'Dylan Goes Electric!' is the book behind Timothée Chalamet's new Bob Dylan biopic
NPR's Book of the Day
Deep Dive
Why did Bob Dylan's performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 cause controversy?
Bob Dylan's performance was controversial because he played an electric guitar, which was seen as a radical departure from the traditional acoustic folk music that the festival and its audience were known for. This act was perceived as a betrayal by the folk faithful, who considered Dylan the heir to Woody Guthrie.
What was Bob Dylan's musical background before his electric performance at Newport?
Bob Dylan was an avid listener of R&B and rock and roll as a kid in Minnesota. He was influenced by artists like B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard, who was his hero. This background in R&B and rock and roll laid the foundation for his eventual shift to electric music.
Why did Bob Dylan try on different personas in the folk scene?
Dylan was known for trying on different personas, which was typical for a young musician in his early 20s. He would pick up a record and sound like it for a while before moving on to another style. This experimentation was part of his creative process and his desire to find his own voice.
What was the reaction of the audience to Bob Dylan's electric performance?
The audience reaction was intense, with some people booing and yelling for the old Dylan, while others were excited and supportive. The microphones were turned down due to the band's loudness, making it hard to hear the crowd clearly. People yelled for Dylan to bring back acoustic acts and for the festival to return to its roots.
Why did Bob Dylan's performance at Newport in 1965 become a cultural turning point?
Dylan's performance marked a significant shift in the cultural landscape of the 1960s. It symbolized the transition from the idealistic, communal first half of the decade to the more chaotic and individualistic second half, characterized by the Vietnam War, the hippie movement, and the rise of psychedelic rock. While not the cause, it serves as a powerful marker of this cultural divide.
Shownotes Transcript
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Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. I've been inundated by Timothee Chalamet's press tour for his new movie, A Complete Unknown. But if you haven't, I can fill you in. It's a biopic of Bob Dylan, and it's based on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald.
That book details the run up to Dylan's performance at the Newport Folk Festival where he did the radical act of playing an electric guitar. Okay, I'm being a little cheeky here. But Wald spoke to NPR's Arun Roth back when the book came out. And Wald lays out how, yeah, this was a radical act if you take into account the political context of the moment. That's coming up.
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Experience the all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks for yourself at NissanUSA.com today. In the early 1960s, folk music scenes were blossoming all over the country, and the Newport Folk Festival was their confluence. ♪
In the middle of the decade, the reigning king was a young Bob Dylan. But on this very day, 50 years ago, Bob Dylan did the unthinkable, the unforgivable. He plugged in an electric guitar and he rocked. The crowd was stunned. The folk faithful were betrayed by the man they considered the rightful heir to Woody Guthrie. That's the mythology, at least.
But without question, that night proved to be a major turning point in music history. Elijah Wood has written a new book about that performance. It's called Dylan Goes Electric.
He says the crowd at Newport 65 might not have been so shocked had they known Dylan's listening habits as a kid in hitting Minnesota. He was an R&B fan. It's interesting. He was actually listening to a record program. It was his favorite program that was beamed out of Shreveport, Louisiana, and that was specializing in, you know, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry. I bought a brain.
Little Richard, incidentally, was his hero. He pounded piano and shouted like Little Richard and did the falsetto whoops and all of that. And you write about Bob Dylan when he arrived in New York, the kind of scene in Greenwich Village. It's almost like he's trying on different personas, like you never know what Bob Dylan might show up.
Oh, yeah. I mean, people who knew Bob Dylan back in Hibbing, Minnesota, say he was already trying on personas. But, you know, that's not very unusual. He was young. Yeah, exactly. Guitar player, singer, 18, 19, 20 years old. It's very typical that you'll pick up a record and sound just like that record for two weeks and then you pick up another record and sound like that record for a while.
The folk scene that you write about back then, it's a lot more diverse than I realized. And they're even factions in a way. There always was friction on the folk scene between the people who really believed that this music should be done authentically, should be done right.
And people who just thought, you know, this is fun music. Let's do it however we want. Let's do it in ways that's fun. But there were a lot of people on the purist side who thought the pop folkies were simply taking great music and turning it into tripe. There's a point that you return to in his book a number of times that Bob Dylan, it wasn't like he wanted to lead the folk revolution. He didn't want to lead a movement revolution.
He wasn't a movement kind of guy. I mean, I'm not going to say he didn't want to be a pop star, but he was not a joiner. He was not good with organizations. There was this feeling that it was all about we're going to make a movement that's going to change the world. He was the man who had written one of the anthems of the freedom movement and one of the people who was holding it all together, this new youth movement that would change the world.
And by 1965, that role was feeling, I think, constricting to him, but also frightening to him. You know, the fact that people were looking to him for answers. It was a very tricky time right then. Anyway, that was the weekend that Lyndon Johnson fully committed the United States to Vietnam War.
The civil rights movement was falling apart. SNCC, which was the group that had brought all the kids down for the Freedom Summer the previous year, now was throwing the white members out and the new chant was Black Power. You know, that communal feeling of the first half of the 60s was getting harder and harder to feel like that was all going to work and the world was going to be a better place. And Dylan was someone a lot of people were looking to.
to hold that together. And instead, he comes out there with an electric band, doesn't say a word to them. Dylan was always somebody who'd been very sort of cheerful, friendly, chatting with the audience, doesn't say a word, and is playing the loudest music they've ever heard and screaming, how does it feel to be on your own? ¶¶ ¶¶
So you say that the scene was not like, you know, the near riot, maybe some people describe it as being or the way that it's been come down in mythology. How intense was the reaction? The reaction was very intense. How much booing there was, it's hard to say because the fact is they turned the microphones on stage way down because the band was so loud. So suddenly you can't hear the crowd during the electric set very much.
There are people yelling, bring back Cousin Emmy, who was the hillbilly singer who had sung just before him. And I don't like your band and throw away that electric guitar and bring back Pete Seeger. We want the old Dylan. You can also hear people yelling, Beatles, play the Beatles.
or cancel the rest of the show, stay all night. So there was all of this feeling that the folk festival was turning into something else, maybe a pop festival or maybe just a place where people went to get famous rather than a place where they went to share music. And in order to fight against that,
The Newport Festival carefully was not giving anyone star treatment. So everyone who played that night was supposed to just play 12 minutes. And they put Dylan on partway through the first half. And he sang three songs and he left. And that's when the place went completely nuts.
Beyond the moment itself, that night took on cultural baggage pretty much right away, you know, being taken as a defining moment for something. You could argue about what it was. But now we actually have, you know, a nice, tidy 50 years of distance from this, maybe some real perspective. So what did that moment mean for music or for American culture?
You know, when I called this book The Night That Split the 60s, you know, it's very easy to forget that all of the things that we normally think of when we say the word 60s.
happen after 1965. I mean, the Vietnam War, the hippies, the drugs, the Beatles had not yet, much less Sergeant Pepper, they hadn't even yet done Rubber Soul. They were still a fun pop group. And all of that stuff, that's really the break that happens right at this time. And I'm not saying at all that it happened because Dylan went electric, but it's a real good marker.
for the divide between what had been the first half of the 60s and what was coming. I try my best to be just like I am But everybody wants you to be just like them They say sing while you slave, I just get bored I ain't going back, it's fun to me
That's Elijah Wald. He's the author of a new book, Dylan Goes Electric. Bob Dylan's disruptive electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival happened on this day 50 years ago. Elijah Wald, great speaking with you. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
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