DULUTH — When I recently wrote about the Northland's changing attitudes toward the Nobel winner who was born here in 1941, I came across multiple references to an incident that seemed unbelievable. Could it really be true that, in 1986, the Duluth City Council agreed to name a street after Bob Dylan, only to quickly change its mind?
Indeed it is. A scan of the News Tribune's archives for the days surrounding Dylan's June 26, 1986, concert at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome shows that it was a wild week in the artist's original hometown. (The newspaper was then called the Duluth News-Tribune and Herald.)
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"Harbor Drive is to become Bob Dylan Drive," reported the News Tribune on June 24, following a 6-3 council vote declaring an intent to rename that scenic street. The city attorney's office was tasked with writing an ordinance that would have made the decision official.
Before the council could seal the deal, though, they faced a constituent outcry. "My phone has been ringing and ringing and ringing — and I'll say ringing again," said Councilor M. George Downs. "I think the last count was about 80-3" against renaming Harbor Drive.
The News Tribune conducted its own poll, and found that only four out of 436 respondents favored the idea of Bob Dylan Drive. "Next to stopping the freeway, this has got to be the most stupid idea the council has come up with," wrote one resident, presumably referencing the council's having considered stopping the extension of Interstate 35 to 26th Avenue East.
The paper's editorial page concurred with readers. "No Bob Dylan Drive," read the headline on an editorial that asked, "Is six years as a child enough to justify naming a major downtown thoroughfare for this man, however talented, however famous he might be? It is not."
The editorial went on to call Dylan's arrival at St. Mary's Hospital "an accident of birth" for which Duluth "can take no credit whatsoever."
Some locals thought it looked embarrassingly desperate for Duluth to exploit Dylan's association with the city. Citing a section of the renaming resolution indicating that the move could "bring a new measure of fame to the city itself," Councilor Richard Braun said, "I think that's a rather selfish reason to recognize him."
So the council selflessly overturned the renaming decision, instead resolving simply to "appropriately recognize Mr. Dylan's heritage in Duluth" by way of some unspecified future action. Twenty years later, in 2006, the city finally designated Bob Dylan Way as a "cultural pathway" acknowledging the artist's Duluth history.
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Incredibly, News Tribune reporter Bob Aschenmacher actually had the opportunity to ask Dylan himself about the kerfuffle when granted a backstage interview in Minneapolis. The artist didn't do much to counter arguments that he had little personal relationship with his city of birth.
The interview ran on the front page of the June 29 issue under the headline "Dylan talks." A quote prominently highlighted was, "I don't remember much about Duluth, really, except, uh, the foghorns."
With respect to the street-naming controversy, said Dylan, "I really don't know what to think. I would think there'd be a lot of other people in Duluth they could name streets for."
That was certainly true. During the Dylan debate, Councilor Cynthia Albright pointed out that an earlier attempt to name a city park after Martin Luther King, Jr. also met with opposition and failed to pass. "I guess I would submit," she said, "that we're not very good at doing that kind of thing."
The Trust Project
