Credit: Raph Pour-Hashemi

The guitarist Bob Dylan called a “mathematical genius”

Mon 23 June 2025 0:30, UK

It’s hard to believe that the journey Bob Dylan has been on these past decades, one that sees him shrouded in myth and mystery, all began with him taking to the stage one night in New York with nothing but his voice and a guitar.

“[I’ve] been travelling the country,” he said as the crowd watched on, unaware of the history the man before them would make, “Following in Woody Guthrie’s footsteps.”

His career took off, and he became a revered solo artist. His ability to reflect the times he was living in with his lyrics and put them together using a melody that was unlike anything people had heard prior was enough for folk lovers across the country to buy into the hype. However, while he was doing well as a folk artist, his career took a controversial turn when he stood on the stage at Newport and started playing with an electric guitar.

There are a few speculative reasons that people throw around when discussing why Dylan was booed so heavily at Newport. The first is that he was playing music with an electric guitar when people had grown accustomed to him being a regular folk artist. The second is because he was late on stage, while the third was because even though he was headlining, he didn’t play many songs.

Realistically, the hostile reception was more than likely a combination of all three factors; however, it makes for a much better headline if you put it down to a crowd being unwilling to accept his innovation. The subsequent tour that he went on was filled with controversy as a lot of members of the audience would boo in response to the new direction the folk icon was going it.

Of course, it wasn’t just Dylan who was affected by the boos. He became relatively numb to the whole thing, which is best represented in his response to someone calling him “Judas” in Manchester, when he replied, “I don’t believe you, you’re lying,” before turning to his band and saying “Play fucking louder.” It was the band he was speaking to who subsequently struggled a lot with the tour, as they were also on the receiving end of relentless criticism.

Dylan enjoyed working with his guitarist Robbie Robertson, and had high praise for Robertson indeed. He described him as “The only mathematical guitar genius I’ve ever run into who does not offend my intestinal nervousness with his rear guard sound.” The two grew so close that they would stay up in hotel rooms together all night writing songs; however, they were both so high on amphetamines that they couldn’t remember what they had written, and they never wrote anything down either.

Dylan had similar praise for the rest of his band, but his band members struggled with the tour. Some left when the criticism became too much, while those who managed to push through did so gritting their teeth. “I’d been raised to believe that music was supposed to make people smile and want to party,” wrote drummer Levon Helm, “And here was all this hostility coming back at us.”

While Dylan might have become a fan of the band he toured with, it took his audience a lot longer to get on board.