Following Bob Dylan, and Maybe Even Bono

In his 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, Bob Dylan recalls spending an evening with Bono and telling U2’s singer that he should take a trip through Minnesota to the birthplace of America, following a road along “the river up through Winona, Lake City, Frontenac.” What Dylan didn’t reveal is what Steve Dougherty figured out when he opened a road map.

Dougherty writes in an excellent New York Times story that the unnamed road in “Chronicles” is Highway 61, “the fabled Blues Highway that runs from the Mississippi Delta through Duluth, where Mr. Dylan was born, and that Mr. Dylan mythologized in his 1965 masterpiece ‘Highway 61 Revisited.’” That revelation sparked Dougherty’s own road trip, following the trail Dylan suggested to Bono. Among the places Dougherty visits on his excursion: Rollingstone, Minnesota, population 697.

I’m no Bobcat, but I care enough about Dylan’s music that I borrowed “Chronicles” from a friend a couple months ago. It’s a rambling, somewhat cryptic read, but it also contains at least one terrific sequence of travel writing. The passage takes place in 1989 in New Orleans during the recording of his album “Oh Mercy.” The sessions with Daniel Lanois were sometimes contentious, so at one point Dylan escapes by hopping on his motorcycle and taking a trip through the bayou with his wife. His vivid retelling of the trip includes a visit with a man called Sun Pie at King Tut’s Museum outside of the city. I can’t find any of the passage online, but if you can get your hands on it I highly recommended that you do.

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