How Bob Dylan Catapulted Folk Music | Roads Rapidly Changing (Full Documentary) | Amplified

[Music] rock and roll died of its own weight in a way focusing was happening at the village it was just the sort of swamp of clubs and coffee houses the guitar was like a magnet you know it could draw people in people did get influenced by a romantic idea of a guitarist and seeing a sad song there were all these little factions there were some people that were just into blues some people that were just into bluegrass some people that were just into the protest part of it how could you beat an era like that i mean it was just a great scene and had an energy all its own that's seldom been repeated the thing about dylan is that dylan kind of signified a sea change and all of a sudden you wrote your own song it was just sort of like automatic as opposed to no one even thought of doing that and then suddenly like everyone didn't really think of doing that just thought that's what you do he changed everything he's astonishingly better than almost everything else around him when he started writing that that was a big paradigm shift right there the bar was then set for for good songwriting way way before it was here [Music] then it was here [Music] american folk music a broad loosely defined term covering a range of genres derived from european and african musical forms and brought to the country by settlers of various nationalities ballads hymns songs and instrumental styles passed on through the generations by an oral tradition yet constantly evolving this music was the product of the lower classes workers peasants and slaves by the early 20th century while some genres have become established in popular culture others had remained obscure and these caught the attention of folklorists and archivists looking to study and catalogue traditional musical forms new advances in recording technology enabled these academics to capture the sounds of america's neglected communities and discoveries such as lead belly in 1933 by father and son folklorists john and alan lomax brought this music to a wide audience and in an america wading through the great depression the most receptive audience to the traditional sounds of folk music were the leftists who championed these forms that had emanated from the lowest strata of society and which had endured without the interference of commercial interests by the late 1930s leadbelly himself was transformed into a heroic figure by the communist party of the usa who were growing considerably at the time and folk music itself soon became political there were a lot of things wrong with the communist party usa but the folk movement was not one of them it had its things wrong with the cp usa problems for sure it was ideological it was sentimental it was uh moralistic in a way that wasn't going to convince anybody who didn't already agree with you all of that stuff nevertheless it was a brilliant creation it was a creation the notion of folk music and it was created primarily not entirely by communist party intellectuals in the 30s in 1940 new york became the center of activity for an emerging folk scene here the leading lights of the movement were establishing its political values while reviving and reassessing its musical parts alongside singer songwriter and activist josh white ledberly and his manager alan lomax were two white musicians the young middle class new york native pete sega and a singer and songwriter from oklahoma woody guthrie these two artists in particular would become pioneering figures in the redefinition of american folk penning their own material in the mould of the traditional songs that had inspired them and using the music itself as a vessel for political commentary they set the template for the artists who would follow in their wake pete and woody meant the world to us i mean they were um at least at least to me i mean i willingly followed the trail that they had blazed i mean i've always said that uh if it hadn't been for pete seeger there wouldn't have been a folk music revival anything approaching what what actually happened and pete really blazed the they're all the trailer i began writing songs because of woody guthrie and pete sieger i wanted to write songs that sounded like the songs that woody wrote except i wanted to try to make them my songs and my time my my era this radical faction of folk music emanating from new york became muted after the end of the second world war with fascism apparently defeated and a new enemy emerging communism guthrie suffered declining health sega formed the weavers and this group's less overtly political output struck a chord with the public and propelled them into the mainstream yet by the mid-1950s both the red scare and the cold war were escalating and the anti-communist witch hunts led by senator joe mccarthy on the house un-american activities committee put an end to the weavers and derailed pete seeker's career folk refused to die however with the release of filmmaker harry smith's landmark compilation anthology of american folk music in 1952 introducing obscure recordings from the late 20s and early 30s to a receptive wider audience and popular group the kingston trio emerging as one of the most commercially successful acts in america towards the end of the decade despite the brief revolution brought into popular music by rock and roll in the mid-fifties as the country entered the 1960s a new generation of musicians began looking to the past once again and word spread of a folk revival you know it's seen as this efflorescence but i actually see it as the gathering storm that begins with harry smith runs through the fact that there were folk hits uh in the in the late 50s like the terriers three uh greenwich village folkies who had a big hit with banana boat song which was then covered by harry belafonte who was not without his folk connections either i see it myself as an organic process in the first great efflorescence of rock and roll