Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, nominated for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor for Timothee Chalamet.

On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at Newport Folk Festival, backed by an electric band, and roared into his new rock hit, Like a Rolling Stone. The audience of committed folk purists and political activists who had hailed him as their acoustic prophet reacted with a mix of shock, booing, and scattered cheers. It was the shot heard round the world—Dylan’s declaration of musical independence, the end of the folk revival, and the birth of rock and roll as the voice of a generation—and one of the defining moments in twentieth-century music.

In Dylan Goes Electric!, Elijah Wald explores the cultural, political and historical context of this seminal event that embodies the transformative decade that was the sixties. Wald delves deep into the American folk revival, the rise of rock, and the tensions between traditional and groundbreaking music to provide new insights into Dylan’s artistic evolution, his special affinity to blues music, his complex relationship to the folk establishment and his sometime mentor Pete Seeger, and the ways he reshaped popular music forever. Breaking new ground on a story we think we know, Dylan Goes Electric! is a thoughtful, sharp appraisal of the controversial event at Newport and a nuanced, provocative, analysis of why it matters.

“In this tour de force, Elijah Wald complicates the stick-figure myth of generational succession at Newport by doing justice to what he rightly calls Bob Dylan’s ‘declaration of independence’ . . . This is one of the very best accounts I’ve read of musicians fighting for their honor.” — Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties and Occupy Nation

This definitive account of a musical revolution reveals:

• Newport Folk Festival 1965: Step into the charged atmosphere of July 25, 1965, to witness the performance that split the folk world in two and marked the birth of a new era for popular music.
• Dylan, Seeger, and the Folk Establishment: Explore the complex, often tense relationship between the acoustic prophet and his mentor, Pete Seeger, and understand the deep ideological rifts that defined a movement.
• The Voice of a Generation: Go beyond the music to understand the cultural, political, and historical forces of the 1960s that made Dylan’s electric turn a defining moment for a generation in transition.
• From Folk to Rock: Trace Bob Dylan’s artistic evolution, from his deep affinity for the blues to the creation of a sound that would reshape popular music forever.