I made a pilgrimage to Hibbing MN.

I'm a Dylan fan from way way back. A mutual love of Dylan is the starting point for my 38 year (gulp!) friendship with Geo. I've got the music, the books, the t-shirts, the posters, etc. But a pilgrimage like this isn't really the type of thing that appeals to me. I was visiting an old childhood friend Gerry in Minneapolis who is also a big Dylan fan. We went up for a weekend to his cabin which is about 90 minutes north of Minneapolis. From there it's only another hour or so to Hibbing.

I confess that I agreed to the weekend trip to the cabin in hopes that I could persuade Gerry to make the Hibbing trip; Gerry already been there before and didn't initially jump at the idea of a return trip. But he did finally agree.

So, off to Hibbing. Approaching Hibbing and then driving down the main drag was like stumbling upon the land that time forgot. So much of it looks just like it must have looked when Dylan was a teenager there in the 1950s. The Zimmerman family appliance store is long gone but there were many other local stores that are a thing of the past around where I am now, in the land of Home Depots, Best Buys, Staples, and such.

Then we drove to the recently renamed Bob Dylan Drive. Stood outside Dylan's boyhood home - how I would have loved to get inside that. Then, a block away, to Hibbing High School. Stood outside the auditorium entrance. Another place I would have liked to have gotten into, to stand on the stage where a teenage Dylan 's rock & roll band, The Golden Chords, played at an assembly. Unfortunately, it was a summer Saturday afternoon and everything was locked up tight; believe me, we tried.

Yes, we tried to steal a Bob Dylan Drive street sign. But in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon with no tools it was not to be. Too firmly attached and a good 4 feet higher than your normal street signs, undoubtedly to foil idiots like me.

Visited Zimmy's Bar; no affiliation with the erstwhile Robert Zimmerman, but a nice bar, just as bars go, and filled with posters and crap for sale (but no real memorabilia as such). Yeah, I bought some of the crap.

The whole experience was far more gratifying than I ever expected it to be. Deeply moving in a way I can't put into words. One thing that was clear, seeing the whole Mayberry RFD aspect of Hibbing was why a nascent genius like Bobby Zimmerman would have to leave such a place. It could never have contained him.

I should state upfront that I am an unabashed Beatles geek. In the Spring of 1999, I had a chance to visit some friends who were living in Manchester. This also provided an excellent opportunity to make the short trek from Manchester to Liverpool and visit the Beatle sites. I didn't get much out of some of the more commercialized tourist traps, however I did get a huge charge out of visiting McCartney's childhood home which is now a National Trust deal. The little tour was pleasant enough, but the real thrill came out of being in the very same front room where John and Paul had sat across from one another with guitars and a notebook writing the early Beatles originals. I have to admit that that sent a shiver up my spine. (Come on, I told you that I was a geek)... I also got a kick out of visiting the re-created Cavern Club - it was still cool, but it was tempered a little by not being the actual building... I also got a charge out of visiting Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane.

And I LOVE that Spinal Tap clip - "a little too much f*cking perspective", LOL.

when i was in the uptown bones, we played lubbock texas. we asked everyone where the buddy holly museum / memorial was and everyone gave us different directions. later on, at the club, we met the original bassist from sha na na, who told us that giving deliberately bad directions to outsiders was a local sport / pastime.

I did Memphis a couple of times. The Elvis tour stuff was pretty museum-y and sterile (though I did see Elvis' last living relative/live-in guest being wheeled out of a side door at Graceland -- his great aunt or something). But my last trip to Memphis gave me a chance to visit McLemore Ave. and see the rebuilt Stax studio/Museum of American Soul Music, and *that* kicked major ass -- a near religious experience for me. I'm usually pretty anal about not touching museum artefacts, but I couldn't help laying my fingers on the old Sculley two (or was it the eight?) track deck on which so much incredibe music was recorded. (shiver)

While on tour we drove up through Mississippi and stopped in Tupelo to see the shack Elvis was born in. Didn't pay to go in. It's pretty unremarkable really. Then onto Graceland. We did the house tour and wandered by the grave. Tossed some Milkmen stickers on it. I have photos somewhere...

My uncle just did the UK National Trust tour of the Lennon/McCartney houses and recommends it for Beatles geeks. As Michael K says above, he got the most thrill out of being in the sitting room where they sat and wrote songs together.

But my last trip to Memphis gave me a chance to visit McLemore Ave. and see the rebuilt Stax studio/Museum of American Soul Music, and *that* kicked major ass

I walked out of that museum deliriously happy. I felt proud of my country. Such a great musuem. I still have my Stax oven mitt and coffee mug.

I thought Elvis’ birthplace in Tupelo was cool. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, a buddy of mine had a meeting in Nashville, so I drove to pick him up, and we drove the Natchez Trace back down towards New Orleans. The Natchez Trace is one of those scenic parkways that doesn’t go through any big cities, kind of like the Blue Ridge but less spectacularly scenic. There were Indian mounds, which was what my friend was interested in.

