checked out his Wikipedia page. Every time a celebrity dies, a bunch of morbid weirdos rush to be the first to update the dead’s Wiki page,” a relieved Donnelly added. “But, I still found nothing, so I’m pretty confident Dylan is alive and well.”
“How many times I gotta tell you people: I ain’t dead, man!” said an agitated Bob Dylan when reached for comment. The crotchety rock legend added, “It feels like every other day, I got to tell everyone I’m still breathing. Stop coming to my house. You’re scaring my dogs.”
Mad Dog was held responsible for a similar incident in 2014 when he inexplicably played three songs from Keith Richards’ solo albums, setting off a wave of severe panic attacks throughout Suffolk County.