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Bob Dylan on why he changed his name: "Some people get born to the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens." As a young musician in Minnesota, Dylan went through several names before landing on the one the world knows him by. He went by Elston Gun first. Then Robert Allen. Then he changed Allen to Allyn because he thought it looked better. He explains the deeper logic behind needing a new name at all: "I think you have an identity of yourself that maybe others around you are unaware of. So, you've got to start over again in every way you can." It had nothing to do with reinventing his character, he says. He was already who he was. Nobody knew him yet anyway, so whatever name he gave them, they had no choice but to accept it. On how he arrived at Bob Dylan specifically: "I was talking to a guy in KISS one time, Gene Simmons. He used to have another name. But he just said it popped into his head one day. A lot of the rappers give themselves different names because that's who they feel they are. They're not that person everybody knows when they go to school; they're into other things and they need another name. It makes sense." Dylan saw himself the same way. He was into other things. He never felt like Robert Zimmerman, even before he stepped on a stage. "You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free."