By 1965, Bob Dylan had achieved the status of leading songwriter of the American folk music revival.[a 1] The response to his albums The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The Times They Are a-Changin' led to him to be labelled as the "spokesman of a generation" by the media.[1] In March 1965, Dylan released his fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home. Side One featured Dylan backed by an electric band. Side Two featured Dylan accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. On July 20, 1965, Dylan released his single, "Like a Rolling Stone", featuring a rock sound. On July 25, 1965, Dylan performed with a rock band at the Newport Folk Festival. Some sections of the audience booed Dylan's performance. Leading members of the folk movement, including Irwin Silber[a 2] and Ewan MacColl[a 3] criticised Dylan for moving away from political songwriting, and performing with an electric band.
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At the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan had been received enthusiastically when he performed "Blowin' In The Wind" with Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, and other Festival performers.[2] At the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed "With God On Our Side" and "Mr Tambourine Man".[3]
On Saturday, July 24, 1965, Dylan performed three acoustic numbers, "All I Really Want to Do", "If You Gotta Go, Go Now", and "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" at a Newport workshop.[4] According to Jonathan Taplin, a roadie at Newport (and later a road manager for the acts of Dylan's manager Albert Grossman) Dylan made a spontaneous decision on the Saturday that he would challenge the Festival by performing with a fully amplified band. Taplin said that Dylan had been irritated by condescending remarks which festival organiser Alan Lomax had made about the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, when Lomax introduced them for an earlier set at a festival workshop. Dylan's attitude, according to Taplin, was, "Well, fuck them if they think they can keep electricity out of here, I'll do it. On a whim he said he wanted to play electric."[5] Dylan then assembled a band and rehearsed that night at a mansion being used by festival organiser George Wein.
On the night of Sunday, July 25, Dylan's appearance was sandwiched between Cousin Emmy and the Sea Island singers, two very traditional acts.[6] The band that went on stage to back Dylan included two musicians who had played on his recently released single, "Like a Rolling Stone": Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar and Al Kooper on organ. Two of Bloomfield's bandmates from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band also appeared at Newport: bassist Jerome Arnold and drummer Sam Lay, along with Barry Goldberg on piano.
Footage of Dylan's Newport performance can be seen in the documentary films Festival (1967), No Direction Home (2005) and The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965 (2007). The footage begins with Dylan being introduced by Master of Ceremonies Peter Yarrow: "Ladies and gentlemen, the person that's going to come up now has a limited amount of time ... His name is Bob Dylan." In the documentary footage, the sound of both booing and cheering can be heard a few bars into Dylan's first song, "Maggie's Farm", and continues throughout his second, "Like a Rolling Stone". Dylan and his band then performed "Phantom Engineer", an early version of "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry", but this song was omitted from The Other Side of the Mirror DVD.
After "Phantom Engineer", Dylan and the band left the stage. The sound of booing and clapping can be heard in the background. When Peter Yarrow returned to the microphone, he begged Dylan to continue performing. According to Robert Shelton, when Dylan returned to the stage, he discovered he did not have the right harmonica and said to Yarrow, "What are you doing to me?"[7] Dylan then asked the audience for 'an E harmonica'. Within a few moments, a clatter of harmonicas hit the stage. He then performed two songs on acoustic guitar for the audience: "Mr. Tambourine Man", and then, as his farewell to Newport, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". The crowd exploded with applause at the end, calling for more. Dylan did not return to the Newport festival for 37 years. In an enigmatic gesture, Dylan performed at Newport in 2002, sporting a wig and fake beard.[8]
It has been argued by Murray Lerner, and others present at Newport, that the boos were from outraged folk fans, who disliked Dylan playing an electric guitar. Al Kooper, and others present at Newport, have disagreed with this interpretation, and argued that the audience were upset by poor sound quality, and the short duration of the set.
