Hibbing girl Echo Helstrom, Bob Dylan's first love and who inspired the song "Girl from the North Country."  Not only did Helstrom provide Thompson with insight and perspective on Bob as a quiet, polite and impressionable young man, but she and Thompson themselves had what he calls "a brief romance" and remained lifelong friends.  In Dylan's own memoir, "Chronicles Volume One," he wrote of Helstrom, "Everyone said she looked like Brigitte Bardot, and she did."  After Helstrom died in 2018, at age 75,  this was one of the photos published in newspapers around the world that accompanied word of her passing. Photo by Toby Thompson
Hibbing girl Echo Helstrom, Bob Dylan's first love and who inspired the song "Girl from the North Country." Not only did Helstrom provide Thompson with insight and perspective on Bob as a quiet, polite and impressionable young man, but she and Thompson themselves had what he calls "a brief romance" and remained lifelong friends. In Dylan's own memoir, "Chronicles Volume One," he wrote of Helstrom, "Everyone said she looked like Brigitte Bardot, and she did." After Helstrom died in 2018, at age 75, this was one of the photos published in newspapers around the world that accompanied word of her passing. Photo by Toby Thompson