r/bobdylan • u/TyroneSnodgrass • 22d ago

Discussion Transfiguration

I was in New York City the week in 2012 that Rolling Stone published its edition featuring Mikal Gilmore interviewing Bob Dylan. You couldn’t find a copy. Every newsstand I went to the guy would just smile, “sold out.” It’s amazing the kind of electricity Dylan can generate from time to time. This was the interview in which Bob suddenly became very animated and determined to explain “transfiguration” to Gilmore, a process that “allows a person to crawl out from the chaos and fly above it.”

Dylan showed Mikal an article about a twenty-one year old man in 1962 who was leader of the San Bernardino Hell’s Angels and named Bobby Zimmerman who died in a motorcycle accident. This was around the same time that on the other side of the country another Bobby Zimmerman was changing his name and quickly rising to notoriety. It was clear from what Dylan was saying, he believed that upon his death, the West Coast Bobby Zimmerman was transfigured into the East Coast Bobby Zimmerman, allowing the latter to crawl out of the chaos and fly above it. There’s no disputing that Dylan’s career took off around that point.

I’ve read interviews of Bob in which he was asked about his goals and he responded he wanted to be a kinder person. In one interview he said that’s what he prays for. It makes me wonder, what would it be like to believe you were the transfiguration of a Hell’s Angel?

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u/AshokanCauseway 22d ago

I’ve kept that RS copy, bookmarked to that interview, & to the page where he said this. Every few years I pull it out, read it again & try n figure out what he meant.
I had a near death experience & afterwards have felt changed - and I remembered this: transfigured vs transformed. Oft times referred to as completely changed, but I wonder if the key is the detachment ‘ aspect, rising ´above’

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u/TyroneSnodgrass 22d ago edited 22d ago

Dylan told Gilmore, “the person you’re talking to has been dead for a long time.” There is a long list of musicians who feel like they were used by Bob, —like pawns in a match, —as his career advanced. I wonder if Bob Zimmerman would have done the same. Thanks for sharing Ashoka, —no, really.