Bob Dylan angered fans (and Pete Seeger) when he went electric on the Newport stage. Photo: Courtesy of newportfolk.com
1965: Bob Dylan trades acoustic for electric at the Newport Folk Festival. It does not go over well.
Dylan was not the first performer at this staunchly traditional folk music festival to plug in: Muddy Waters had done it the year before and both the Chambers Brothers and the Butterfield Blues Band played amplified music, without incident, in the sets leading up to Dylan. But Dylan was, well, Dylan, and his dramatic (and unannounced) switch from acoustic to electric was seen by the majority of the folkie crowd as a betrayal of purity.
It didn’t help that Dylan’s band was a lash-up — a few guys from the Butterfield Band and piano player Barry Goldberg — that crammed in an all-night rehearsal and wasn’t given time to do a sound check before going on. The result was poor sound and uneven balance, which didn’t do much to enhance the crowd’s mood.
The hostility was palpable from “Maggie’s Farm,” the set’s opening song, continued building through “Like a Rolling Stone” and finally reached the boiling point during “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry,” causing Dylan and his band to abandon the stage. After an uncomfortable interlude, Dylan was lured back, handed an acoustic guitar and, with the crowd now urging him on, performed “Mr. Tambourine Man” and, in what proved to be his kiss-off to Newport, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”
Dylan was shaken by the negative reaction; he hadn’t anticipated it. Years later, whenever asked about his role in introducing amplified music to Newport and the resulting storm, he always replied, “It was honest. It was honest.”
(Ah, but the times they are a-changin’: Dylan is shilling for Victoria’s Secret these days and the Newport Folk Festival is sponsored by Dunkin’ Donuts. Now what would Pete Seeger say to that?)
No comments:
Post a Comment