which begins say with maybelline in september of 55 and runs pretty strong through 58 does in fact really begin to tail off between 59 and 62 not as bad as in myth but nevertheless in a real way so that people are just the right age to turn from the music they like when they were a little younger it's getting worse they have new ideas and and they pick up on what was already in the air and in their own culture about that time we were starting to pick up on the smithsonian anthology people started listening to these old recordings and started finding that these amazing artists mostly blues artists but also country artists and appalachian artists were not just these mythical figures that were coming to us on these scratchy recordings through the mists of time but they were actually quite alive and well most of them but there was another component to the folk music scene i would say it started with people like pete seeger and woody guthrie there was a sort of a branch of folk music that was mostly interested in songs of social relevance and of course all the wonderful songs that woody guthrie had written so there were a lot of different factions it wasn't just blues or appalachian or bluegrass it was it was everything all at once this growing interest in folk music spread to minnesota young robert zimmerman whose first band had performed little richard numbers at their high school in the large mining town of hibbing was one of many to grow disenchanted by the commercialization of rock and roll and to subsequently be drawn to the earthier sounds offered by artists from the recent past [Music] dylan growing up in the 1950s like almost every american kid his music is not folk music it's it's rock and roll and elvis presley and little richard i i mean i suppose if you're arlo guthrie then it might be different but you'd be quite an unusual teenager to uh be into folk music uh i think uh that age there's a story in fact that he was given some old lead belly 78s on his graduation and that was possibly his first introduction to this music and he started learning and playing those songs [Music] but the folk music epiphany really comes when he goes to college in the twin cities of minneapolis and saint paul where he's a very poor attender of lectures and a very assiduous attender of the folk clubs and coffee houses in dinky town the uh sort of bohemian district next to the to the campus and uh i think it was probably a girlfriend gave him his first woody guthrie recordings and he's transfixed he describes this far more eloquently than i ever could in chronicles when he describes the moment he first hears woody guthrie as like a heavy anchor dropping into the deep waters of a harbour i ain't got no home i'm just a roaming round just a wandering worker i go from town to town and the police make it hard wherever i may go and i ain't got no home in this world anymore the guthrie obsession grows and grows until the point where he feels uh he's he's ready to make the road trip to new york and seek the great man out zimmerman now going by the stage name bob dylan left minneapolis in december 1960 having outgrown the local scene in dinky town and after a brief stay in chicago finally arrived in manhattan on january the 24th 1961. ever since the early 1940s when pete seeger led belly josh white and woody guthrie had first congregated there the city had remained the focal point of the folk world and dylan was just one of many artists drawn there from all across the u.s it was a very romantic thing to come to new york this was the place where the beats were this is the place so many people were jackson pollock worked through all the abstract expressionist work there i mean new york was it of course and um san francisco is very interesting but it wasn't really it it didn't have the gravitas that new york did or the history it wasn't as big it didn't have the energy it wasn't quite the same new york was most important like sinatra said you know if you make it in new york you can make it anywhere and it was true then and it's probably true now and the district of manhattan that dylan gravitated to was greenwich village the artistic and bohemian hub of the city there's nowhere else for him to go but to village where there's nothing available it was all in in that area village was place you'd come to new york that's had its own sense of life its own acceptance of life style of life and you'd find anything that seemed to be against the normal of life in the village and accepted by it i was one of the few people that was on that scene that was actually born and raised there john sebastian and my old buddy john hammond being the only other two i know that i can think of and as a very little girl i remember the village was it had a very strong uh italian community there was a very strong itali italian presence there there were some neighborhoods that were irish first generation irish first generation italian but the other main um population of the village was made up of all sorts of artists musicians dancers i mean i think from the early 1900s it was a mecca for free spirits and free thinking people of all kinds it was even the first place i can think of where people could openly be gay so it was naturally it became the epicenter for all things hip and that that was from the 1900s early 1900s to the period in the early 60s that we're talking about on the night of his arrival dylan stumbled upon the cafewar a small venue known to the local musicians as a basket house where donations from the audience were collected at the end of a set appearing on stage that very night as part of an open mic show or hootenanny across the following week the young singer accustomed himself to the various clubs and cafes that made up the village folk circuit the village was just the sort of swamp of clubs that catered to tourists sometimes catered to the locals or like coffee houses that didn't have cabaret licenses so anything that happened entertainment wise was