Welcome to Week 5 of the History of Rock, Part One. this week we're going to talk about the American response to the British invasion. Just to review our story up to this point we [UNKNOWN], we've already talked about that first wave of Rock and Roll between 1955 and 59. All those folks like Elvis and Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and the way in which much of the energy of that sort of dissipated by the time we get to the end of the 1950s into 1959. You know, February 1959 being the day that Buddy Holly went down in the plane crash and often called [UNKNOWN] the day, the day that music died. Then we talked about that period between the end of the 1950's, the first half of the 1960s up to 1964 when The Beatles arrived and asked the question was this was this a great period for pop music or was this, in fact, a kind of a dark ages between Elvis and The Beatles. Then, The Beatles arrived in February of 1964 and in, with, with the rise of the British invasion, the impression is always given that it, it changed rock music considerably, especially changed the American market because, you know, that period between 60 and 63 had been all about trying to find the next Elvis. And it turned out that none of the things they did during 60 through 63 were actually the next Elvis. It turned out the next Elvis were the Beatles. Of course, the Beatles coming from England, that's the first time an English group, a British group, had ever really broken through in America in, in the way the Beatles did. So, in many ways, the, the two sort of, big figures in our history so far are Elvis and the Beatles. When this British invasion occurs, as I said it, it, it doesn't disrupt as much as many historians or, or music journalists will often say, but it did disrupt, disrupt the American music business a lot. And a lot of American musicians felt like these British musicians were, were really taking part of the business away from them. And so what we want to talk about this week is the response that American artists had during this period, roughly from the, the 63, 64 period, up through about 67, 68. Although by that time we get done this week we'll push some parts of our discussion up to the early 1970. So lets, let's start now talking about the American response. Start with probably the most important American figure, arguably the most important American figure in our history for the 1960s. And that's Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan's importance here is that he establishes a kind of a new model of what it is to be a songwriter in popular music. up to now, out, our model has really been the Brill Building kind of songwriters. You know, the professional songwriters who, who who wrote songs almost by order in a, in a kind of craftsmanly kind of talk, a kind of way. And when we talk about The Beatles, we talk about how they move from that model in 64 63, 64 to something more like an artist's model, Tomorrow Never Knows from 19 66 Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane from early 1967. There's a real change from the craftsman model to the artist model. Well, Dylan is right in the center of all that too, and there's a lot of interaction really between The Beatles and Dylan. And a lot of influence going both ways. So, let's, let's talk a little bit about Dylan. Dylan began his career in New York's Greenwich Village in the early 60s, but as I've pointed out before, did not have his first hits as a performer really until the summer of 1965. So really those first few Dylan albums were really only known to people who understood what the sort of purist folk movement was. Not even the folk revival. I mean, the folk revival was really about Peter, Paul, and Mary, it was about the Kingston Trio, the New Chrinsty, New Christy Minstrels, groups like that. Not people like, so much like Bob Dylan and even Joan Baez. Dylan, born in Duluth, Minnesota, raised in Hibbing. his his given name is Robert Allen Zimmerman. By changing his name to Bob Dylan, the Dylan part coming from the influence of, of the poet Dylan Thomas. in 1959, he enrolls in the University of Minnesota. And his first musical interests were in rock and roll. I mean a kid growing up, 1955 to 1957, you're going to be listening to Chuck Berry and, and later Buddy Holly and Elvis. So that's kind of what Dylan was doing, playing some guitar piano in different groups. But with the rise, rise of the folk revival Dylan got increasingly interested in folk and, and fash-, fashioned himself as a kind of of, of a folk singer and very much in the, in the under the influence of Woody Guthrie. So he starts to play the, the folk circuit around the University of Minnesota and that region. And eventually, he moves to New York City, to Greenich Village where that's really where things are happening. as I said his early image, his early act really based on, on, on Woody Gutherie. Woody Guthrie, by that time was really quite ill with Huntington's Disease and was in a hospital there. Dylan, as the story goes, would visit Woody Guthrie quite often and in many ways according to the, the, the stories and the accounts that come from the folk communities, almost sort of pass the mantle from Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan. And it's sort of Dylan that became sort of the new star, or over a certain period of time, became the new star of this, this folk movement. so, Dylan comes to Greenwich Village, he starts to play around in different clubs. He sees what the other more experienced guys are doing and starts to imitate that. it's interesting that people don't think about this too much, but early in Dylan's career a lot of his stage show his, his performing had to do with his rapport with the audience and almost a kind of a kind of a comedy thing that he would do sometimes. A dry kind of comedy, for sure. Nothing sort of slap stick or loungy about it. But there was an element of him you know clowning and fooling