We spent the fist night in Florence, which is in northwestern Alabama right near Muscle Shoals. I had no directions to the recording studio, but I found that area pretty desolate. In that whole part of the country pretty much the only decent food is barbecue or fried catfish, and you can’t expect that those will even be especially good. The people had nice southern manners, but it was pretty much gooberville. For dinner I said we should just find some hole in the wall barbecue place, so we did. It was one of the worst meals ever.

The next day we went to Tupelo. My buddy is not at all a music geek like me, but he found the tour of the house moving. We were the only two people there for the tour, but the lady who took us in was very sweet and didn’t act like Elvis was her religion. Vernon borrowed the money to pay for the materials to build the house, but he couldn’t pay the loan back, so the Presley family didn’t even live in the house very long, if I recall. At the gift shop I bought a poster of the famous photo of Elvis shaking hands with Dick Nixon in the Oval Office while being given some kind of honorary drug enforcement badge, but I never had the nerve to actually put it up at my house. The barbecue we had in Tupelo afterwards was not at all bad.

The next night there was no really good place to stay on the Trace, so as a joke we stayed in Kosciusko, which is the birthplace of Oprah. This place was beyond desolate, and the catfish buffet was sad. There were no monuments to her Oprahness, as far as we could tell.

We’d had enough, so we didn’t go all the way to Natchez, which I don’t think has any music connections, though it’s across the river from Ferriday, where Jerry Lee is from. We got off the Trace at Jackson and just took I-55 back down to New Orleans. We stopped for lunch at Middendorf’s in Manchac, which is across the lake from the city. It was Good Friday, and the place was hopping. The fried catfish was spectacular.

I just realized I already wrote about my pilgrimage to Hendrix's grave in the eraly days of this blog. Another quickie ... once while driving through Kentucky on one of its parkways, either the Bluegrass or the other one, I saw a sign that said "next exit birhtplace of the Everly Brothers." I wasn't in a big hurry, and I figured I'd never have this chance again. They had a nice little stone monument right in front of the courthouse/city hall. No tourist trap, just a little example of civic pride. I thought it was very cool. Researching it now, I see that only one of the brothers was born there, and they actualy grew up somewhere in Iowa. Oh well ....

when i was in the uptown bones, we played lubbock texas. we asked everyone where the buddy holly museum / memorial was and everyone gave us different directions. later on, at the club, we met the original bassist from sha na na, who told us that giving deliberately bad directions to outsiders was a local sport / pastime.

My god, I totally forgot about that, but yes indeed, this was one way we used to amuse ourselves. Mostly because...it's a GRID, people. The memorial's at 4th Street and Avenue Q. A first-grade education should get you there. Sheesh.

Bonus fun fact: that dude was my English professor. Hell, for all I know, I was at that gig.

I think some of you may have heard me tell this story before, but by far the best rock mecca pilgrimage I’ve ever made was to the Sun Studio in Memphis. I’ve driven past Graceland (as everyone remarks, it’s a surprisingly modest house), but I love Elvis, and I don’t want to confront the sad image of him that the house would embody.

On my first or second visit to Memphis – this is maybe 15 or so years ago – I decided to go have a look at Sun, since it was in the phone book. What you saw when you drove up was mostly the Sun Studio Café. When I asked about a studio tour, they sold me a ticket for a very modest fee ($3?), but the tour wasn’t going to begin for another hour or so, so I decided to have lunch in the café. It was nothing fancy, and I ordered a burger. While I was eating, two guys came in, one of whom I recognized as legendary Sun producer Jack Clement. They took a table and ordered. I decided to play something on the jukebox, and I noticed an obscure Jack Clement single there, so I played it. When it came on he turned and gave me an inscrutable look.

The tour was given by the son of one of the two famous Phillips brothers, I think Dewey’s son. It was a very low-key thing, just me, a young Japanese couple, and I think one middle-aged American couple. He brought us into the studio, which is a very small room. The control booth is right there. They had a drumkit and a very nice hollow body Gibson electric in there, but we were instructed not to touch them. I think they were basically props. This was shortly after U2 had recorded some stuff for Rattle and Hum there, but it was clearly not a regular working studio.

Anyway our guide was kind of bored and distracted, and he was obviously not going to be making a lot of money off of this tour. He had a spiel that he gave us about the history of the studio, and he would periodically play parts of songs that were recorded there for our edification using a boombox. When he played Rocket 88, the two Japanese couples broke out into spontaneous sock-hop style dancing. That was surreal. Despite the fact that the presentation was so desultory (the guy clearly did not appreciate my music geek questions and comments) it was MAGICAL being in that room. Just thinking about how many times lightning had struck right where I was standing was mind-boggling and a bit overwhelming. At the end of the presentation he said it was ok to just stick around for a few minutes and soak it up, as long as we didn’t touch anything, so that’s what I did. It was one of the coolest things I ever done in my entire life, no lie.

