Homecoming

Fresh out of Hibbing High School, Bob Dylan arrived in Minneapolis in 1959, “looking for the great city, looking for the speed,” as he writes in Chronicles. He enrolled at the University of Minnesota, rented a room above Gray’s Drugstore in Dinkytown, and plunged into the local coffeehouse scene. Eighteen months later, he hitchhiked out of town, en route to New York and an extraordinary decades-long gig as America’s premier singer-songwriter.

Dylan returns to the U of M campus, albeit in spirit only, as the subject of a multimedia exhibition that runs from February 3 through April 29 at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum. Organized by Seattle’s Experience Music Project, Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1956–1966 begins on Minnesota’s Iron Range, where young Bobby Zimmerman jammed with rock ’n’ roll bands, and ends in Woodstock, New York, where he sought seclusion with his family following a motorcycle accident.

All the major milestones are here: Dylan’s name change; his search for the ailing, institutionalized Woody Guthrie; his roles in the civil rights movement and Greenwich Village–based folk revival; his personal and professional relationship with singer Joan Baez; his incendiary performance on electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. To sharpen the Minnesota focus, the Weisman is enhancing the exhibition with rare memorabilia from Hibbing and Dinkytown, including Zimmerman family photos and priceless early audiotapes.

Even for longtime fans, this portrait of the artist as a young man will be eye- and ear-opening. It’s fascinating, for example, to study the first draft of “Gates of Eden,” handwritten on Holiday Inn stationery, and listen to Dylan sing the simple tune that metamorphosed into “Blowin’ in the Wind.” It’s heartening to learn that the gifted lyricist wrote insipid yearbook inscriptions. And it’s just plain fun to watch a hilarious outtake from the seldom-seen film Eat the Document.

As he rose to fame, the Duluth–born troubadour left a trail of ticket stubs, concert posters, album covers, taped interviews, and newspaper articles from Minneapolis to Melbourne. Now the Weisman, to borrow the title of Dylan’s fifth album, is bringing it all back home. 

Elizabeth Bachman, a former associate editor of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, lives in New York City, where she visited the Dylan exhibition during its recent stay at The Morgan Library & Museum.