had to be for free first off there were the basket passing houses that was the lowest level um which are most of them and then there's a place that actually paid something like uh the bitter end and the gas light and a goodies folk city but most places were basket passing houses the idea of a basket house was none of the club owners paid you to play you would walk in with your instruments play a set i mean you had to be good enough i mean not just anybody could do it uh and then pass a bread basket around and people would fill it with money like maybe on a great saturday night you might get seven bucks worth of change in there then you'd pack up and go to the next one and on that same circuit were john hammond richie havens jose feliciano john sebastian and various incarnations of different groups he had all of us did it and we would have hoot nannies on saturday nights in a i remember i think it was a room at the ymca on 23rd street pete seeger was off in the mc people like reverend gary davis would be there and my friend john harold and some of the greenbrier boys various people and we'd all sit in a big circle and each sing some songs and uh sing some songs together and it it was all like one scene the group nannies were most important they were and they were also called wingdings there were places where people got together and uh they were great incubation points and people came to them it was very vibrant and people were honing their skills and uh not just the hootenannies but there was washington square park that was a great gathering place every sunday and there was the fountain and people came around the uh people were singing songs and playing their guitars and banjos and exchanging you know swapping songs like whatever and people were coming from all over from all over the world and everyone knew that washington square was the place to be while keen to establish himself within this new thriving environment dylan also had another priority 30 miles west of greenwich village woody guthrie was interned at greystone park state hospital in new jersey suffering from huntington's disease since his introduction to guthrie's work dylan like fellow greenwich village musician rambling jack elliot had begun to imitate not only the musical style but also the mannerisms of the ailing older artist and his itinerant non-conformist lifestyle and ragged persona had proven inspirational over the following year the young folk singer from hibbing minnesota was a regular visitor at guthrie's bedside and the pair became close friends he came looking forward together he didn't come looking for a pizza but he struck a lot of people for his independent style which i assume the younger people of that generation try to emulate the independence and the willingness to go a different way than the normal way and breaking away from family ties living pot hobo just never getting down to a trade or a job and it wasn't a great experiment people like pete seeger were very radical politically and of course had been through the whole mccarthyite era but they were at the same time very respectable very bourgeois if you like earnest about their causes and about their music guthrie and his followers like rambling jack elliot represented a different strand of the folk tradition which was much earthier but was uh closer to the common people for want of a a a a better phrase and you know of course guthrie took to the road and uh was a a rambling gambling man who who rode the rails there's that outlaw quality to it so that strand of folk music is probably far more attractive to teenagers steeped in 50s rock and roll than the rather serious dare i say po-faced pete seeger approach to the music back in 1927 i had a little farm and i called that heaven well the price is up and the rain come down and i hauled my crops all into town and got the money bought clothes and groceries fed the kids and raised the family [Music] rain quit and the wind got high and a black hole dust storm filled the sky and i swapped my farm for a ford machine and i poured it full of this gas eileen and started rocking and rolling over the mountains out towards the old peach bowl dylan was quite genuine in his love and admiration for woody guthrie i mean it's not a case of him cynically trying to ride on guthrie's coattails he goes out to the hospital and visits him and you know i think he is genuinely in awe of the man but there's no doubt that because guthrie warmed to dylan and took him as a kind of unofficial protege in a way that this helped dylan enormously back in greenwich village there's a story that when dylan first visited guthrie in hospital when he gave him a card which said on it i'm not dead yet and dylan went flashing this all around greenwich village so you know he he he he literally was carrying woody guthrie's calling card so yeah it was an enormous help to him to have the support of such an influential figure that said you know i mean he'd he'd have made it anyway it might just have taken him a little bit longer having performed on the greenwich village circuit albeit briefly and having established contact with his musical hero within the first two weeks of his arrival in new york dylan also headed to izzy young's folklore center a small shop that offered both materials for study and a gathering place for the local folk artists it started off as a bookstore selling folk music books but it also sold records and music instruments and then this wonderful guy izzy young who put it together he also had little store concerts so it was really a center every time one of these people came in from out of town the first place they'd go would be to the folklore center and you could find out what's going on now just a half a block away was all these little clubs coffee houses and so on but i think what was going on in the folklore center was at least for me was the center of it because you could look at records from all over the country you could look at books old books song