with the, with the crowd a little bit. We tend to think about Bob Dylan as being sort of deadly earnest so much the time or maybe just a little bit sort of sarcastic or ironic but, in this case he, he, he, he really did try to connect and, and, the in a minute I'll talk about some of the tunes were you can sort of see this in their early stuff. So anyway Dylan makes a great impression around New York and is signed to Columbia Records by a fella by the name of John Hammond in the fall of 1961. And remember this is all way before anybody really knows who Bob Dylan is going to to be. he releases this album, his first album called Bob Dylan in March of 1962 and it sold really poorly. some, some reports are that it maybe only sold 5,000 copies in the first year. I mean, this is Bob Dylan we're talking about here. so, so much so that around Columbia Records since John Hammond had signed him Dylan was sort of referred to as Hammond's Folly, right? In other words, he, he sort of made made [UNKNOWN] a real misstep, with signing Bob Dylan. But Bob Dylan ended up signing with a manager by the name of Albert Grossman in August of 62. And, this guy Grossman really knew how to manage Bob Dylan's career. Not unlike Elvis signing with Colonel Tom Parker back in in the mid 1950s and what Grossman was able to do was to helped sort of reshape Dylan, reshape the word, the, the, the ideas around him the, the, the press on him. And there was, there was some friction between Albert Grossman and John Hammond. And so Hammond stopped producing Dylan. And another guy came in, Tom Wilson. I wouldn't normally mention that, that seems like a small detail, but Tom Wilson producing Dylan is going to play a bigger role in our story than, than, than just the Dylan early albums. that early The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, his second album from May of 1963 is produced by Tom Wilson. and again, Dylan is getting a reputation inside the folk community but is not very well known. He's more what, he's more known as as a songwriter. his tune Blowin' in the Wind becomes a big hit for Peter, Paul, and Mary in the summer of 1963. Dylan also recorded his version of Blowin' in the Wind. But his version of it, even though it's maybe more popular and better known to people now back in the day that, that would have been seen as not suitable for radio play. Dylan's voice being, not sounding very professional or very trained and the harmonica playing to go with it that, that just, it just wouldn't really have, have cut it by professional standards. So a smoother sounding group like Peter Paul and Mary were able to have a hit with one of his songs. that album, The Times They Are a-Changin' comes from January of 1964. another side of Bob Dylan from August of 1964, all these albums I've mentioned were essentially not really big hit albums for Bob Dylan. It didn't turn him into a performing star. They were more sort of catalogs of his songs. Well, the, the idea of folk performer, we talked about this when we talked about the period between 60 and 63, is that they, they engage more serious issues than maybe your average teen idol or girl group does. And so Dylan was very much working in that tradition and meant that he was playing a lot of traditional songs, traditional folk songs that, that went back to the nineteenth century and even further back than, that dealt with social issues. Issues of, you know social equality and justice and this kind of thing. But as he continued to develop, Dylan began to develop as a song writer himself. Now the idea of writing your own songs developing your own sort of language, is maybe a little bit, and became increasingly at odds, with the idea of writing songs about the collective or being part of a kind of of a tradition in the sense of, of, of giving new meaning to traditional tunes. So, in many ways, one of the criticisms that's brought against Dylan as he begins to sort of not only developed as a songwriter but begin to expand past the idea of the traditional folk singer is that he took the we in folk music and turned it into a me. And that move from the we to the me is, is, is in doing so, he's really creating the singer songwriter model, which so many were going to follow after him. think about the different kinds of songs that he did early in his career. Blowin' in the Wind, for example is a kind of social and political kind of message but for the sort of comic kind of stuff, this talking blues thing he would do or he would kind of josh and, and, and, and make jokes and stuff like that. a great example of that is a track called MotoPsycho Nitemare from one of the early albums. And then there were romantic sort of almost kind of love songs like a Girl from the North Country. If you really want to hear a tune that really I think sets the, sets the standard of what the singers songwriters thing is going to be, it would be, Don't Think Twice, It's All Right is, is a great tune sort of shows the crafted Dylan's songwriting and really starts to become what we're going to start to expect from singer-songwriters. And that's a long wave from Don't Think, there's a big difference between Don't Think Twice It's All Right and Blowin' in the Wind in terms of the focus. Don't Think Twice It's All, Its All Right is all about Dylan talking about a relationship that's gone bad w-, w-, with his, with his girlfriend. And Blowin' in the Wind is all about social change and justice and this kind of thing. And it's this trajectory away from the folk toward the singer-songwriter, which is going to be Dylan's important contribution. In the next video, we'll talk a little bit more in depth about how folk rock was born and how Dylan's change during this period, leading up to the summer of 1965 and, and his, his, his change towards being more of a singer-songwriter and his turn to electric instruments really became an important part of the American response to the British invasion. [BLANK_AUDIO]
