On July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan surprised a crowd of nearly 100,000 fans and did what nobody could have anticipated. Dylan plugged in an electric guitar.
Six months before the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan released Bringing It All Back Home, which featured a rock ‘n’ roll feel. Then, just one night before his performance, Dylan decided to switch to an amplified set. He took the stage with a 1964 Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, with members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, keyboardist Al Kooper, and pianist Barry Goldberg.
They opened with Maggie’s Farm before playing Like a Rolling Stone and Phantom Engineer. Shouts, and cries filled the place, and people started yelling “Play folk music!” and “Get rid of the band!”
Anthony Scaduto , who was Dylan biographer at that time, said that people started booing, making Dylan and the band go offstage after the performance of their third song, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.
According to Kooper, they left because they had rehearsed only three songs, and that the people’s reaction was a first reaction to how short the performance was. However many opinions agree that the cause of the booing was a sense of betrayal as fans felt like Dylan had abandoned them.
In doing this, Dylan opened the way for the folk-rock genre, merging his lyrical songwriting style with the rock music. However, Dylan also lost the support of many fans.
In an interview, Dylan talked about how he felt after the festival. He said, “I was kind of stunned. But I can’t put anybody down for coming and booing, after all, they paid to get in. They could have been maybe a little quieter and not so persistent, though. There were a lot of old people there, too, lots of whole families had driven down from Vermont, lots of nurses and their parents, and well, like they just came to hear some relaxing hoedowns, you know, maybe an Indian polka or two. And just when everything’s going all right, here I come on, and the whole place turns into a beer factory. There were a lot of people there who were very pleased that I got booed. I saw them afterward. I do resent somewhat, though, that everybody that booed said they did it because they were old fans.”
On that same night, Dylan returned to the stage with an acoustic guitar, he performed Mr. Tambourine Man and It’s All Over Now Baby Blue. Although some fans weren’t excited about the shift, it wasn’t until the Newport Folk Festival that the full reality of Dylan’s new music set in.
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