What was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening—all bunk. No guarantees of anything, not even the guarantee that life isn’t one big joke.
—Dylan, Chronicles, 2004
The transformation from Robert Allen Zimmerman to Bob Dylan took hold in the long, cold winters of small town Hibbing, Minnesota, when young Bobby listened to chart-topping country music and rhythm and blues songs pumped through the ether from large markets like Chicago or via smaller stations all the way down in the deep South. The tunes he heard on the tiny, transistor radio allowed the boy to dream of a life outside the coal mines and blue-collar, working-class confines of Hibbing and its people, mainly content to live simple lives.
Dylan saw music as his escape, explaining, “I always wanted to be a guitar player and a singer. Since I was ten, eleven, or twelve, it was all that interested me. That was the only thing that I did that meant anything really.”1 Still, the journey from little Hibbing in the cold reaches of the upper north might as well have been a million miles from the bright lights of New York City. Could music pave Dylan’s path? Although we now have the answer to that question, Dylan’s meteoric rise from the iron range of northern Minnesota to his status as one of the most influential people of the 20th century is an example of the American Dream come true.
What young Bobby Zimmerman realized, even in the cold confines of Hibbing, was that he too could achieve his dreams in the United States that emerged from World War II and seemed refocused on mass culture and mass communications. Certainly, Elvis Presley—one of young Bobby’s musical heroes—demonstrated that an ambitious, talented performer could rise above social rank. Others, lesser stars than Elvis, were able to make records and perform for audiences across the nation. As a youngster, Bobby hitched his version of the American Dream to a possible future that he could envision unfolding for him as a musician. Then, he pursued that notion with unbridled determination.
In the postwar era, the American Dream developed into a unifying national belief, championed by the emerging popular culture and in more specific ways by advertising campaigns, marketing, and other forms of mass media. The triumphant feelings of the age, fueled by economic prosperity, were somewhat dampened by the growing Cold War with the Soviet Union, but the commitment to technology and its outcomes pushed the nation forward. Over time, the idea at the heart of the American Dream developed into a central tenet of what it meant to be an American, thus establishing its place in the collective popular culture as both a thing to be achieved and model for living one’s life. For some, this idea might equate to a college education or new automobile, while others saw it in a fancy refrigerator or suburban home.
In the postwar world, people used popular culture and the ideas at the heart of the American Dream to serve their personal needs and confront societal challenges, whether to ignore problems or to unify the nation in a common battle against perceived evils. Each person, it seemed, had the choice to use it as a way to assess society or mask reality in favor of a Hollywood dream version of life that ended with sunshine and rainbows. Simultaneously, the Dream fused Americans together in an unprecedented manner.
For someone like young Bobby Zimmerman, the American Dream meant that one had the ability and freedom to pursue a goal that might seem almost impossible to reach. As the American Dream became more deeply entwined within popular culture, the idea fostered a sense of hope and renewal, even in a society that began confronting the evils of racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Thus, the American Dream contained both a way to address the future, while also providing a means of working through the ills that held one back. Tying the idea to success also allowed the nation and its people to champion the cause at home and abroad, thereby elevating the United States culturally as it had been militarily and economically.
Robert Allen Zimmerman came into this world on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota to parents Abe and Beatty. A precocious, beautiful youngster with light hair and an interest in entertaining the adults around him, little Bobby sang for family and friends as early as four years old. People recognized that the youngster had a gift and many around him expected that the boy would someday be famous.2
Abe contracted polio in the epidemic of 1946, which forced the family to move from Duluth to Hibbing, where his mother Beatty grew up. The transition from Duluth to Hibbing provided young Dylan with a center—surrounded by family and a tight-knit Jewish community. When his parents Abe and Beatty moved to the town where his mother grew up, it provided a shelter for his father to recover from polio. The disease left the man homebound and weak. The Zimmermans initially lived with Beatty’s parents, which forced little Bobby to sleep on a roll-away bed. Later, after regaining his strength, Abe went into business with his brothers Paul and Maurice, who ran an appliance and furniture business.
