That's an interesting question, PoppaGator. I tend to think that honesty about his name, roots, etc. is not essential, brecause they're not (or should not be) the main point of who he is and what he has to offer. He came up with a new name and some interesting fictions about his origins when he first got started, probably because he recognized that it would be hard to get a foot in the door as a middle-class Jewish kid from Hibbing. People would ask themselves why they should bother listening to him, in the belief that he should be defined by his resume, ethnicity, or social class. He could have argued that point at the outset, but first he needed people to pay attention. So he invented a name and persona that might help him be heard without the filter of his true-life origins.

As for the name, there's nothing new about that in show business. It used to be a pretty standard practice, especially if you were Jewish; just ask Ramblin' Jack, Jerry Lewis, or a host of others who did the same thing. It is also customary to take a new name at threshold moments in one's life: marriage (most women, at least until recently), religious conversion (Simon Peter, Muhammed Ali), etc. I think there's value in it, at least for some.

As for the biographical fictions, I think they served a purpose, and probably did allow him to communicate his artistic vision more directly, and therefore more honestly, than he otherwise might have done. Primarily because the various fictions (which he never bothered to keep straight) made him interesting, so people listened to him, and discovered the substance in his work. They might never have crossed that threshold if they thought he was just some suburban Minnesota kid who liked rock and roll. Also, it may have had some psychological impact on him as well; it's amazing what we can make ourselves believe, at least on some level, if it serves our purposes.

Once the initial threshold was passed, and significant numbers of people had started paying attention, he largely dispensed with the false autobiographical stuff (except in a humourous way; he never worked very hard at sustainging these fictions). I would argue that this predated his "artistic decline," to the extent that there was one, by a number of years. I think most of his audience knew he was Bobby Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota before his most widely recognized masterpieces were produced.