The Origin Story of the Bob Dylan Fan Club

 Bob Dylan has never had a fan club.  At least that’s what he thinks.  At least that’s what he tells us he thinks when we eventually meet him in the narrow passageway between two trucks on a hot July day in St. Paul MN, where he is standing smoking an American Spirit cigarette and awaiting our arrival.

“And I was wondering if you girls would like to start one?”

When we ask him more specifically what he wants us to do he admits, in a tone that underscores the importance of the question, “Well that’s just it, I don’t really know. You see, I’ve never had a fan club.”

It really takes me a few seconds to realize that he is talking about a fan club in a literal way, and not just using the turn of phrase to say something like, “I’ve never had a fan club until you two came along.”   It is with increased puzzlement that I realize that he is serious and really does mean he wants us to form a club, made up of his fans.  But how many?  And how come?  These questions and others will follow our encounter.  For now I’m just thinking that, of all circumstances in which I’d imagined meeting Bob and discussions that might ensue…of all the things I have thought about him asking me, the requests he might lay on my table… that he’s wondering if I would like to co-preside over his official fan club just wasn’t among the possibilities.