The boom after World War II led to great success for Abe and his brothers. Consumer purchasing skyrocketed, fueled by pent-up demand after years under wartime rationing. Families all across the nation found themselves with greater disposable income as the United States took to rebuilding its infrastructure and settling into the postwar world marked by its economic and military supremacy. Inside the home, women yearned for products to make their domestic lives easier, which would then provide them with greater control over their lives. The thriving economy translated into a solidly middle-class lifestyle for the Zimmermans, despite some economic travails for Hibbing itself. Suffering a similar fate to other mining towns, Hibbing smarted under the weight of new technologies and declining mineral supplies.
For as long as Americans had been fascinated with the West as a place to start over again, those who provided the tools to carve out a home life in the Wild West prospered as dreams solidified into reality. The Zimmerman extended family and its appliance business fulfilled this role in postwar Hibbing by giving expanding families with growing income the chance to attain the day’s high-tech goods. Young Bobby’s family moved into a roomy house on Seventh Avenue in Hibbing and with plenty of children in the neighborhood and friendly families all around them. A sign of the family’s solid middle-class standing was the purchase of a television set in 1952, which made the Zimmermans one of the first families in Hibbing to own the new contraption. In this environment, surrounded by people with similar Midwestern values, they commenced to enjoy their version of the postwar American Dream.
At Hibbing High School, Dylan found a mentor in English teacher B. J. Rolfzen, who inspired the youngster’s love for poetry. Under Rolfzen’s tutelage, the quiet student learned the intricacies of language. Often described as a loner in high school, Dylan had a small group of close friends. He stood outside the mainstream of Hibbing High’s popular students.3 Still, Dylan’s youth from today’s vantage point seems like a nostalgic yarn. He recalls:
Mostly, what I did growing up was bide my time. I always knew there was a bigger world out there but the one I was in at the time was all right, too. With not much media to speak of, it was basically life as you saw it. The things I did growing up were the things I thought everybody did—march in parades, have bike races, play ice hockey.4
Like millions of teenagers coming into their own in the mid-1950s, young Dylan found a hero in rebel icon James Dean, attempting to ape the young actor’s style and swagger. He saw Rebel without a Cause many times, eventually wearing a red jacket like Dean’s in the film. Already a music fan, Dylan turned to rock music as a way to further create an identity for himself, something so many young people yearn for during that point in the maturation process. Like most teenagers, he might not find himself yet or understand the vortex of emotions swirling around him, but even then Dylan knew his star stood hitched to music.
Bobby’s mother Beatty had played the piano growing up, so when the family bought a Gulbranson spinet piano, she pushed her sons to play. Young Bobby took some lessons from a cousin, but eventually taught himself to play. Soon, though, he decided the acoustic guitar was for him.5 When the youngster wanted to listen to music, he turned to the radio and stations from across the Midwest and South. One of his early influences was country star Hank Williams who, like Dylan, did not have a conventional sound. The shows from the South introduced the budding musician to a broad array of blues talents, including John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. The explosion of genres and influences had a profound impact on Bobby’s life.
Dylan started putting little bands together, mainly comprised of boys from school or summer camp who knew how to sing or play an instrument. Initially, Dylan played the piano in these bands, bouncing around on them like one of his heroes, Little Richard. One of his groups, The Golden Chords, gained a bit of notoriety, even appearing on a Duluth television show called Polka Hour.6 None of the bands seemed to last very long, but Dylan continued to ply his newfound trade and grow as a musician. After graduation, he got a small taste of fame when up-and-coming artist Bobby Vee took him on as a pianist for his backing group, the Shadows, despite his limited ability. The short stint fueled the young man’s desire, but to achieve his goals he would have to leave small-town Hibbing and search out larger lights.
