‘Married... With Children’s Katey Sagal Sang Backup for Bob Dylan

Before Katey Sagal became sitcom royalty as Peg Bundy on Married… With Children, she spent years as a musician and singer. Her pipes were strong enough to earn her stage time with a weird assortment of musicians, including KISS’ Gene Simmons, Bette Midler and the voice of a generation, Bob Dylan. 

Sagal’s tenure with Dylan began nearly as strangely as it ended. As a young, aspiring singer in 1973, she was part of a band with two other women. One of them “knew Bob Dylan because she used to go hang out at his house up in Malibu,” Sagal told Howard Stern in 2022. Dylan asked Sagal’s bandmate to come down to a rehearsal and to bring some singers. Sagal came along for the ride and was hired on the spot. 

“I was a little freaked out,” Sagal confessed. “I was 19.”

She spent two months rehearsing with Dylan, warbling backup on classics like “Just Like A Woman.” All of the practice sessions were in preparation for a tour that Sagal never saw. That’s because “a week before the tour, he fired not only myself but half the band,” Sagal told Dennis Miller on an episode of his old talk show. 

How does Dylan fire someone? Miller imagined the unintelligible reprimands that the mumbling folk singer might mutter to underperforming singers. “I wish he’d done it that way,” Sagal said. “Actually, I just got a call that said, ‘Don’t come to work.’”

Sagal figures she had it coming. “I’m sure I was doing a terrible job,” she told Stern. “I was so intimidated.”

It’s easy to understand why she felt daunted. “This is what would happen,” she explained. “We would rehearse, and then we’d sit in a room and he’d play the tape back. If you made a mistake, he wouldn’t really say anything. He’d just look at you.”

She used her index finger and thumb to indicate just how small she felt after one of Dylan’s withering stares.

She had a better relationship with Simmons, the fire-breathing KISS member. Besides lending backup vocals for solo songs like “Burning Up With Fever”…

…Sagal also demanded a wedding ring after the two musicians had an affair. “At first, I thought Gene was really weird,” she wrote in her memoir, per Ultimate Classic Rock. But “he was cute and had a lot of confidence.”

Eventually, she told Simmons that she was going to marry Freddie Beckmeier from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band unless he agreed to tie the knot. Simmons laughed, and Sagal followed through on her threat. (That marriage only lasted a few years.)

Sagal’s music career continued with stints singing backup for Molly Hatchet and Olivia Newton-John before she landed her role as Peg Bundy. Every once in a while, producers let her bust out the singing chops for old times’ sake.

Eat your heart out, Dylan.