The sound quality was the reason Pete Seeger (backstage) disliked the performance: he says he told the audio technicians, "Get that distortion out of his voice ... It's terrible. If I had an axe, I'd chop the microphone cable right now."[9] Seeger has also said, however, that he only wanted to cut the cables because he wanted the audience to hear Dylan's lyrics properly, because he thought they were important.[9] Rumors that Seeger actually had an axe, or that a festival board member wanted to pull out the entire electrical wiring system,[7] remain unsubstantiated. In the film No Direction Home, John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers claimed Seeger wanted to silence the band because it was frightening his elderly father Charlie, who had a hearing aid.[10] In the same film, Dylan claimed that Seeger's unenthusiastic response to his set was like a "dagger in his heart" and made him "want to go out and get drunk".[11]
Bruce Jackson, a director of the Newport Folk Festival, called the incident "the myth of Newport". Professor Jackson was present at Dylan's 1965 performance, and in 2002 reviewed an audio tape of it. Jackson contends that the booing was directed at Peter Yarrow, who upset the crowd when he attempted to keep Dylan's spot to its proper length ; Jackson maintains there's nothing to indicate the crowd disliked Dylan's music, electrified or not.[12]
Al Kooper has argued that the boos were brought on by the short duration of Dylan's set, not the fact that Dylan had gone electric. He said: "The reason they booed is because he only played for fifteen minutes, when everybody else played for forty-five minutes or an hour. They were feeling ripped off. Wouldn't you? They didn't give a shit about us being electric. They just wanted more."[13]
In 2007, documentary director Murray Lerner released on DVD his complete footage of Dylan's three appearances at Newport: The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965. When interviewed by Mojo magazine, Lerner was asked: "There’s been a lot of debate over the years as to who exactly was doing the booing and who were they booing? Dylan? The organisers? The shortness of the set?" Lerner replied: "It's a good question. When we showed the film at The New York Film Festival [in October 2007] one kid gets up and says, 'About this booing... I was sitting right in front of the stage, there was no booing in the audience whatsoever. There was booing from the performers'. So I said, Well, I don't think you’re right. Then another kid gets up and says 'I was a little further back and it was the press section that was booing, not the audience', and I said, Well, I don’t think you’re right. A third guy gets up and says 'I was there, and there was no question, it was the audience that was booing and there was no booing from the stage'. It was fascinating. People remember hearing what they thought they should hear. I think they were definitely booing Dylan and a little bit Pete Yarrow because he was so flustered. He was not expecting that audience's reaction and he was concerned about Bob’s image, since they were part of the same family of artists through Al Grossman. But I absolutely think that they were booing Dylan going electric."[14]
Dylan appears to have believed the booing represented disapproval of his new sound. At the concert after Newport, in New York in August 1965, Dylan warned the backing musicians that they were likely to be booed.[15] Interviewed in San Francisco, on December 3, 1965, Dylan was asked whether he was "surprised the first time the boos came?" He responded: "That was at Newport. Well, I did this very crazy thing, 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 mean, they must be pretty rich, to be able to go some place and boo. I couldn't afford it if I was in their shoes."[16]
The next concert Dylan played after his Newport performance was on August 28, 1965, at Forest Hills Stadium, in Queens, New York.[17] Dylan appears to have believed that the booing at Newport was a consequence of some fans disliking his electric sound. Photographer Daniel Kramer, who accompanied Dylan to the Forest Hills concert, wrote: "Dylan held a conference with the musicians who were going to accompany him in the second half of the concert. He told them that they should expect anything to happen—he probably was remembering what occurred at Newport. He told them that the audience might yell and boo, and that they should not be bothered by it. Their job was to make the best music they were capable of, and let whatever happened happen."[18]
Musician Tony Glover, in his liner notes for the Bob Dylan Live 1966 album, quotes a contemporary account of the concert from Variety: "Bob Dylan split 15,000 of his fans down the middle at Forest hills Tennis Stadium Sunday night... The most influential writer-performer on the pop music scene during the past decade, Dylan has apparently evolved too fast for some of his young followers, who are ready for radical changes in practically everything else... repeating the same scene that occurred during his performance at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan delivered a round of folk-rock songs but had to pound his material against a hostile wall of anti-claquers, some of whom berated him for betraying the cause of folk music."[19]
The polarised responses of Dylan's fans were exacerbated by the structure of his concerts in late 1965 and 1966; the first half would be 'folk,' Dylan solo accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica; with the second half 'rock,' Dylan and the Hawks with electric guitars and a full rock and roll combo. The rock segment was often greeted with hostility, as seen in shows in Sheffield and Newcastle upon Tyne in No Direction Home. Footage from the Manchester concert, at the end of that film, includes the infamous "Judas" heckling incident. During a quiet moment in between songs an audience member shouts loudly: "Judas!" Dylan replies: "I don't believe you, you're a liar" before telling his band to "Play it fucking loud!" as they launch into "Like a Rolling Stone".[20] This incident was recorded, and the full concert was eventually released in 1998 as Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert in Dylan's Bootleg Series. One fan who claimed to have shouted "Judas!" was John Cordwell; when interviewed by Andy Kershaw he explained:
Another claimant to the "Judas!" shout was Keith Butler.[22] Butler's presence was documented in the film Eat the Document, when the then 21-year old was filmed leaving the Manchester Free Trade Hall, saying "Any pop group could produce better rubbish than that! It was a bloody disgrace! He's a traitor!" In 1999, he took part in a BBC Radio documentary about Live 1966, and asked about his reaction at the time, he replied, "I kind of think: 'You silly young bugger'".[23]