After spending the summer tooling around, searching for a way to play and learn new music, Dylan compromised with his parents and enrolled at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. They hoped he would pick up a college degree and either return to Hibbing to run the family business or find another respectable career outside music or poetry. Ironically, the new college student lived in the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity house early in his stay. His cousin was “Sammy” president and Beatty thought it would be a good influence on the boy. Sigma Alpha Mu was the best Jewish fraternity on campus.
According to biographer Howard Sounes, “Membership in the fraternity showed that Bob was from a family with good connections,” so his parents paid his rent and gave him an allowance to ease the way into college life. Despite the help, though, Bobby never made it through the pledge initiation or really settled into the university. College was not the young man’s priority and he soon dropped out.7
The transformation from small-town boy to a wiser soul had begun with Bobby’s foray into the music business and erstwhile travels, but a final touch was needed to complete the break with Hibbing. While there is a great deal of speculation about when Bobby Zimmerman transformed into Bob Dylan, the name stuck when the young musician got involved in the burgeoning folk scene in and around the university and an area called “Dinkytown,” where the young intelligentsia and folk groups hung out. As Bob Dylan, the musician began carving out a new persona and reputation, a kind of starting over from scratch. The influence of Dinkytown led to the young man turning his back to the rock and roll that he played in high school to the bohemian subculture of folk music.
The move to folk was like a reawakening for the newly christened Dylan. He returned to his earliest influences, musicians like Woody Guthrie and blues legend Leadbelly. He spent a great deal of time listening to others play folk music at the Scholar, a coffeehouse in Dinkytown, which served as a kind of home base for the avant-garde in Minneapolis. Dylan also began studying folk records and past musicians, a habit that he continued when he left for New York City. It is no stretch to say that this self-study is a central element in Dylan’s development as a musician. His training as a music historian of American folk music had a profound impact on his own work and sound.
Around Christmas 1960, Dylan finally left Minneapolis for New York City, deciding it was his time to attempt life in the big city. After visiting his parents for their approval—they granted him a year—he hitchhiked out of Minneapolis. After a couple of stays in both Madison, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Dylan (still a teenager) set out for the Big Apple and a new life, inspired by the folk community in Greenwich Village and the numerous record companies in the city.
The cover of Dylan’s 2004 memoir Chronicles represents much of what the reader finds in the book—the singer’s longtime love affair with New York City. The photograph, snapped by longtime Columbia Records staff photographer Don Hunstein, transports the viewer back in time to the Big Apple of the early 1960s. The image of Times Square captures the pace of the city, evident in the blur of classic cars, the night streets illuminated by the bright lights of a neon glow, and the headlights of passing sleek, finned automobiles. This is the New York City that Dylan embraced as a young man, fresh to the city and working diligently to learn his craft.
Hunstein also created the iconic images for Dylan’s first two albums. In an age just beginning to realize the power of visual images, these album covers were Dylan’s passport to fame. Without music videos and television appearances, cover art enabled fans to make sense of a musician or at least get a feeling about the artist. The sparse Bob Dylan, featured the young man in a ragged hat and wool-collared jacket, with a wry smirk on his face. In contrast, the revered Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, shows Dylan walking down the wintry street with girlfriend Suze Rotolo. She sports a knee-length, green overcoat and tightly grips his arm against the biting cold.
Bob Dylan plays the harmonica and acoustic guitar in March 1963.
(AP Photo)
Although the young man told outrageous lies early in his career about journeying to the city via boxcars and riding the rails like a hobo, Dylan actually hitched a ride from Chicago sometime after Christmas and possibly in early 1961, sharing some of the driving and small talk as the miles raced by. After crossing the George Washington Bridge, Dylan hopped out into the frozen, cold air and snow. He finally realized his dream of getting to the big city. In his memoir, Dylan flatly declared that New York City would “shape my destiny . . . I was at the initiation point of square one but in no sense a neophyte.”8 From these meager beginnings, Dylan initiated the transformation from budding folk singer to American icon. It all started on the hard, snow-covered streets of the Big Apple.
