Bob Dylan, going electric and handling confusing criticism: “They certainly booed, I’ll tell you that”
Not every artist is ready to deal with heavy criticism during their career. It’s one thing for people to say that they aren’t a fan of any record that an artist puts out, but having someone relentlessly bash everything that a musician does is bound to wear on anyone, even if they have the thickest skin imaginable. Bob Dylan didn’t necessarily care about what his fans thought of his music, but once he decided to go electric for the first time, he was a bit perplexed seeing fans get so heated at the mere sight of him with a Fender Stratocaster in his hands.
Keep in mind, this wasn’t like Dylan suddenly turning around and deciding that he wanted to be a rockstar overnight. Bringing It All Back Home had laid the groundwork for something like this coming, and the minute that he counted in songs like ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, his poetic approach to lyrics went from sounding like a town crier to tunes that could give The Byrds and The Beatles a run for their money.
That wasn’t what fans wanted to hear, though. As much as folk and rock both had equal footing during the 1960s, there was always a clear divide between the groups since the folkies were more concerned with poetic turns of phrase. So when they saw Dylan wearing his guitar just like John Lennon, it’s not exactly hard to see why they felt betrayed.
For all they knew, this was the moment when the voice of their generation had sold out, and they let it be known that he played the Newport Folk Festival. Despite his goodwill with the people and connection to the popular zeitgeist, Dylan was greeted with boos the minute he started, with one audience member infamously calling him ‘Judas’ for walking away from his roots.
As far as Dylan was concerned, he couldn’t fathom why someone would show up to ridicule him so quickly, telling Rolling Stone, “I didn’t know what was going to happen, but they certainly booed, I’ll tell you that. You could hear it all over the place. I don’t know who they were, though, and I’m certain whoever it was did it twice as loud as they normally would…They’ve done it in a lot of other places. I mean, they must be pretty rich, to be able to go someplace and boo. I couldn’t afford it if I was in their shoes.”
Granted, it’s not like Dylan had changed all that much. He was just as scathing in his social commentary as he ever was, and with an electric guitar instead of an acoustic guitar in his hands, he could compete with artists like The Byrds, who had been shamelessly taking his tunes and putting their jangly rock sheen behind them.
If anything, the electric band just gave him a bigger platform to work with. He had outgrown folk, and even if some uptight fans were trying to convince him to return, he finally had the ear of the masses and wasn’t about to give that up when tearing through his future classics like ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ or ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35’.
Yes, Dylan was “selling out”, if you want to call it that, but this is the best instance of an artist selling out for the right reasons. He had the new musical flavours of the day behind him, but just because someone gets a look doesn’t mean that they had to lose their silver tongue along the way.
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