It was July 25, 1965 when Bob Dylan made his third appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, which was only six years old—a counterpart to Rhode Island's more famous Newport Jazz Festival. Mr. Zimmerman of Minnesota had played Newport in 1963 and 1964, performing sets of folk music for which he was already famous, protest songs like he sang at the 1963 March on Washington—great gritty tunes from albums like The Times They Are A-Changing or new acoustic melodies like "Mr. Tambourine Man."
This year, 1965, was different, for reasons anyone of that period knows. Earlier that year Dylan had released the LP Bringing It All Back Home, which featured some electric guitar. And then that summer, right before Newport, he released the monster single "Like a Rolling Stone," often considered the greatest rock song of all time. I loved, loved, loved that tune and still do. My friend Jack and I somehow bought a crappy guitar, holed up in his bedroom entire afternoons, and learned chords by listening over and over to "Rolling Stone," whose meaning, as a young kid, escaped me. What's all this shit about chrome horses and Siamese cats?
By the time Dylan got to Newport in 1965, then, he had a foot in at least two musical worlds. On Saturday the 24th, he held a workshop, where he played his usual acoustic material. But then, perhaps pissed at the festival's rigid structure, he decided to do something different the next night, when he was the headliner. He rounded up Mike Bloomfield (guitar) and Al Kooper (keyboards), who had played on the "Rolling Stone" recording, along with some other players he hastily assembled, and they had a quick rehearsal before going on the next day.
Sunday night, then, instead of standing there solo in the spotlight, strumming his acoustic guitar, blowing wistfully into his harmonica, and singing one of his nasally spokesperson-for-a-generation iconic tunes like "Blowin' in the Wind," Dylan came out in a black leather jacket, strapped on a Stratocaster electric guitar and, backed by a very loud band, launched into a raucous version of "Maggie's Farm."
Dylan only played five songs that evening, lasting about 35 minutes, but music and social critics often point to the moment as a tipping point—indeed, electrified pop music wasn't only about holding hands, dancing the mashed potato and "she loves you." It could shine a light on serious social and moral issues, just as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and the rest of the unplugged folk singers did a generation before Dylan.
Many of us have read about, or seen documentary footage of, the reaction to Dylan's electric set: people booed, screamed, cried and walked out. Audience members, journalists and the musicians onstage still debate "why." Most reports say traditionalists were upset because Dylan had hijacked and grotesquely metamorphed their precious folk songs. Or, said the purists, he had sold out—become a cog in the music industry's Top-40 machine. Rumor had it that, backstage, Pete Seeger was so livid he took an axe to the speaker cables. Before he passed away in 2014, Seeger was interviewed many times about that night. He was pissed, no doubt about it, but he didn't have an axe—he only wished he had!
Others say there weren't that many boos and that, in fact, there was a lot of cheering and applause. Mike Bloomfield said people booed because the sound system sucked, and all the audience heard was a distorted, raspy voice and even raspier guitar. Al Kooper thought the crowd was upset because the band played such a short set. Regardless of the boos, or the reasons why, someone must've liked it: after Dylan left the stage, he was called back for an encore, during which he played a couple traditional songs solo.
Today, we expect electrified rockers, from Springsteen and Lil Wayne, to Arcade Fire and Rage Against the Machine, to turn their instruments and social protests up to 11, and we watch the footage from 1965 and wonder, What was all the fuss about? But it was about something, because Bob Dylan didn't play Newport again until 2002.
Shortly after the 1965 Newport show, he hooked up with The Band and toured the US. I saw The Band several times, but regret that I never saw this: