| January 8th, 2006 10:08 PM |
|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
End of an era
duluthSuperior.com
Jan 8,2005
Those who grew up with or knew the young Bob Dylan in Hibbing are gray now and remember when Robert Zimmerman was not yet famous
BY JANNA GOERDTNEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
The times, they are a-fading.
The years of turmoil and social upheaval that Bob Dylan -- reluctantly, unwittingly or otherwise -- came to represent have passed. The people who experienced it are growing gray.
Many who grew up alongside Dylan in Duluth and Hibbing have moved away. Many who remain choose silence about the person they knew as Robert Zimmerman, having been pressed too hard by too many people for details. But some will still talk about their Dylan days.
All are part of a generation that changed and were changed by Bob Dylan. But even as that generation passes, Dylan's music remains.
``He is one of the few artists who will go on forever, like Mozart, like Picasso,'' said Tino Markworth, who lectures on Dylan at Stanford University in California. ``In today's music, there's Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Bob Dylan.''
THE BAND
But first, there was Robert Zimmerman, lead singer and guitar player with the Golden Chords garage band -- Dylan's first.
LeRoy Hoikkala, 65, played a set of golden drums, and Monte Edwardson, 63, played guitar.
The group had its first paying gig at the Hibbing Armory in March 1958, Hoikkala said. At 50 cents a head, it was a success with the local teen crowd.
``People say Bob Dylan was a loner, but he really wasn't,'' Hoikkala said. ``He was massively independent; he was restless.''
Hoikkala and Dylan hung out together. They didn't talk about their families or their feelings. Instead, they went on ``missions,'' going to the movies or riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Hoikkala once picked up a Harley for Dylan, who didn't yet know how to ride it. Hoikkala rode the motorcycle home with Dylan clinging to the back seat.
Hoikkala also remembers listening to late-night jive and blues on AM radio with Dylan.
``Bob didn't copy the music, but he used it as a stepping-stone for his own,'' Hoikkala said.
Hoikkala, retired from U.S. Steel, still lives in Hibbing. He eventually gave up the drums and sold his golden set to either the Hibbing or Chisholm schools, he can't remember which.
He gears up for Dylan Days, anticipating the tours that circle Hibbing landmarks and talking about his Golden Chords days, which he only recently decided to discuss.
Both he and Edwardson have been dogged by media hungry for details, and both have been pressured to distort the past.
For example, ``I know we never played at a concert with Little Richard,'' Edwardson said. ``We were supposed to have done that.'' Or the tale about teachers dropping the curtain on Dylan's wild talent show performance -- that never happened, either, Edwardson said.
Edwardson left Hibbing after graduation and spent several years with the Air Force. He lives in Colorado and played the guitar until just recently. He once shared a stage with the Chmielewski Fun Time Band, and still loves a good polka.
Though he grows weary of repeating his Dylan stories, ``I never lost touch with LeRoy,'' Edwardson said. ``He's good people.''
Does Edwardson listen to anything Dylan these days?
``Nope,'' he said, and left it at that.
THE TEACHER
B.J. Rolfzen dialed up the stereo's volume and smiled as Bob Dylan's tight, world-wise voice permeated his basement office.
Rolfzen, 82, used to correct papers in this office, Robert Zimmerman's among them. Zimmerman sat in the front row, center seat in Rolfzen's 11th-grade English class at Hibbing High School in 1958.
Rolfzen remembers ``Robert'' well and has come to admire his music.
``He is a poet,'' Rolfzen said. ``He loves words, and the sounds of words.''
A 22-page essay on John Steinbeck's ``The Grapes of Wrath'' Dylan wrote in Rolfzen's class recently sold at auction for nearly $35,000. Rolfzen told the story with a tiny smile on his face. He had returned the paper to Dylan, red corrections marks and all.
Dylan also chose Rolfzen as something of a confidant, as have many of Rolfzen's students.
When Dylan returned to Hibbing for his father's funeral in 1968, he visited with Rolfzen, talking about his ``successes in New York,'' Rolfzen said. It was six years after Dylan recorded his first album.
Rolfzen last saw Dylan in fall 2004, at a funeral for one of Dylan's relatives.
``I put my arms around him, and said, `Robert, how are you?' '' Rolfzen said. ``Right away, he said to me, `You taught me a lot.' I thought that was a good compliment.''
``I don't see him often,'' Rolfzen said. ``He's too busy running around the world.''
But as Rolfzen sat in his basement, he seemed sweetly lost in Dylan's music, tapping his stockinged feet and singing softly along with the lyrics from Dylan's 1997 ``Time Out of Mind'' album. Rolfzen drew his voice out on the long syllables, similar to Dylan.
``Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear,'' Rolfzen sang. ``It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.''
THE NEIGHBOR
Steve Raukar remembers some of Dylan's earliest music spilling out of the Zimmerman family garage.
Raukar lived next door to the Zimmermans and would often ride his tricycle past the garage as Dylan and his band jammed inside.
``It was just noise to me then,'' Raukar said. He was 5 or 6 at the time, and Dylan would have been in his later teens.
The Raukar family kitchen window also had a view of an upstairs bathroom in the Zimmerman house, where Raukar watched Dylan smoke cigarettes.
Though Raukar, who still lives in Hibbing and is 7th District St. Louis County commissioner, likes Dylan's music, his father feels differently.
