Biography is a lot like naugahyde-a cheap imitation of the original experience. -Bob
Dylan
I know that. That's why I made the whole thing up. -Pam Quinlan
Bob Dylan began life with only a Y chromosome and a pair of genes. He was a cluster of cells that divided non-stop. For forty days and forty nights he divided. This proto-Dylan became a speck then a dot then a spot, a splotch and finally, a drop. He doubled in size every night but was still small, on account of his starting out no bigger than a speck of dust.
This tiny piece of tissue showed no signs of stardom as it floated like a balloon in the watery sky. The womb was like a lake of warm soup. When the flood gates finally opened and he was swept out into the waiting hands of a nurse it was no wonder he shrieked like a wet monkey. Good bye primordial hot tub, hello Minnesota.
Hello Minnesota. East Hibbing to be exact, a town like any other town; i.e. rows of houses, a main street, two parks and places to buy gasoline or ice cream. If the town had an unusual feature it was the coldness of the winters there. By November East Hibbing was colder than Lapland.
When Bob was growing up in this suburb of Antarctica, his last name was not Dylan but Zimmerman. "Zimmer" means "room" in German, so we can think of Bob as Bob Room-man. His mother's maiden name was Hausman, which further strengthens his connection with interiors. To this day he is something of a house plant.
This indifference to the outdoors is an adaptive behavior exhibited by many Minnesotans. They live in a harsh, uncompromising environment where joggers and bird-watchers die out.
Another characteristic of people in the area is their love of mayonnaise. They just glom it on. Bob loves mayonnaise the way that Eskimos love whale blubber. Salad dressing doesn't make him fat the way it would a native Californian: it gives him the extra insulation that Minnesotans need.
As a baby growing up in East Hibbing, Bob was not content to remain small. He was determined to grow, to keep up with his clothes, which each year got a little larger. As a young boy he always ate his carrots, in the belief that they would give him x-ray vision that would allow him to see through peoples' clothes. He learned to say things like "I don't want to go to bed" and "Aw, cut it out." He played with model airplanes and made zoom noises.
Given this unexceptional start in life, how did Dylan develop into a troubled genius, a curly-headed microphone for successive waves of hippies, flower children and folkies? The answer is that he didn't. Dylan is neither a spokesman nor a genius. He is merely a grown-up embryo that liked being born so much that he keeps dividing and being born again, always in a new guise. He writes songs as naturally as a platypus lays eggs, and he uses the songs to get a rise out of people. Wouldn't you?
The six year-old Dylan was a dreamy child, the one with his eyes closed in the second row of his fourth grade class picture. When he closed his eyes, after-images floated by, like brightly colored dust bunnies. Such were the effects of flash bulbs on the young poet.
At a young age the Zimmerman child showed considerable promise as a poet. But in his
early teens he came down with a rare writing malady known as either retroactive plagiarism
or, more commonly, spontaneous co-composition. His symptoms included having dead writers
steal his creations and having songs he wrote being played on a "golden oldies"
show. Bob first realized that something was wrong when he penned these beautiful verses.
Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my shield O clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire
William Blake, seer and poetic kleptomaniac, had stolen these verses 250 years before Bob had a chance to write them down. A year after his bout with Blake, Bob came down with co-composition and co-wrote "Blue Suede Shoes" with Carl Perkins, even as Perkins sat alone in a hotel room thousands of miles away. Frustrated by this strange malady, in which he wrote masterpieces he did not get credit for, Bob turned to cover versions of other people's songs.
It was around this time that Robert Zimmerman began to play piano. His fingers stumbled over the keyboard like a blindman tumbling down the basement stairs, and it was feared that the ruckus might cause the cat to miscarry. So, during the last months of his confinement the young folksinger was encouraged to take up guitar, and even given a Voice Lesson.
Insofar as the mind punctuates, Dylan always thinks of the Voice Lesson in capital letters. The Voice Lesson took place in Warsaw, an unincorporated rural area to the east of East Hibbing, in one of those cold months when it gets dark early. Dylan walked across the Voice Teacher's frozen lawn, crunching as he went. She was standing there at the door, a middle-aged lady with lipstick-colored hair. "You must be Bobby" she intoned in that clear-as-a-bell voice that Voice Teachers always have. "This way-to the living room."
"Now Bobby," the Voice Teacher said, pulling the piano bench up to her butt in a highly stylized way. "Would you sing high C?" "V-8," Bob sang.
"Huh huh huh" laughed the Voice Teacher in a way that suggested that the joke was not at all funny. "Now middle C."
"Ahhh" sang Bob, but the note went foul, over the third base line.
"D" she said.
"Uhhh" sang Bob, and it was good.
"E" declared the Voice Teacher.
"Ehhh" sang Bobby, slam-dunking this last note.
"Very good," said the Voice Teacher. "I would now like to teach you a song."
And she sang:
Drink to me only with thine eyes
And I will drink with mine
Or leave a kiss within the cup
And I'll not ask for wine.
"Do you think you can learn this for next week?" asked the Voice Teacher. "Sure," said Bob, but he never went back. As for the song, there was no need to memorize it, because the lipstick-haired lady's rendition had tattooed it on his brain.
