Title: Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seegar, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties
Author: Elijah Wald
Publisher: Dey St., an imprint of WILLIAM MORROW
Price: $15.99
Pages: 354
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
Cause the times they are a-changing
— The Times They Are A-Changing by Bob Dylan
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi quoted from Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan’s iconic song at the Coldplay-led Global Citizen Festival in Mumbai on November 19, 2016, he was neither the first nor the only one to do so. Way back in 1984, while unveiling the Macintosh, Apple-founder late Steve Job had quoted another verse from what Modi termed Dylan’s “transformative anthem”.
In 2009, Swedish Scientists Jon Lundberg and Eddie Weitzberg titled their research paper ‘The Biological Role of Nitrate and Nitrite: The Times They Are a-Changin’. They were not the only one either. A 2015 study – Freewheelin’ Scientists: Citing Bob Dylan in the Biomedical Literature’ by Carl Gornitzki and colleagues – found 213 references to his lyrics in medical papers; while another one in 2010 – The Freewheelin’ Judiciary: A Bob Dylan Anthology’ by Alex Long – concluded that he was the most-cited songwriter in American judicial opinions!
Dylan’s appeal is universal and all-pervasive – be it politician or physician, law lord or a trendsetter, student or teacher, man or woman, and young or old. That’s why when Dylan sneezes the Western music world catches a cold. This happened around half a century ago when he virtually transformed the world of American folk music for ever. No wonder then that Grammy-winning writer and music historian, Elijah Wald, decided to devote his latest, more-than-350-page tome to what was essentially a 35-minute performance by the songster.
On July 25 1965, Bob Dylan – then 24 – took stage at the Newport folk festival in Rhode Island, USA, in a new Avatar. He wasn’t alone but was accompanied by instrumentalist Al Kooper and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band; and was carrying an electric guitar (Fender Stratocaster) in place of his proverbial acoustic guitar. After playing just three songs with the group, Dylan came back onstage to play two more on a borrowed acoustic guitar.
But that was no solace for Dylan’s violation of Newport’s acoustic bias. Some in the crowd cheered while others booed; some called him innovator while folk-song purists despised this innovation. “Some people were dancing, some were crying, many were dismayed and angry, many were cheering, many were overwhelmed by the ferocious shock of the music or astounded by the negative reactions,” reveals Wald. He “electrified one half of his audience and electrocuted the other”. So much so that Pete Seeger, the gentle giant of American folk music, is said to have tried cutting the sound cables with an axe.
Indeed, Wald’s book is as much about Pete Seeger as about Bob Dylan. His central theme is about the two defining American ideals and the dissimilarity between these towering figures of American music. Seeger, according to Wald, stood “for the ideal of democracy, of people working together, helping each other, living and believing and treating each other as members of an optimistic society of equals.” In contrast, Dylan personified “the ideal of the rugged individualist, carving a life out of the wilderness, dependant on no one and nothing but himself.” Wald chronicles mini-biographies of Seeger and Dylan, placing them in the political and social context of the America of sixties – the Vietnam War, the campus riots, the Civil Rights movement, bra-burning age, the summer of love, the hippies, the drug culture, and so forth. Amidst all this, Seeger built and nurtured the folk revival of the 1960s, got people singing along and inspired many a young artists including Dylan himself. For Seeger, according to Wald, “folk music was not just another form of entertainment; it was a hammer of justice, a bell of freedom, and a song of love between brothers and sisters.”
Dylan, in contrast, grew up in a world apart. While Seeger came of age in the era of Great Depression, Dylan was the product of post World War II American prosperity. “Dylan had a gut sense that the world was a mess and admired the idealism of (Woody) Guthrie and Seeger, but his politics were a matter of feelings and personal observation rather than study or theory,” explains Wald.
Though Seeger and Dylan – and to a much lesser extent, Guthrie – are the focus of Wald’s work, he also details the rise of American folk genre through the work of many others including Alan Lomax, Lead Belly, Burl Ives, Molly Jackson, and Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Wald divides the folk revival into four strains: community music-makers; preservers of regional and ethnic songs and styles; those who celebrated “people’s music” and “folk culture”; and professional performers who were marketed as folk singers. “People committed to one of those strains often tried to distance themselves from people identified with another – purists criticised popularisers, popularisers mocked purists – but the all overlapped and intertwined…” reveals Wald.
The book not only depicts that night but maps the history of folk music and its many and varied exponents as well as a good deal of America of sixties. It narrates the gradual decline of the old guard and the rise of the new kid on the block, one who even today stands tall. That’s what makes it a must-read for any serious student of folk and rock music, anywhere in the world.