I went back a couple of years later, and there was a shop, and things were tarted up a bit. The tours were a bigger deal and more obviously a cash cow, so I decided not to ruin my great memory of the place with a second visit. But whenever I’ve been in town I try to at least drive past the place.

I haven’t been to Memphis since they built the Stax mecca, and I’d like to visit it. When I first inquired about it I was told not to go to that part of town. I also asked about seeing the site of the Ardent Studios and was met with mostly blank stares. A guy at the indie record store later told me it was torn down.

48,

are you / were you familiar with willis cooper? i assume he's passed on by now...

he entertained us quite a bit during the normally boring interlude between soundcheck and the gig.

I know I wrote about this on the old list but I did a tour of the Abbey Road #2 Studio a couple of years ago. EMI hadn't allowed the public inside the studio for deacdes but they were doing a special series on Movie soundtracks recorded there and allowed people w/ tickets to walk around the studio. It was amazing to go in there and really see where all the magic happened.

I'm in Las Vegas now on vacation w/ my family. Our main destination is Utah - Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park but we flew in/out of Vegas and will be going to see "Love" tomorrow night. My kids are Psyched to see it. I'll try to post a report.

Oh, I'd be shocked if Willis Cooper was still alive. He had to have been in his 70s back in the mid-to-late 80s when I used to see him around. Fascinating guy, and proof that there's just something odd about Lubbock. Willis Cooper was this guy who looked like just every other old retired farmer in west Texas, complete with the gimme hat, checked shirt and the Carhartt barn jacket that he wore pretty much all day every day, but he was also a poet who was halfway between, like, Ivor Cutler and Daniel Johnston, and he was also just funny as shit. He was the kind of old man I want to be, the kind who's just like "Okay, I'm old enough to be able to say any goddamn thing I please, and if you don't like it, piss up a rope." It was also fascinating to see him interact with the waitresses, because he was this fascinating combination of sweet and grandfatherly and totally handsy. You'd see him talking to the girl wiping his table and collecting the empties, and he's asking after her mama and asking how classes are going, and at the same time, he's just totally grabbing her ass.

So Willis Cooper usually hung out at the Main Street -- I had assumed you guys had played at Fat Dawg's / Fast and Cool, which was where the touring bands usually ended up.

You weren't opening for the Hysteric Narcotics by any chance, were you? That's the only touring-band gig I can think of off the top of my head that I would have seen at the Main Street. I was usually there because that was where the Nelsons and Terry Allen usually played in town.

Two people I was in a band with (one of whom I've known for close to 30 years) got married in Sun Studios. I'm not quite sure how they pulled it off.

They got press on it - in Brazil(?!):


http://bizz.abril.com.br/especial/especial_246589.shtml

I guess being in Cleveland I've visited what some civic leaders here hoped would be the ultimate rock mecca, the Rock and Roll HOF a few times. I think the museum is neat. The HOF itself is better now than it was originally.

Originally, it was at the top of the building and they would only let a few people at a time in. While we waited, some tour guide type told us that this part of the place was "reverential" and that we should be quiet as others would be in there "revering" the little pictures and etched glass signatures. There would be no music in there, as it was a place of "reflection." I blurted something stupid like, "Isn't this the music we all get drunk and fuck to?" It was good for laughs and I think I'm like the millionth person to say something along those lines because it's way different and you can make noise in there now.

I like the HOF. It has dumb aspects and they do more for NYC than they do for us here, but it's a fun museum. The Goldmine Record Convention there is a lot of fun, too.

48,

your description of willis matches our experiences exactly. we were there in '91. and yes, it must've been at the main st., because the other venue you named doesn't ring a bell at all. and willis was there, after all. he said that was his hang out.

he felt up elysia, one of our retinue who went on tour with us that time. she was a nifty number back in the day and he couldn't resist. he veered from doddering sweet old man, to letch, and back to sweet old man more times in one minute than a hummingbird flaps its wings. he kept us in stitches and reminded us of how lucky we were to be traveling the country and playing music.

we allowed him to join us on stage and played a blues for him while he recited, from memory, his spoken word bit called "it was sad".

i still have the casette he gave me, called "fun at all costs".

i can't remember the name of the band we played with, but we headlined. it was a monday or tuesday night, scheduled to fill in the tour.

we stayed with a real outgoing little bald guy who had a cardboard cutout of sylvester stallone as rocky in his house. he was like "you guys are from philly. one of you has to hump this thing".

thanks for prompting my memory! this is fun stuff to recollect....

obviously, we enjoyed lubbock.