Driven by the influences of early rock stars like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard (whom he used to imitate on the piano at high school dances), the young Dylan formed his own bands, including the Golden Chords, as well as a group he fronted under the pseudonym Elston Gunn. While attending the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, he began performing folk and country songs at local cafés, taking the name "Bob Dillon." (Despite a popular myth to the contrary, the pseudonym was not inspired by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas — who he later professed to dislike — but by the main character from the popular Western television series Gunsmoke.)
In 1960, Dylan dropped out of college and moved to New York, where his idol, the legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie, was hospitalized with a rare hereditary disease of the nervous system. He visited with Guthrie regularly in his hospital room; became a regular in the folk clubs and coffeehouses of Greenwich Village; met a host of other musicians; and began writing songs at an astonishing pace, including "Song to Woody," a tribute to his ailing hero.
In the fall of 1961, after one of his performances received a rave review in The New York Times, he signed a recording contract with Columbia Records, at which point he legally changed his surname to Dylan. Released early in 1962, Bob Dylan contained only two original songs, but showcased Dylan's gravel-voiced singing style in a number of traditional folk songs and covers of blues songs. Continue reading from Biography
When Bob Dylan entered Columbia Records’ Studio A in mid-January 1965 and blew out an 11-song LP in three days, he didn’t merely go electric, invent folk rock and transition from an acoustic troubadour to a boundary-pushing rock & roller. He conjured performances that would completely reimagine how pop music communicated – not just what it could say, but how it could say it. “Some people say that I am a poet,” he wrote coyly in the prose-poem notes on the back cover. Now, he was ready to test the limits of what that meant, rewiring himself for a singularly revolutionary moment. The fallout-shelter sign in the cover shot was on point: Bringing It All Back Home was the cultural equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
“The thing about Bringing It All Back Home was his words,” says David Crosby. “That’s what Bob stunned the world with. Up until then we had ‘oooh, baby’ and ‘I love you, baby.’ Bob changed the map. He gave us really, really good words.”
As Dylan put it in his memoir, Chronicles, “What I did to break away, was to take simple folk changes and put new imagery and attitude to them, use catchphrases and metaphor combined with a new set of ordinances that evolved into something different that had not been heard before.”
Dylan had been considering his next artistic leap forward for some time – at least since early 1964, when he’d been bowled over by hearing the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on the radio. “They were doing things nobody was doing,” he recalled. “The chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and the harmonies made it all valid. You could only do that with other musicians.”
On January 13th, 1965, the first day of sessions for the album, Dylan recorded solo and entirely acoustic, just as he always had, with a guitar, harmonica and piano. Some believe the idea was to cut demos for an all-electric LP. But Dylan was clearly feeling out the best approach for each song. His instincts were shark like. “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” “On the Road Again” and a variant of “Outlaw Blues” were recorded on that first day, in versions that have since surfaced. Within the next 48 hours, all those songs would be recut electric for the final release. Continue reading from Rolling Stone
On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in black jeans, black boots, and a black leather jacket, carrying a Fender Stratocaster in place of his familiar acoustic guitar. The crowd shifted restlessly as he tested his tuning and was joined by a quintet of backing musicians. Then the band crashed into a raw Chicago boogie and, straining to be heard over the loudest music ever to hit Newport, he snarled his opening line: “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more!”
What happened next is obscured by a maelstrom of conflicting impressions: The New York Times reported that Dylan “was roundly booed by folk-song purists, who considered this innovation the worst sort of heresy.” In some stories Pete Seeger, the gentle giant of the folk scene, tried to cut the sound cables with an axe. 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.
As if challenging the doubters, Dylan roared into “Like a Rolling Stone,” his new radio hit, each chorus confronting them with the question: “How does it feel?” The audience roared back its mixed feelings, and after only three songs he left the stage. The crowd was screaming louder than ever—some with anger at Dylan’s betrayal, thousands more because they had come to see their idol and he had barely performed. Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul, and Mary, tried to quiet them, but it was impossible. Finally, Dylan reappeared with a borrowed acoustic guitar and bid Newport a stark farewell: “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue….” Continue reading from Time Magazine
Bob Dylan Performs "Mr. Tambourine Man" at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival
Bob Dylan Goes Electric with "Maggie's Farm" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival
Dylan Performs "Like A Rolling Stone" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival
Pete Seeger Discusses His Reaction to Dylan's 1965 Newport Folk Festival Performance
Fifty Years Ago, Bob Dylan Electrified a Decade with One Concert (NPR)
Newport Folk Festival Marks Fifty Years SInce Bob Dylan Went Electric (Billboard)
Bob Dylan in Newport, 1965 (Medium)
Bob Dylan's 50 Greatest Songs (The Guardian)
How Bob Dylan Make Rock History on "Highway 61 Revisited" (Rolling Stone)
