Newport, 1965
Bob Dylan’s band included Mike Bloomfield, guitar; Jerome Arnold, bass; Al Kooper, organ, Barry Goldberg, piano and Sam Lay, drums
Photo courtesy Newportfolk.com
Before he took the stage at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival — the annual event that had given him his first real national exposure one year earlier — Bob Dylan was introduced by Ronnie Gilbert, a member of The Weavers:
"And here he is...take him, you know him, he's yours."
In his 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan would write about how he "failed to sense the ominous forebodings in the introduction."
One year later, he would learn just how possessive the Newport audiences felt toward him.
On this day in 1965 — 57 years ago — Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, performing a rock-and-roll set publicly for the very first time while shouts and boos came from some dismayed fans in the audience. Six weeks earlier, Bob Dylan had recorded the single that marked his move out of acoustic folk and into the idiom of electrified rock and roll.
"Like A Rolling Stone" had only been released five days before his appearance at Newport, however, so most in the audience had no idea what lay in store for them. Neither did festival organizers, who were as surprised to see Dylan's crew setting up heavy sound equipment during sound check as that evening's audience would be to hear what came out of it.
With Al Kooper and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band including Mike Bloomfield on guitar, Barry Goldberg on piano, Jerome Arnold on bass and Sam Lay on drums backing him, Dylan took to the stage with his Fender Stratocaster on the evening of July 25 and launched into an electrified version of "Maggie's Farm."
Almost immediately, the jeering and yelling came from some audience members. Some said it was due to bad sound, some said it was due to the short set, while others complained of the folk singer going electric. Dylan's vocals were unintelligible to many in the audience.
But it was clear by Dylan's next number, the now-classic "Like A Rolling Stone" — that the old folk singer was headed in a new artistic direction. Dylan's performance at Newport in 1965 stands as a pivotal moment in the history of American music.
By severing his ties to the old-guard folk establishment, Dylan sought to escape the limitations imposed by his former champions, the well-meaning purists of traditional musical expression. The rigors of their intellectual understanding of "folk music" — who should play it, how it should be made, what it should be about — were stifling to Dylan's own intellectual freedom.
He needed to purge his music of its "authenticity" and move beyond the musical category he had so willingly insinuated himself into since meeting Woody Guthrie in 1961. It was time for his music to be entirely about Bob Dylan, not about some coal mining strike in 1931.
And what did the man himself think of the unfriendly reception he received from what should have been the friendliest of audiences? Some say he was extremely shaken at the time, but with four decades of hindsight, his feelings were clear.
Reflecting on Ronnie Gilbert's "Take him, he's yours" comment, Dylan wrote, "What a crazy thing to say! Screw that. As far as I knew, I didn't belong to anybody then or now."
Thanks History.com and other sources
Here, Dylan performs “Like a Rolling Stone” at Newport, 1965
Bob Dylan, Donovan and Mary Travers of Peter Paul and Mary backstage at the Newport Folk Festival in July, 1965
Photo by David Gahr