Police officer don't recognize Bob Dylan

Rock legend Bob Dylan, 68 - whose hits include Like A Rolling Stone and Blowin' in the Wind, was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.

Photo: Police officer don't recognize Bob Dylan

Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.

A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday.

"I don't think she was familiar with his entire body of work," Woolley said.

The incident began at 5 p.m. when a resident said a man was wandering around a low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood several blocks from the oceanfront looking at houses, The Associated Press reports.

When the officer asked the man for identification papers, he did not have a driving licence or other form of ID to prove his identity.

But despite having seen photos of the 68-year-old star, she failed to recognise him and drove the singer back to a hotel where his manager was able to confirm his identity, informs Telegraph.co.uk.

According to The Mirror, Dylan has often preferred going unrecognised. He once told an interviewer: "Being noticed is a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot."

In 1991 he was filmed at a bus stop in Belfast after shunning his chauffeur-driven car. In the words of one of his songs, he could have told the young woman officer: "It ain't me you're looking for, babe."