As you recall, last month we printed a segment of the first interview Bob Dylan gave in the early 60s as he burst onto the national music scene in New York City. In that interview, Dylan told the interviewer that he grew up in the West and Midwest and that he lived several years in Gallup. This was, by the way, not an isolated claim by Dylan; in almost every interview he gave in that era he claimed that he had lived an adventurous life traveling around as a carnival worker and he would regularly claim to have lived in Gallup.
Not long into his national career, Newsweek printed a critical article on Dylan – who was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota – which, among other things, claimed that his tale of an adventurous youth was a fiction. According to Newsweek, Dylan grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, the home of home run king Roger Maris.
Last month we asked if any of you had information connecting Dylan to Gallup in his youth and, if not, why he would have included Gallup as part of a made up persona. Well . . . as they say, the silence was deafening; we didn’t hear from you. The absence of anyone claiming to have known Dylan sure suggests that his claim of growing up in Gallup was fictional, but we are still open to hearing from anyone who claims otherwise. But, this isn’t the end of the story as far as we are concerned. If Dylan wasn’t from Gallup, we want to know why he adopted us in his imagination. And, we’ll put our theory out there. Our guess –and that’s all it is: a guess – is that at some point as a youngster Dylan was driving with his family through Gallup on Route 66. Well what did he see as he drove through town? A huge sign smack dab in the middle of a town filled with Indians and cowboys that said “Zimmerman’s.” And when it came time to invent a persona to match the image of “the freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” he thought back to that sign and the town where he saw it.
As far as we are concerned, this story is not over. If you have information or your own theory, we still want to hear from you . . . and we have decided to go straight to the source. That’s right, we want to hear from Dylan himself. It’s now our mission to get an interview with Dylan. We may end up like Michael Moore chasing an interview with GM’s Chairman, but we are going to try everything we can think of to get Bob Dylan to speak to us and we will keep you posted. Stay tuned.
My wife (Sharon McKim Walker (formerly Troncoso)) grew up in Gallup and has convinced me that Dylan’s song “Isis” was based (at least a lot of the imagery was based) on a visit to Gallup. The second verse describes Gallup, even tongue-in-cheek: “I came to a high place of darkness and light/The dividing line ran through the center of town/I hitched up my pony to a post on the right/Went in to a laundry to wash my clothes down.” New Mexico (“the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong” of the first verse) is prized by artists for its play of shadow and light, the BNSF divides the town, and how many laundries are in Gallup? The fourth verse: “I was thinking about turquoise I was thinking about gold/I was thinking about diamonds and the world’s biggest necklace” sounds like Gallup also. Dylan undoubtedly passed through, and he probably spent enough time in town to pick up a good bit of the local flavor. I hope you get your interview.
I don’t recall the season but it was in a cool evening of 68 or 69, my friend Jerry Montgomery and I were at Denny’s and we ran across this fellow who was talkative, and friendly. He piled into Jerry’s red Dodge pick up truck and we cruised the town for while and then we decided to go to a party at Hot Springs.
I remember on the way that was first time me and Jerry ever tried pot. This guy called himself Bob Dylan. I saw him a few times after that. He was always friendly. When I first heard of Dylan the singer and got a chance to compare his picture with what I recalled of him..I am certain it’s the same person.
Yeah ..Dylan played football with us in the Perkey and played pin ball machines at the Greyhound bus sation
What do The Zimmermans say?
The early Bob Dylan persona was an elaborate construction that started with his name. He was preceded in this by Elliot Adnopoz, otherwise known as “Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, the diminutive “cowboy” folksinger who was the son of a Jewish Brooklyn dentist.
It is in a radio interview that Dylan claimed to have lived in Gallup. You can hear a part of this interview in Martin Scorsese’s PBS documentary on Dylan that is available on DVD. Dylan claimed that he composed cowboy and Indian songs while he lived there. He speaks in an affected western accent dropping all the “g’s” from every gerund.
My guess is that Dylan absorbed part of Peter LaFarge’s background. Peter LaFarge was the son of Oliver LaFarge, the Indian scholar and writer, and was the composer of “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.” Peter grew up on a ranch in Fountain, Colorado and also affected a cowboy image in his stage presentation, although his was a more authentic claim.Dylan was close to Peter in his early Greenwich Village days and even collaborated with him on a couple of songs. Also, on the liner notes of his first album Dylan claimed to have performed at a strip joint in Central City, Colorado in 1959, yet another fabrication.
There is also the Woody Guthrie persona that Dylan identified with through his reading of “Bound for Glory.” The rambling, itinerant folk singer was an essential part of Guthrie’s image, some of it true and some it manufactured. Dylan was part of the quest for authenticity of the 60′s, the “salt of the earth”, just “down home folks”, which is ironic in that, in many cases, it based on total falsehoods.
So I seriously doubt that Dylan was ever in Gallup in his early days, much less as a cowboy. I believe Dylan to be a true genius in many ways, not the least of which is self promotion.
Jim Cooley
In the previous comment I failed to address the question: “Why Gallup?” The interview with Oscar Brand in which Dylan claims to have grown up in Gallup was conducted in October of 1961. That same year, Chuck Berry had a big hit with his version of the Bobby Troup song, “Route 66.” Gallup, New Mexico was in the consciousness of any teen with access to a radio, and that was all of them, including Dylan.
This was also within the bygone era of the picture postcard when everyone sent friends and relations photo evidence of their journeys west. Gallup bills itself as being the “Indian Capitol of the United States,” but it is possibly the postcard capitol as well, the only possible contender being the Grand Canyon.
As a teenager in 1961 I was well aware of Gallup’s iconic old west, cowboy and Indians status and I would imagine that Dylan was, too. Coupled with Dylan’s agility in pulling all sorts of exotic information out of whatever orifice that was available to him at the time, I would surmise that Dylan’s life in Gallup existed only in his head, and the minds of his more gullible fans.