When Bob Dylan Awkwardly Attended His High School Reunion

On August 2, 1969, Bob Dylan made a surprise appearance at his 10th high school reunion in Hibbing, Minnesota. He was not well received. An excerpt from the article:

"You think your high school reunion was awkward? Try standing around making small talk with Bob Dylan.

According to the Telegraph, Dylan attended the 10-year reunion for Hibbing High's Class of 1959 on Aug. 2, 1969, returning to his hometown of Hibbing, Minn., to gather with his former fellow students at the local Moose Lodge. As you might imagine, the scene was a little surreal; as one attendee told the paper, "It was very different. My memory of that is of Bob standing in one corner and of people going up and shaking his hand. I didn't like that. I would have been happier if he had just been able to sit down and be one of our classmates."

As Bob Dylan fans are aware, his relationship with Hibbing hasn't always been warm: The Telegraph quotes a 1965 interview in which he sneered, "When I left there, man, I knew one thing: I had to get out of there and not come back." That comment fits the overall tone of the way Dylan shaped the myth surrounding his boyhood, presenting himself as an outcast and a misunderstood loner in a dying Midwestern town.

And although there are elements of truth scattered in the legend – as one former girlfriend told the Chicago Tribune in 1988, "he was odd, and different. Nobody really understood what he was trying to do" – Dylan's evident contempt for Hibbing ruffled feathers among the townfolk for years. "If Bob Dylan came here to sing tonight, I wouldn't go," a resident told the New York Times in 2004. "Bob Dylan doesn't care about Hibbing, so why should we care about him? Besides that, I don't like his music."

"People in this town, they weren't real receptive to him," a former classmate reflected in the Telegraph piece. "I think they were jealous of him, or didn't think he was talented enough. That's why he didn't come back, because he was not well received." Added another graduate, "He was a little weird. He still is."

However, more than 50 years after Dylan graduated, Hibbing has evolved into a sort of tourist attraction for hardcore fans."