Electric Dylan: What did Bob Dylan actually play at Newport Folk Festival in 1965?
Elvis Presley stepping into Sun Studio in 1953, The Beatles heading out onto the rooftop in 1969, Berry Gordy Jr taking out a loan from his parents in 1959: these are the definitive moments that forever changed popular music. Events which might seem banal in the present often go on to amass a far greater reputation, influencing everything from that point onwards. At the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Bob Dylan inspired one such event when the once-devoted folk singer plugged in and freaked out.
To fully understand the importance of Dylan ‘going electric’, you have to look back at the origins of the songwriter. Back in 1961, the young Minnesota-born songwriter made the pilgrimage to New York City, following in the footsteps of his hero, Woody Guthrie. At that time, Dylan was obsessed with the folk music that artists like Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly had recorded years prior.
Folk music, as a genre, is obsessed with the idea of songs being passed down, unchanged, through the generations. During his early years, Dylan was pressured to carry on those traditions, hence why his early records were largely composed of traditional folk songs, even though the songwriter had enough of his own material to fill multiple LPs. Even when Dylan’s original folk songs became popular within the scene, almost single-handedly inspiring the folk revival of the 1960s, he was still bound to those restrictive traditions of the genre.
From his very beginning, however, Dylan drew upon an incredibly broad range of musical influences, including rock and roll stars like Little Richard. Regardless of the expectations put onto him by his folk music peers, the songwriter was determined to explore these more diverse influences, and this first became evident on the 1963 record The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. During his live performances, on the other hand, the musician was still invariably tied to folk.
Dylan performed at the prestigious Newport Folk Festival in both 1963 and 1964, becoming an inarguable highlight of the festival. The attendees of Newport were, much like the organisers, folk purists who viewed traditional, acoustic folk music as the be-all-end-all of musical performance. Conversely, Dylan was increasingly seeking to reflect the politically turbulent time period of the 1960s, and in order to do so, he required an injection of electricity.
So, in April 1965, he unveiled Bringing It All Back Home, which firmly established the period of ‘Electric Dylan’. Bizarrely, though, there was still an expectation that his 1965 performance at Newport would be exclusively acoustic folk, as was tradition within the festival. Never an artist to conform to the ideals of others, however, Dylan emerged onto stage clutching a Fender Stratocaster, his chosen weapon, which would change music indefinitely.
The legendary nature of Dylan’s performance at Newport and all the sensationalist stories that go along with the show often cloud the actual events of that fateful day in July 1965. Performing a short set of only five songs, Dylan, along with his band, blistered through three electric tracks, debuting ‘Maggie’s Farm’, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, and ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’ for the very first time.
These tracks were met with a mixture of cheering and booing, with many hardcore folk obsessives feeling as though Dylan had betrayed both his audience and his folk roots. As such, these three short tracks created an incredibly hostile atmosphere in Newport for the songwriter, who eventually went back out onto stage following the uproar after his initial set finished. When he returned, without his band, Dylan performed two acoustic songs, almost in an effort to quell the anger towards both himself and the festival.
The acoustic portion of the set consisted of ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’. Although these tracks did a little to appease the furious audience of folk fans, the damage was already gone: Dylan had officially ‘gone electric’. Not only did that momentous occasion change the landscape of folk music indefinitely, but it also established the defiance and artistic principles that Dylan has always coveted. How many other artists could inspire such a cultural revolution with only three songs?
Bob Dylan’s 1965 Newport Folk Festival setlist:
Set one: electric, with backing band
- ‘Maggie’s Farm’
- ‘Like A Rolling Stone’
- ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’
Set two: acoustic, solo
- ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’
- ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’
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