Through the haze of Greenwich folk clubs, dimly lit joints filled with audiences representing a cross section of the teeming city streets, Dylan focused on learning his craft, listening to other performers and spending time with them in the backrooms, often playing cards and sipping beers. The young singer made the rounds at clubs with interesting names, such as Gaslight, Folk City, the Folklore Center, and the Kettle of Fish. These gigs served as Dylan’s introduction to the East Coast folk scene, his version of an on-the-job apprenticeship, and a professional networking opportunity. By aligning with some of the old-guard musicians in the Village, like Dave Van Ronk and Jack Elliott, Dylan gained a seriousness that might otherwise have taken a long time to acquire.
Simultaneously, the nation experienced great changes in the late 1960 and early 1961 period. The election of young Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy sparked the nation’s imagination, yet the world’s ills were at the doorstep, intensified by the internal rot of racial prejudice crippling the South. With the stench of McCarthyism still in the air, the Korean War a near-memory, and the specter of atomic weaponry, it is no wonder that the message songs of the folk scene grew in popularity. These were troubling times and the mix of traditional songs and new themes excited the crowds filling Greenwich Village coffee shops and clubs.
A tenacious learner, Dylan crafted himself after Woody Guthrie, his musical idol. He did not have what we would today call a “master plan,” but Dylan did possess an unflinching resolve and confidence that he stood poised on the right track. Looking back, he explained, “It wasn’t money or love that I was looking for. I had a heightened sense of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a visionary to boot.”9 Dylan maintained both an acute sense of urgency and patience in learning more about music, performing, and his own goals and aspirations, demonstrating maturity beyond his young age, particularly for a neophyte fresh out of the upper Midwestern plains.
Dylan arrived in New York with little money and no real connections, yet he set out for Greenwich Village to make his mark on the folk world. Without a place to stay or steady income, he slept on floors and often played at local cafes or restaurants in exchange for food. Some of these joints drew in sizable crowds but gave the performers little or no pay, resulting in the singers passing the hat among the crowd. Looking at photos of Dylan before he arrived in New York, one might be surprised at the slightly doughy teen, particularly in contrast with the leaner times in the Big Apple. Yet, while he might occasionally go hungry, the young musician feasted on the new sounds he found in the city and the multitude of influences all around him.
The legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie suffered from Huntington’s disease, which would take his life on October 3, 1967. Dylan went to meet his idol and eventually became friends with Guthrie and his family members. Although he might be the most famous Guthrie disciple to show up at the singer’s bedside, Dylan was actually one of many who made the trek, one in a long line of folksingers who knew about Guthrie’s suffering and hoped to fill his day with a little music and camaraderie. According to his daughter Nora, Guthrie loved being surrounded by young singers and enjoyed knowing that he influenced the next generation of musicians. Dylan, for example, spent time with Guthrie by singing his own songs to him, which brought the older man happiness.10
Amazingly, Dylan had not really been much of a Guthrie fan early in his music apprenticeship. However, when he finally took note of the singer’s power and sound—at the urging of Flo Castner, a friend in Minneapolis—he fell hard, virtually transforming himself into a Guthrie clone. The impact, as Dylan describes in Chronicles, changed his life:
His mannerisms, the way everything just rolled off his tongue, it all just about knocked me down. It was like the record player itself had just picked me up and flung me across the room. . . . For me it was an epiphany, like some heavy anchor had just plunged into the waters of the harbor.11
Soon, Dylan only sang Guthrie songs and he began aping the man’s style, from the famous caps he wore to the pull-on work boots. This self-imposed apprenticeship—both musically and in terms of style and image—helped catapult Dylan into the heart of the Greenwich Village folk scene and eventually onto the national stage.
