How The Beatles “killed” folk music, according to Bob Dylan
The career arc Bob Dylan had throughout his career was never about being the biggest rock star in the world.
He wanted the opportunity to play the kind of earnest songs that he heard from the biggest folk musicians in the world, and the amount of adulation that came his way almost didn’t seem to matter. He was there to make earnest songs and share music like people used to do in the age before pop music, but he knew that the tide was turning when he first began playing.
Then again, it’s not like Dylan didn’t have a healthy respect for rock and roll at the time, either. The biggest names in music had been stars for him when he was in high school, and even before he made a name for himself in Greenwich Village, he could appreciate Little Richard in the same way that he saw Pete Seeger. Each of them had messages to send in their own respective way, but they were also uncompromising in their own respective styles as well.
And while Dylan did always come back to vocals and guitar to get his point across, it’s not like he couldn’t throw different lyrical shapes at his audience when the time called for it. His turn towards rock and roll certainly confused fans who wanted to hear a legitimate take on folk music, but even if he was taking the basis of the genre and turning it into rock and roll, the rest of the rock crowd was certainly listening.
As much as folk was dominating the conversation of lyricism, people like The Beatles were quickly becoming Dylan fanatics at the time. George Harrison may have become the true Dylan fan behind the scenes for decades, but John Lennon and Paul McCartney took Dylan’s lyricism to heart when working on their own folksy songs, taking the basis of his music and turning it into gold on albums like Rubber Soul.
It was certainly a change of pace, but that was never how folk music was supposed to be done as far as Dylan was concerned. He had a great deal of respect for The Beatles, pushing the boundaries of rock and roll, but the second that he heard the Fab Four break down the door for something new, he realised that the scene he had come to know for so many years was officially over.
He could still enjoy the new jangly pop that The Beatles started to influence, like The Byrds, but Dylan felt as far removed from folk as possible by that point, saying later, “Folk music came at exactly the right time in my life. It wouldn’t have happened ten years later, and ten years earlier, I wouldn’t have known what kind of songs those were. They were just so different than popular music. But it came at the right time, so I went that way. Then folk music became relegated to the sidelines. It either became commercial or The Beatles killed it. Maybe it couldn’t have gone on anyway.”
Given where the genre was, though, Dylan is probably right saying that it had to die. All major musical movements only have so many years of relevance before they are kicked to the curb, and while The Beatles did have a fondness for listening to those old records, there was no question that people would have rather listened to their take on folk than to hear people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.
But Dylan always knew the power of where that music originated. He certainly was going to take a few liberties when working on his own masterpieces like Blonde on Blonde, but even if he missed those old days or playing with people like Joan Baez, it was more important for him to move on and see what else is out there.
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