Me and Bob at Al's Breakfast

The Column: 07.10.25

Jul 11, 2025

People are always asking me if I know Bob Dylan, seeing as we’re the same age and both of us were at the University of Minnesota at the same time, and I’ve always said no, not wanting to get into the whole complicated story or claim any credit for his career. Dylan is a hard-working guy who deserves his entire $500 million fortune and the fact he never gave me credit for his name and never paid me back the ten bucks I gave him in 1960 at Al’s Breakfast diner is neither here nor there. He was sitting next to me, guitar on his back, eating two eggs over easy on hash browns with three strips of bacon and he said, “Hey, man, you got a ten on you? I left my billfold in my car and my girlfriend Elaine borrowed it to go pick up my suit at the cleaners. Soon as she returns, I’ll pay you back.”

He looked like a nice clean-cut guy, pinstripe shirt with a turquoise bolo tie, blue Bermuda shorts, maybe too much Wildroot hair cream but what caught my eye was the Roy Rogers tablet he was writing on.

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I’m a writer and singer
And I have prophesied now and again
On various topics wide-ranging
And I’ve written poetry now and then
That people have said was engaging
Some I thought I might send to a friend
And others I felt like changing
And some I would definitely recommend
And it’s time I got an agent.

“Interesting,” I said. “I think you’ve got something here.” People often showed me their writing back then because I had a moustache and wore a denim jacket and a neckerchief and “I think you’ve got something here” stood up pretty well as response. It’s not a put-down but it also doesn’t encourage false hope and maybe lead them to waste years of their life. But what struck me was his signature, Robert J. Zimmerman. “If you’re going to be a singer-songwriter, you need a better name,” I said. “Zimmerman is a plumber’s name.”

I pulled out a copy of Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill” and said, “Anything there strike your fancy?”

“Robert F. Hill?” he said. “Or Bob Hill?”

“Bob Hill sounds too much like Bobble. How about his name?”

“Bob Thomas?” he said.

So I wrote it out in big letters: B-o-b D-y-l-a-n.

He said, “Hnnh. It’s too odd. And people’d pronounce it Die-lan. Like Dialin’ For Dollars.” And he wrote: Bob Dillon.

I said, “It’s too close to Matt Dillon. And when you’re a writer poet, Odd is to your advantage. Try it out for a few weeks and see how people respond to it.”

And then a tall woman with long black hair walked up with a jacket on a hanger. A tweed sport coat.

I said, “Elaine, I want you to meet Bob Dylan.”

She looked at him and grinned showing all of her teeth and gums except a couple back molars. “I like it,” she said. “It’s perfect.” And that sealed the deal for Bob, that big grin. He himself never cracked a smile, even a slight one; back then, songwriters didn’t. He reached for the jacket and I pulled his hand back. “A tweed sport coat people will take to mean you’re an essayist. Trust me. You want this.” And I took off my denim jacket and helped him on with it. I said, “Believe me, you’ll thank me for this someday.”

That was the last I saw of him. He forgot about the ten bucks and he never thanked me. His success is very simple. My generation was brought up on clichés and they were fascinated by a man who was diligent about being mysterious. He sang about the circus in town and painting passports brown and the blind commissioner in a trance with one hand in his pants and the riot squad needing somewhere to go and Lady and me on Desolation Row and when you devote yourself to meaninglessness you become fascinating and anyway it’s so much better than “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and your love of the inexplicable sets you apart. People love puzzles, especially insoluble ones. And Bob had a great investment guy, Roland Stone, who put his dough into Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh and Ohio Dynamo, but without me, he’d be a complete unknown in a trailer home without a phone. Now I’ve said it, you’ve read it, hope you get it.