On his first album for Columbia Records, simply titled Bob Dylan, the young singer basically embodied Guthrie, writing traditional folk songs for the album, but creating new versions by rearranging chord progressions and adding new lyrics. The one song that universally inspired listeners was “Song to Woody,” a homage to his idol that demonstrated the musical and historical link between the two performers. In the tune, Dylan acknowledges the debt he owes to Guthrie and other folk heroes. Interestingly, though, the young man also nods to the ills America faced during Guthrie’s era and still confronts in his own. Dylan wants to credit his idol, yet he also wants to show how society’s ills still need to be addressed. Not much has changed when one compares and contrasts Guthrie’s world of the 1930s and 1940s with Dylan’s 1960s.
When Dylan sang the song for the bedridden Guthrie, the older man was moved. “That’s damned good Bob!” Guthrie exclaimed after the younger man finished. Later, after Dylan left, Guthrie told a family friend, “That boy’s got a voice. Maybe he won’t make it by his writing, but he can really sing it.”12 Ironically, Dylan’s hero pegged him as a singer, rather than a songwriter, while the rest of the world would soon see the opposite.
It did not take the young performer long to make it in New York City, as if meeting and befriending Guthrie lit a fire in him that more or less guaranteed his success. Without Guthrie’s influence, it is anyone’s guess what would have happened to Dylan or if he would have ever become the icon that emerged. “My life had never been the same since I’d first heard Woody on a record player in Minneapolis a few years earlier,” the singer explains, “When I first heard him it was like a million megaton bomb had dropped.” That weapon, in effect, would soon shoot Dylan to the top and far beyond what he could have ever imagined what his life would become.13
In the early 1960s, a musician needed a champion to make the leap from obscurity to a larger scene. Dylan had two: John Hammond, a powerful Columbia Records executive, and New York Times rock critic Robert Shelton, who not only gave the young singer his first big publicity, but also became a friend and confidante. Through Shelton, Dylan met singer Carolyn Hester, then making her first record for Columbia. She liked Dylan’s harmonica playing so much that she asked him to join her recording sessions. She championed him to Hammond, who after reading Shelton’s review in the influential newspaper, signed Dylan to a five-year contract.
While no one seems exactly sure of the full details, it seems that Hammond acted on instinct and signed the young singer without ever hearing him perform. Thus, as the fall season set in on New York in 1961, Dylan had his first record deal, less than a year after arriving in the city and begging for gigs in and around Greenwich Village.14 Shelton recalls, “Dylan’s reputation was growing as another Jack Elliott or Woody Guthrie, yet recording seemed the only doorway to national recognition.”15
Hammond provided the opportunity for Dylan to reach the stars. Originally a jazz producer, the influential record executive had discovered Billie Holiday and promoted many other jazz stars. With Dylan, Hammond found someone he called “a poet, someone who could communicate with his generation.” The producer worked with the singer to get his feelings on record and purposely kept tinkering to a minimum. Instead, he let Dylan write and record, which they did quickly and without much overhead costs. Hammond recalls that the first album, “cost something like four-hundred-and-two dollars because he was the only guy on it, no arranging costs, no musicians to pay.”16 Dylan remembers his excitement and trust for the executive, explaining, “There were maybe a thousand kings in the world and he was one of them.”17
Hammond, it turns out, pegged Dylan correctly: the young man brimmed with anger and things to say to his generation, even if he exuded a great deal of shyness in his one-on-one interactions with others. “There was a violent, angry emotion running through me then,” Dylan says. “I just played guitar and harmonica and sang those songs.”18
The news of the contract with Columbia went through the Greenwich Village folk community like wildfire. Not everyone, however, was pleased with the young man’s meteoric rise. Soon, relations became strained with some folk musicians who felt that they deserved a shot before this interloper, while others who seemed close to him began to take sides. Many commentators speculate that this snubbing by the folk scene, even at this early stage, set the tone for Dylan’s later break to playing rock and roll.
