Echo Helstrom

[4] In his memoir Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan refers to Helstrom (not by name but by clear implication) as "...my Becky Thatcher".

And at one of Dylan’s first public performances, in his high school auditorium, he sang a song beginning "I got a girl and her name is Echo..."[4] 20 below zero, and running down the road in the rain with yo' ol' man's flashlight on my ass... when we sat and talked in the L&B 'til two o'clock at night... Let me tell you that your beauty is second to none, but I think I told you that before.

Love to the most beautiful girl in school – Bob.Dylan and Helstrom together listened to rhythm-and-blues coming from long-distance radio stations in Chicago, Little Rock, and Shreveport.

She was wild in a way that he wanted to be wild... I’ve always felt that her support of Dylan in the netherland of Hibbing, and their shared experience as, at the least, cultural outsiders, helped him enormously.Helstrom has been frequently cited as the inspiration for Dylan’s classic folk ballad "Girl from the North Country".

1: 1957–73) is skeptical, saying that Helstrom "laid it on thick" for Thompson, but cites evidence on both sides of the question (Heylin acknowledges that Dylan did introduce "Girl From the North Country" at a 1978 show with "First girl I ever loved is in the house tonight, I wrote a song about her..." when Helstrom was apparently indeed in attendance, but also provides some contrary indicators, such as Dylan saying the same thing when Helstrom was not in the house),[12] while Robert Shelton (No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan), favors Bonnie Beecher as the Girl.