In 1960, a young Robert Zimmerman — who had begun to call himself “Bob Dylan” — journeyed from the icy flatlands of Minnesota to New Jersey on a pilgrimage. His destination: the bedside of his ailing idol, the legendary folk hero, Woody Guthrie. He was obsessed with Woody, or rather, with the mythic figure Guthrie created in his memoir, Bound for Glory. The book painted Guthrie as a train-hopping folk troubadour singing for hobo camps, union halls, and saloons, armed with nothing but a guitar and harmonica. Biographer Clinton Heylin described Dylan at this time as being fully immersed in his “Guthrie phase.”
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