Bob Dylan always knew he was destined for greatness
To say Bob Dylan is a music icon in every sense of the word is an understatement. He is a visionary poet who successfully explored the inner realm of emotion and the outer world of politics in his music. Dylan told of the time he knew he was destined for greatness in a revealing interview on the American television programme 60 Minutes.
During the conversation, the late host Ed Bradley asked Dylan what his parents thought about him moving to New York to pursue his music career. According to the interview, Dylan told his father he thought that New York was the capital of the world, who misinterpreted the comment as a joke.
He told Bradley: “No, they wouldn’t have wanted that for me, but my parents never went anywhere. He probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anywhere else than where he and his wife were in their own home, that was the capital of the world.”
As to what made him want to get out of his parent’s house, Dylan said, “Well, I listened to the radio a lot, I hung around record stores, banged around on the guitar and played the piano. Learned songs from a world which didn’t exist around me.”
Eventually, Dylan moved to New York in 1961. He remembered in his memoirs: “I was heading for the fantastic lights; destiny was looking right at me and nobody else.” Asked what Dylan means by the word “destiny”, he said, “It’s a feeling you have that you know something about yourself that nobody else does. The picture you have in your mind of what you’re about will come true.”
However, that inner feeling is something that Dylan felt ought to be protected from any outside influence. “It’s kind of a thing that you have to keep to your own self because it’s a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, and somebody will kill it, so it’s best to keep that all inside,” he said.
That destiny was part of the reason that Dylan changed his name; he never really felt like Robert Zimmerman, even before he started performing. “Some people get born to the wrong names from the wrong parents. That happens,” he said. As to why Dylan decided to call himself Bob Dylan, he simply replied, “You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”
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