Mountain Journal: Searching For The 'Other Bob' Behind Dylan
On somewhat of a lark, realizing little by way of epiphany had been revealed about the childhood circumstances that yielded Bob Dylan, Thompson went where few journalists had gone before—poking around the mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota. There he confronted a question: how to reach the essence of a person who is, by his own design, inscrutable?
In 1968, Thompson set out on a quest to find a holy grail in contemporary culture. On somewhat of a lark, realizing little by way of epiphany had been revealed about the childhood circumstances that yielded Bob Dylan, Thompson went where few journalists had gone before—poking around the mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota.
There he confronted a question: how to reach the essence of a person who is, by his own design, inscrutable? Thompson was a young twenty something. His intent was not to interview Dylan the elusive phenomenon who at the dawn of the 1960s experienced a meteoric rise to become “the voice of a generation,” and then only a few years later broke his neck in in a motorcycle accident and retreated to upstate New York in semi-seclusion.
Thompson wasn’t interested in recapitulating the millions of words previously written about Dylan's persona. Instead, he wanted to gain insight into how one of the greatest songwriters of all time, who would go on to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Nobel Prize for Literature, began as Robert Allen Zimmerman.
Interview with Toby Thompson at Mountain Journal.
Story Date: 2022-04-25T11:00:00