Given Guthrie’s preference for Dylan’s voice over his writing, it must be noted that the first album consisted primarily of traditional songs with new arrangements. At that time, Dylan did not have enough original songs to fill an album. Although Hammond and Dylan recorded the tracks quickly, it took nearly four months to get the vinyl in stores. During that nerve-wracking time, the young singer endlessly fretted, essentially penniless and eager for the album to see the light of day.
When the record Bob Dylan dropped in March 1962, it won critical praise, but barely registered in terms of sales. The cover photography—Dylan with his guitar, looking earnestly at the photographer—played on the folk mythology already growing up around the young singer. He wore the seemingly ever-present black, short-billed hat, reminiscent of Huck Finn.
Although we examine the Bob Dylan cover today full of the knowledge of who Dylan would become, consumers who picked up the album then must have wondered about this fresh-faced boy, who mysteriously looked both younger and older than his 20 years. At one time, the Dylan who stares out seems to look like a high school sophomore mugging for the camera right before the high school talent show, perhaps even a little scared and self-conscious. Another glance and Dylan seems like a dockhand, just off his shift, tired, but eager to tackle the world.
Since it only sold about 5,000 copies in its first year on the market, Columbia execs secretly labeled Dylan “Hammond’s folly” and wondered if the famed producer had finally lost his ability to pick a winner.19 What Hammond understood, though, was that the initial release merely revealed a modicum of the young singer’s talent. He instinctively realized that there were much bigger successes in store for Dylan and Columbia would benefit in the long run, as long as it showed patience in its new talent. The relationship that began with a simple handshake between the two men soon launched the most spectacular musical career to date—and, to think, if some Columbia managers had their way, it would have ended after one album.
* * *
Recalling these early years in New York City, Dylan confessed to journalist and biographer Robert Shelton his fear of death and thoughts of suicide. Reading these reminisces now, it seems as if the pressure on Dylan to live up to the 1960s’ idol labels simply overpowered him. The crush of fame had an impact on the young man. He recalls, “I was actually most afraid of death in those first years around New York. When I started writing all those songs and everyone started calling me a genius. . . . I knew it was bull, because I still hadn’t written what I wanted to.” Dylan even chastised himself for “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which he called, “a lucky classic song” and “one-dimensional.”20
Assessing this fear of death in hindsight, it is clear that Dylan’s concern may have led to his later disavowal of the labels people placed on him at the height of his fame as a folksinger. Someone afraid of death would certainly worry about how fame opened himself up to threats: both civil rights activist Medgar Evers and President John F. Kennedy were struck down by assassins.
Another thread also plays into Dylan’s early life: the desire to make records and achieve fame. For example, Dave Morton, a poet and musician who knew Dylan in Minneapolis, remembers the young singer as an introvert and shallow, not really interested in politics or intellectual activities, like many in the Dinkytown folk scene. Morton recalls, “He was focused and he did what he wanted to do, and he did it pretty good. He wanted to be rich and famous.”21 This kind of single-mindedness about achieving fame stands in contrast to the common narrative about Dylan’s rise, which usually seems a much more innocent quest.
The eternal question one must ask regarding the many dichotomies in Dylan’s life is how to reconcile them, if that is either possible or desirable. Is there anything wrong, one might ask, with a young musician yearning for fame and then realizing that once he has attained it, that celebrity is not all that one might have assumed? The challenge seems to reside in the way Dylan renounced his fame in the mid-1960s and later and pushed the “voice of a generation” label back in the face of his supporters.
In Chronicles, Dylan is pretty forthright about his desire to write great songs and get recorded. “You want to write songs that are bigger than life,” Dylan says.22 He remembers wanting to be “revolutionary,” like the famed artist Picasso.23 At the time, he sensed the changes taking place in the nation and in New York. Reading these passages and many others along similar lines in Dylan’s memoir, it is difficult to reconcile how passionately the young man wanted fame and fortune versus how he reacted once the notoriety exceeded anything he could have possibly imagined. Then, on the other hand, one must simply wonder: how does a 20-something in that era rationalize the labels anointing him sainthood or god-like status?