``If you were to ask my father who were the three most negative influences to come out of popular music, he'd say Elvis, the Beatles and Bob Dylan,'' Raukar said. ``He is more a fan of Glen Miller and Benny Goodman.''
That generation gap may be why Hibbing was slow to embrace one of its most famous sons.
``It's always been young people who liked his music,'' Raukar said. ``There's an older generation that never connected to rock and roll. They never embraced Bob's origins.''
The anti-Vietnam War movement that came to be associated with Dylan also grated on some of the older generation.
Raukar counts ``The Hurricane'' and ``You Gotta Serve Somebody'' among his favorite Dylan songs.
``He's a poet who can also write great music,'' Raukar said. ``The message is in the music.''
THE COUSIN
Ask David Garon how he is connected with Bob Dylan and he gives a matter-of-fact answer.
``Well, he's my cousin,'' Garon says. ``And we lived in the same house for a while. But I don't know the guy.''
Dylan is a first cousin once removed on Garon's father's side. The two families lived in the duplex at 517 N. Third Ave. in Duluth, though the Zimmermans moved when Garon was only a year old.
Garon once had a picture of Dylan pushing Garon's older brother, Tom, in a stroller, but he hasn't seen it in a while.
``I feel like one of my Dylan fan friends made off with it,'' Garon said.
Garon, also a musician, said he wasn't much of a Dylan fan in his youth. His relationship to the music icon ``didn't mean that much to me,'' Garon said. ``It seemed to mean an awful lot to my friends, though.''
THE BABYSITTER
Delores Tynjala remembers little Bobby Zimmerman's curly brown hair, but not much more. Tynjala, 75, used to babysit for the Zimmerman boys while the family still lived in Duluth.
``It tickles me now,'' Tynjala said. ``You don't think you're babysitting a future celebrity.''
``I would tell my friends that my mom used to babysit Bob Dylan, and no one would believe me,'' said Delores' son, Paul Tynjala. ``They would say, `Yeah, right, and my mom babysat for Jimi Hendrix.' ''
Though Delores Tynjala was among the few people in Duluth to spend time with the young Dylan, she prefers the violin, and doesn't care for Dylan-era music.
She moved to New Brighton, Minn., six years ago -- to babysit her grandchildren.
THE ICON
Dylan remains relevant because he has successfully blended three traditions: folk music, rock 'n' roll and the ``high-end culture'' of poetry, Markworth said. ``He addresses the human condition, in all its complicated facets.''
In 1998 Markworth organized an international conference about Dylan's work at Stanford University. He still teaches an occasional class.
Dylan introduced social criticism into popular music -- today, almost a given for many artists -- and stretched the limits of a single. ``Like a Rolling Stone'' is more than seven minutes long, in an era when most singles lasted just three.
``Even when he sings about love, it's a little more complex,'' Markworth said.
And Dylan's voice, which once made a young Markworth cringe? Today, it resonates.
``The roughness of his voice adds to the emotional impact of his songs,'' Markworth said. ``It suggests authenticity; it mirrors the emotional complexities.''
It's a voice that seems likely to remain, even after the new ``Bob Dylan Drive'' signs in Hibbing have lost their shine, and after the Zimmerman house on Seventh Avenue changes hands again and again.
Even after those who knew Robert Zimmerman are gone, Dylan's voice will remain.
|
| January 8th, 2006 10:09 PM |
|
|
| jb |
What? |
| January 8th, 2006 10:17 PM |
|
|
| MrPleasant |
Nice, funny article. Thanks. |
| January 8th, 2006 11:14 PM |
|
|
| jb |
quote:
MrPleasant wrote:
Nice, funny article. Thanks.
Thanks Voodoo!!! |
| January 8th, 2006 11:19 PM |
|
|
| MrPleasant |
Eh? |
| January 8th, 2006 11:20 PM |
|
|
| jb |
quote:
MrPleasant wrote:
Eh?
I've fallen and I can't get up......................where's the beef? |
| January 8th, 2006 11:23 PM |
|
|
| MrPleasant |
quote:
jb wrote:
I've fallen and I can't get up......................where's the beef?
We are pigs, drunks, rapists, louts, and molesters, and when we’re taking a break from such things, we are vindictive, condescending, and violent. Feminist twaddle, you ask? Hardly, as broads aren’t victims so much as bitches pushed to the edge. |
| January 8th, 2006 11:24 PM |
|
|
| jb |
quote:
MrPleasant wrote:
We are pigs, drunks, rapists, louts, and molesters, and when we’re taking a break from such things, we are vindictive, condescending, and violent. Feminist twaddle, you ask? Hardly, as broads aren’t victims so much as bitches pushed to the edge.
You got style!!!!!!!!!!! |
| January 8th, 2006 11:27 PM |
|
|
| MrPleasant |
quote:
jb wrote:
You got style!!!!!!!!!!!
All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not. |
| January 8th, 2006 11:31 PM |
|
|
| jb |
quote:
MrPleasant wrote:
All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not.
One love, one heart, ....................brothers and sisters, lets cool it............. |
| January 8th, 2006 11:34 PM |
|
|
| MrPleasant |
quote:
jb wrote:
One love, one heart, ....................brothers and sisters, lets cool it.............
Comin' for to carry me home.
|
|
