Life Bookazines - Bob Dylan - 2020

8 LIFE BOB DYLAN

T

he prodigious Minnesotan Robert Zimmerman, who certainly hoped that one day books

would be written about him, just as certainly never imagined—even in his considerable

ambition and his wildest dreams—that there would be so many such books. And he surely

never guessed that one of them might start with a note about Roger Maris and Kevin McHale—

guys he certainly didn’t know. ¶ Bobby Zimmerman was born in Duluth on May 24, 1941, but

the legend of his extraordinary life usually begins with

Hibbing, a smaller place that was his mother’s home-

town (his grandparents, both maternal and paternal, were

Jewish immigrants from Europe, and his people were

ensconced in Minnesota’s small but tight-knit Jewish

community). His family had relocated when Bobby was

six after his father, Abe, contracted polio and the Zim-

mermans required a support system. Whatever trauma

the boy or his toddler brother, David, might have felt at

the time remains unplumbed; it’s just the kind of subject

that Bob Dylan sloughs off. And maybe he is right to do

so, for his childhood seems to have been happy enough.

He went to school, he did okay, he liked rock ’n’ roll. When

he wasn’t yet a teenager, his parents allowed him and his

friends to practice in the garage, though Beatrice Zim-

merman was forced to intercede when Mrs. Schleppegrell

from across the street asked politely if the boys couldn’t

keep it down a bit because it was her son Bill’s nap time.

While at Hibbing High, Bobby performed in the Shadow

Blasters, and then the Golden Chords, whose amped-up

performance of the Danny and the Juniors song “Rock

and Roll Is Here to Stay” so unnerved the high school

principal that he terminated their performance at the

school’s talent show. As was the case with many would-be

rockers in the late 1950s, Zimmerman and his bandmates

were constantly being told to turn down the volume—

either by their parents, their neighbors or the authorities.

Hibbing’s population when the Zimmermans landed

there just after World War II was about 16,300—almost pre-

cisely what it is today. Located about 70 miles northwest

of Duluth, it was and remains an industrial city/town; on

its outskirts is the largest open-pit iron mine in the world.

People worked hard there. Kids played sandlot ball and

shot hoops for hours on end at the schoolyard. If some

young people might emerge to carry the banner of Hibbing

Birth of a

Fol k si nge r

THE CAP, THE GUITAR, THE HARMONICA

rack: All would become signature items after

the college dropout from the Midwest hit the

Big Apple, leaving not only his hometown but

his old self, Bobby Zimmerman, behind. MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY

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