We continue our story of Bob Dylan. In the first video we emphasized that Dylan's emergence as a traditional folk singer, and the transformation that started to happen during those early years leading up to 1965 with Dylan away from a traditional folk singer and more toward a singer songwriter. Now we talk about the big moment at least in the American response. One of the most important one's, in American popular music in the 1960's, and that's the moment when Dylan goes electric. why should Dyl Bob Dylan picking up an electric guitar be such a controversial thing? After all, don't all rock and rollers play electric guitar? Well in the folk movement, the electric guitar, when it was associated with traditional electric blues, chest style blues, that kind of thing, no problem for the electric blues, the electric guitar, that's fantastic. But when it was associated with songs and, and you know, somebody who's music was primarily like a folk singer, primarily about the lyrics, when you brought an electric guitar in, it, it, it made it seem much more commercial. I mean that was about AM radio, that was about teeny bopper music. And so for Dylan to embrace the electric guitar as part of his folk act was, was really seen as a kind of a sell out to the, to the folk traditionalists for whom he'd become the hero really, it was like a kind of a slap in the face. And what's interesting is that when you look at Dylan's history, the, the first, the first real use of the of the electric guitar in a, in an important way that seems to shock everybody is his album Bringin' It All Back Home, which was released in March of 1965. But if you look at some of the earlier records not only were there electric guitar on, on a couple of those things, but there were unused tracks that he tried out almost in a kind of a rockabilly style that used electric guitar. So, it's not like it was a big change as far as he was concerned. And remember, before he turned to folk, he was interested in rock and roll anyway. But anyway, it still made a tremendously big impact that Dylan went on this went, went electric, and didn't go completely electric. Anyway, I mean, half the album Bringin' It All Back Home was accoustic, the other half was electric. featured on that album is a track called Subterranean Homesick Blues which, which was released as a single and went to number 39 in the summer of 1965. So in many ways that that blending of electric guitar and folk music or folk rock, American folk rock is we call it, this, this track, Subterranean Homesick Blues is one of the first ones to chart in the style making Dylan a real kind of a ground breaker. But the real trouble erupts when Dylan shows up at the Newport Folk Festival, a kind of big festival of the year for all the traditional folk musicians, and shows up and, shows up with a band. And he, he was booed. I mean, there were people who were screaming at him. of the you know, they, they thought that he had sold out. There are all kinds of stories about Pete Seeger being there, most of them probably not incredibly accurate. One of them has Pete Seeger running around with his, you know, his hands on his ears. Another one of them, another story has him sitting in a car backstage with the windows rolled up so he couldn't hear it. Even one other sort of more dramatic story has him running around trying to pull the power out of the amplifier, you know, the, the, the plugs out of the wall or whatever [LAUGH] . What, whatever story you believe, or however it actually went, there is one general theme that we take away from it, and that is Pete Seeger was not pleased with what Dylan was doing. And some people were, say well they weren't yelling because they didn't like the electric guitar they just thought it was too loud or they couldn't hear or whatever. Well, I don't know. The way it goes down in the annals of history is that Dylan was rejected at the Newport Folk Festival primarily because he was playing the electric guitar, and this rejection caused him caused him to become increasingly angry with the traditional folk establishment, and he basically sort of broke his connections with them. the big song that summer for him, a number two hit released in, at about the same time as the Newport Folk Festival, was Like a Rolling Stone. again that being a big hit for him, and again, the, the second one for him on the charts in this new style. when he, in his anger Bob Dylan writes a song that is released in September of 1965 called Positively Fourth Street, which is just verse after verse after verse of him pointing his finger at the folk establishment for being false friends, saying that they had, that, that, that he thought they cared about him, but all they cared about was themselves. And in many ways, this was Dylan's official break. Well, what, what's so interesting or special about this particular electric Dylan music? Well, the use of the electric guitar, drums, bass, this sort of a jingly, jangly kind of sound that, that went with what was essentially be, sort of folk music or at least singer songwriter kind of music, that's the basic recipe. very American sounding, certainly under the influence by the Beatles, but, but not really sort of doing quite exactly what The Beatles were doing. An interesting feature on these records is the music, is the organ playing of Al Kooper. Al Kooper is a very fascinating figure as, as the history of rock unfolds as a songwriter and as a producer, doing a lot of different kinds of things, mostly behind the scenes. by the way, Al Kooper, spelled with a K, not the same as Alice Cooper who we'll talk about in the 70s when we talk about theatrical rock and this kind of thing. Anyway, Al Kooper went to those Dylan sessions, for Bringing it All Back Home, hoping that he would play guitar but there was another guitar player who was, who was at some of the sessions, Michael Bloomfield, who was sort of the iconic electric blues guitarist in the New York area. So Al Kooper didn't really want to pick up a guitar while Michael Bloomfield was present, so he went over to the organ, which he didn't really play, but he could sort of you know, play chords and this kind of thing and started to play. Well, they're listening to the playback of Like a Rolling Stone, and Dylan says, it, they're in playback, turn the organ up. And Tom Wilson who was producing the session said, no, hey, you know, you don't want to hear the, the organ. That guy, he can't really play. Now Dy, Dylan said, no, no, I want to hear the organ. And it was Kooper's particularly almost amateurish take on playing the Hammond Organ, which really created one of the most important parts of the Dylan sound from that period. So if you listen to Like A Rolling Stone and Positively Fourth Street, really listen for Al Kooper's organ together with, with Dylan's vocal delivery and you really get a sense of what constituted that. Kooper likes to tell the story of him and Dylan going on tour. Whenever they would go on tour, they would, they would go to record stores and pick up records, bring them back to the hotel and listen to their records, and they would hear record after record where people were imitating Al Cooper's organ style because Dylan's music became so so popular, so that these people are imitating Al Cooper's organ style and Dylan and Al Kooper just thought that was the funniest thing in the world that people should imitate Al Kooper's play. Anyway that's the way Al Kooper tells the story. so Dylan, Dylan continues through 65 into 66 to have this tremendous popularity, but now the important thing is not only does he go electric, but now Dylan is important as a performer. Up to this period in mid 1965, he was really just a songwriter. Not just a song writer, but he wasn't really thought of as a performer, right. In 1965 he really becomes the Bob Dylan we know. Bob Dylan, the persona who is really a, a star in his own right, not only as a songwriter but as a performer. The albums that followed from that Highway 61 Revisited from August of 65, Blonde on Blonde from the summer of 1966, but then Dylan has a motor a, motorcycle accident in upstate New York out by Woodstock. And it's really quite unclear what the extent of his injuries were or what happened but whatever went on with Dylan, that accident and his recovery from the accident created a kind of withdrawal from the music business. And, and he's later talked about it as, as being on purpose. Maybe the world was spinning a little too fast for him. things were things were sort of clouding his mind because of fame and fortune, and all that came with it. So he in, in a sense withdrew for a while, and so it actually makes for a very a nice sort of story for us to think about Dylan in this period between 64 and 66 because by the time Dylan reemerges in, into the late 1960s, things have changed quite a bit and we're no longer thinking about American response. So, if we think about Dylan as one of the central figures in our story of the American response in the 1960s, we now need to think about who were some of the others that were important, and to a certain extent, what, what role did Dylan's influence play on those, to, on those people? And, it's, that's what we're going to turn to in the next video.