With the voice lesson under his belt, what Bob needed now was a stage name. Many myths surround the etymology of this word, "Dylan." "Dylan" is actually an acronym, and a pretty good one. Short enough to fit on a movie marquee, long enough to adhere in the memory, it was coined on a Tuesday evening, at dinner time.
The Zimmermans were having beef stroganoff, Italian bread and buttered string beans, when young Bob helped himself to what his sister thought was an inordinate portion of noodles. "What's a matter Bob, Don't Ya Like Noodles." The phrase was catchy, and became a nickname. "Hey there, Don't Ya Like Noodles, who won the game?" "Don't Ya Like Noodles" was eventually shortened to Dylan, an "a" being added to smooth things out.
Bob had a name, now all he needed was a break. There's the rub. Where does a boy with a stage name go to become a celebrity? It's not as if you can just check the box marked "legend" on the back of a matchbook and they'll send you a brochure on how to become the Everly Brothers. You have to be at the right place at the right time. East Hibbing was not the right place. 1960 was not the right time. The idea was to go somewhere like New York City where there were other folksingers.
Dylan, you see, had felt like a platypus all along. Or a squid maybe. Something not like other creatures. Something risque and surreal that stalked the plains of East Hibbing. To be sure, he stood out like a billboard in that suburb of Antarctica. And why not? He was an incredible folksinger. He could sing those folks so those folks would never forget it. He was handsome too, with almond-like eyes and tawny skin and warm, sweet breath tasting vaguely of carrots and tobacco.
There was more than one woman sad to see him go, but leave he did, on a Greyhound bus marked "no destination."
No he didn't. His brother Dan saw him off. The bus was marked "Des Moines" because the driver had forgotten to change it. It was going to Chicago and on to New York. Bob had a cold cheeseburger with him, some ten dollar bills and a two hundred dollar check.
In Chicago, about 11:30 pm, a girl named Patty sat down beside him. She was pretty meaty as teenage runaways go, bleached hair with black roots, a missing tooth, and a voice that sounded like she drank diesel for breakfast and helium for lunch. Even in the dim brown light of the bus you could see she had on too much make-up. That was okay though. With her florescent nail polish and bright pink blush, she lit up the back of the bus as if the bus was the sage brush and she was Reno, Nevada.
"Wan'some rum and coke?" she said.
"Win some good dope?" he heard.
She pointed the flask at Bob, and he figured out what she had slurred at him.
"Sho'nuff" he drawled, savoring the phrase as if it were a good cheroot.
"You from the South?" she said, her eyes wide open like two vending machines.
"No'mum. Ahhm from Air-zonah."
"You a cowboy?"
"Nope. Ahhm jes'a rancher."
"Oh."
Bob and the runaway drank in silence, each lost in contemplation of the back of the seat in front of them. The rum drink was too sweet, Bob could feel his teeth getting varnished.
"Where you going?"
"Hoboken. Ahhm gonna marry my sweetheart. Prettiest lil' gal in the East. 'Sep for you of course."
This compliment somewhat mollified Patty, who was taken aback by Bob's wedding announcement.
"I'm going to New York to be a showgirl," declared Patty, who had formulated that plan just a second before to let Bob know just what he was missing.
"Hmmm. Yeah, uh-uh" Bob said.
The rum and coke was making him sleepy. He wanted to get away from Patty and the bus, so he said:
"You don't mind if I get some sleep do ya Patty?"
"Nah."
He put his jean jacket over his head, fixing the sleeve so he could look into it. His
sleeve formed a denim mineshaft, an endless tunnel of blue cotton where the day's after
images and the day's talk glittered like fool's gold or beach glass. He put his transistor
radio to his ear and listened to AM radio. Somewhere in the void, a lone d.j. was playing
Jimmy Rogers.
When it's peach picking time in Georgia
Apple picking time in Tennessee
Cheese ripening time in Wisconsin
It's gal picking time for me.''
"Never heard that line about Wisconsin before," thought Bob, a big Jimmy Rogers fan. Then he fell asleep, and the station signed off the air. Bob woke up around 4 am. and realized he'd been listening to an empty buzz.
Four a.m. is a good time of day to get melancholy. It's the time of day when people get born and people die. Bob wished he had some whiskey, but didn't we all, those nights when we hurtled down the lightless highways, with nothing but our reflection to keep us narcissistic company while the snores of the sleepless figure beside us mixed with the snores of everyone else on the bus.
On sped the giant sardine can through the Pennsylvanian darkness. By New Jersey, the
sky was pinkish gray. Bob wrote a song about it.
Past Hoboken, New York dawned
City talked about in songs
Broken down caboose,
ballet shoes on the loose
Lots and lots of french fries lots
and lots of beer
Consumed down on these piers.
And he acts
just like a platypus
And he says syllables
just like a platypus
And he crossed the Hudson River
just like a platypus
But he sings just like a little squirrel.
"Dum-dee-dum-dee dum-dum-dum-dum," hummed Bob, drumming his fingers on the
arm rest. To his right, New York rose up like a mountain range. "The next fifty years
ought to be some kinda fun" he thought.
They were.
Pam Quinlan works for a financial publisher. When unshackled from Standard & Poor's Corporation Records, she writes about mollusks, folksingers and cars. She resides in Chicago, where the distinction between dream and reality blur. Hi mom.
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