How does it feel? Bob Dylan’s hometown prepares for new film about the singer
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Bob Dylan’s music has played a major role in Justine Jacobson’s life.
“My tagline was that he wrote [‘Girl from the North Country’] about me. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
The love of his music was shared between Jacobson and her father.
“My dad passed away in 2020 during the pandemic ... and I sang ‘Blowing in the Wind’ at his memorial as a tribute to my dad. And so, I guess that that is probably the best way that I can exemplify how Bob’s music has impacted me.”
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Like many others, Jacobson is looking forward to the upcoming film based on Dylan’s career beginnings, “A Complete Unknown.”
“I was so excited to see that Timothée Chalamet was cast as Bob Dylan. I can only imagine how perfect he will be in this role.”
Although Minnesota is not featured in the film — which focuses on Dylan’s time in New York in the 1960s — Chalamet visited Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing earlier this year. In a press conference at the University of Minnesota, he told MPR News that the trip helped him understand who Dylan was in “unspoken ways.”
“I just felt like it kind of gave me sort of the, I don’t know, the energetic information of what Bob went through growing up,” the actor said.
Last Friday, ahead of the film’s wide release, Hibbing held an advanced screening. In advance of that, the Hibbing College Foundation held a fundraiser event that celebrated the music icon.
“Bob’s a huge hero of mine,” said attendee and musician Paul Metsa. He has also written a book on Dylan.
“He’s had a lot of influence on my career.”
Metsa is from the Iron Range. He says he can hear how Dylan’s upbringing on the Range influenced the characters that appear in his songs. Metsa also sees Northern Minnesota’s grit in Dylan.
“He’s really bullheaded. I mean, there’s no one in American culture that has suffered the slings and arrows of criticism and withstood him better than Bob Dylan,” Metsa said.
“Like I say in my book, who but an Iron Ranger would take his guitar and hitchhike to New York City in January?”
Across Hibbing are elements of Dylan’s life. Visitors can take tours of his childhood home, and the street he lived on has been partially named “Bob Dylan Drive.” At the Hibbing library, an exhibit featuring Dylan memorabilia, photos and newspaper clippings is on permanent display.
One of the librarians who helped curate it was Nancy Riesgraf, who worked at the Hibbing library for 38 years. She was surprised by the fact that people from around the world would make the pilgrimage to see where Dylan grew up.
“It truly amazed me. I never even imagined that we would get people from Germany and England and Australia.”
Hibbing’s relationship with Dylan hasn’t always been the kindest.
“In school, Bob was an outcast,” said retired social studies teacher Craig Hattam, adding that Dylan’s leather jacket and motorcycle riding projected a counterculture look for the musician in 1950s rural Minnesota.
“In fact, when he was on stage in Hibbing, he played Little Richard songs.”
Hattam also explains that there were benefits to growing up in Hibbing, such as the mentorship Dylan received at school.
“B.J. Rolfzen was helping him with his poetry,” Hattam said of Dylan’s high school English teacher.
In 2016, Dylan became the first musician in history to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
“[Rolfzen] was a major influence on his life.”
Once Dylan left Hibbing, he started to fabricate his backstory, leaving Hibbing out of his tale. This sort of self-reinvention was common for musicians of the era — but left his hometown feeling iced out.
“And for a while it led to ‘Hibbing hates him’ for some reason,” Hattam said. However, it appears to Hattam that fewer people have that attitude towards him now.
Hattam said there’s something undeniably Iron Range about the songwriter.
“I like how in his songs, he’s got, like a whine to his song. And I’m going, wait a minute, that hard R and that whine? That’s how I talk all the time! That’s an Iron Range song!”
As the film nears its wide release, Hattam is looking forward to seeing the impact it will have and celebrating the man.
“[He's] from northeastern Minnesota. Who would have thought that kind of thing would have come from here? And to get that celebrated in a movie? It gives a whole new generation of people a chance to be inspired by his music.”
“A Complete Unknown” opens Dec. 25.
Correction (Dec. 27, 2024): An earlier version of this story misspelled Dylan's teacher’s name. The story has been updated.
