Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald

Author:Elijah Wald [Wald, Elijah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-06-03T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

ELECTRICITY IN THE AIR

The stage is now set for Newport 1965, and we all know how that story ends: Dylan in his black leather jacket with his Stratocaster, blasting his new electric music at an audience split between fervent young believers and uncomprehending old folkies. So let us start with an epitaph written by a pair of dedicated folk fans who were there and who, on the heels of that earthshaking concert, “jotted down a few impressionistic notes” about what they had just seen:

From all parts of the United States they had come in cars and trucks, motorcycles and on foot. During the hot dusty afternoons they participated in as many of the twenty-eight workshops as they could or cared to, or gathered spontaneously in the shade to exchange songs; in four days they attended six concerts, one in a downpour; and many of them slept in cars, tents, sleeping bags, in open fields—wherever the police allowed them. And on this last night, led by Pete Seeger, they had just sung rousing versions of freedom songs with a most impressive ensemble of some of folkdom’s most renowned performers. Their silence now, no doubt, was due in great part to genuine inspiration, reverence perhaps; in part to euphoric exhaustion.

As they wound their way down the dimly lit hillside toward their cars, cycles, and the road, one was reminded of similar groups in history immediate and distant, other “holy barbarians,” other “pilgrims of the absolute.” With their beards, long hair, and sandals, they might have been early Christians emerging from the catacombs. A young man stood on the empty, darkened stage and softly played “Rock of Ages” on his harmonica. The dry shuffle of feet and his slow, almost plaintive music filled the clear, warm summer night. Then the prayerful wail of the harmonica faded; the feet were gone. So came to an end another folk pilgrimage.

From a Dylan-centric standpoint this summation is baffling. That final harmonica solo is part of his legend—Mel Lyman, the mystical guru of the Kweskin Jug Band, was so upset by Dylan’s set that he ascended the stage unbidden and unexpected, seeking to heal the rift in the folk community. But it was too late. Dylan had looked the community in the eye and gunned it down in cold blood. How could the writers have so misunderstood the meaning of it all?

As it happens, the writers were Dylan fans whose retrospective take on his transformation was, “Just when everybody’s protest songs were making it big, he had the courage and integrity (as well as the shrewd showmanship) to say ‘no more; it’s meaningless’ and turn to folk-rock.” They recognized Dylan’s Sunday night set, when he “electrified one half of his audience and electrocuted the other,” as the “journalistic happening” of the 1965 Newport Festival. But they were not mainstream journalists; they were young folk fans caught up in the passion and breadth of the revival, and that phrase about electrifying and electrocuting was not their description

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