Bob Dylan on His Mystical Rebirth

In a startling stretch of his interview with Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan assigns a special spiritual significance to the death of Robert Zimmerman, the president of the San Fernando chapter of the Hells Angels, in the Sixties.

"Have you heard of transfiguration?" Dylan asks Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Mikal Gilmore, referring to the New Testament account of Jesus Christ's transformation from physical to spiritual form. "Well, you're looking at someone that's been [transfigured]."

Bob Dylan first learned about the death of Zimmerman in the book Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hells Angels. Dylan even brought the book to his interview, and he asked Gilmore to read a passage aloud. Dylan was struck by the fact he and the Hells Angel had identical names and both had motorcycle accidents a few years apart. "I didn't know who I was before I read the Barger book," says Dylan.

The biker Bobby Zimmerman died during a Hells Angels' run to Bass Lake in California when a muffler fell off his motorcycle. When he turned around to retrieve it, he was accidentally run over by another biker.

Later in the interview, Gilmore presses Dylan for more details on his ideas.  "You can go and learn about it from the Catholic Church," Dylan says. "You can learn about it in some old mystical books, but it's a real concept . . . So when you ask your questions you're asking them to a person who's long dead. You're asking them to a person that doesn't exist."

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