books photographs of singers there'd be instruments hanging on the wall and other musicians would come in there anybody could come into my store i would lend books to people i had records in the store for all the new folk music records and i had a copy of each one and i still remember people would look at one or two but the person that looked through every damn record i had was bob dylan and i didn't know him from nobody he just walked in the store one day he knew what he was doing long before he came to new york city it's a lot of baloney like oh i come to new york city wow wow things are happening all over wow wow but he was ambitious long before he came to new york he was borrowing records from all his friends and not returning them and you know things like that so he was listening to every thing he could listen to and my place was the place where he could relax [Music] by february 1961 dillon was performing regularly at the cafewar the commons and the gaslight growing in confidence within this new and more competitive environment yet the larger upmarket venues such as gerdy's folk city the limelight and the village gate remained off limits dylan's act not yet refined enough to gain him access to the top tier of the village circuit he approached me for an audition and i said okay i took him to a coffee shop that opened at five o'clock in the afternoon uh was called the caricature there was caricatures all over uh this coffee house and there was a woman who had a full-time job earlier and she opened at five o'clock and so we went over there was it was empty and quiet and so and he performed a few songs i must tell you personally i wasn't impressed and the reason is you know i said you know i know what he guthrie i i like his stuff and jack elliott was around doing that stuff and i said besides it i wasn't too crazy about that sound you know i know i know it wasn't his natural sound you know he wasn't a noki so i just wasn't impressed at that point and besides i didn't know at that point early in that point how much it would help me in my place the village gate to put such a performer in um i did take unknowns but there wasn't that much of an emphasis for me to take him on at that point yet where some of the older guards saw only another woody guthrie imitator other young artists on the village scene quickly took notice of this new arrival and were very aware that dylan offered something new the first time i saw him in 1961 at hoot night on monday his phrasing obviously was part a total grasp on traditional plus rock and roll and i'd considered like you know rock and roll which i adored and folk music would try adore these never that never the twain shall meet they're they're they're they're they're two one one is from the mountain one is a sea they can never possibly possibly find happiness together and dylan had like put them together i'm not talking about dylan going electric in 65 i'm talking about is like like like singing is phrasing and i realized that these two disparate you know like like loves of mine were actually capable of being a singularity which blew my mind i mean like the guy i mean like i thought like that guy can that guy can really sing dylan can't sing i mean what dylan quickly progressed on a scene that was itself blooming having been accepted into the circles surrounding prominent members of the folk establishment through his friendship with guthrie including pete seeger alan lomax and jack elliot he also took up with his contemporaries on the scene these fellow developing musicians marx balestra richard farina and dave van ronk among many others provided not only a close-knit social group but also a well of musical ideas and independently discovered material which dylan would actively absorb by april he secured a supporting slot opening for john lee hooker at gerdy's folk city and by may he began to incorporate two of his own early compositions into his sets still seen as only one of a number of budding folk singers however dylan pressed the new york times folk critic robert shelton to review one of his shows keen to rise to greater prominence when shelton finally agreed the resultant review published on the 29th of september 1961 immediately established dylan as an artist to watch the new york times was an immensely powerful newspaper and shelton was the folk music critic i mean he knew all the all not just the focus i mean he he'd know woody allen and he'd watch gigs by by bill cosby in greenwich village it really had his finger on the pulse um was respected was was by all accounts pretty incorruptible i mean you know he he reviewed straight down the line and i don't think you can underestimate the impact that robert shelton's review of bob dylan had when it appeared in the new york times i mean this put him so far ahead of his contemporaries i mean the fact that new york times had a designated folk critic at this point tells you how booming the the folk revival is um and i think shelton recognized that dylan was something quite different this was not the kingston trio and peter paul and mary it wasn't even joan byers and odetta it was coming from from somewhere else completely people started taking notice of him robert shelton did this killer article on him in the new york times and and that was the first time we had a sense of there was some that some of us might rise to anything above hoot nanny's status or just sitting around jamming at somebody's house or whatever and then of course by then joan baez who was part of the boston contingent of folk music which was a very healthy scene in and of itself she had a record out odetta had an album out by now so we were starting to get a glimmer that this could go somewhere beyond the living room or gertie's on a monday night dylan himself was soon to have an album of his own before the shelton article had been published the young folk singer had encountered columbia records producer and talent scout john hammond at a recording session for fellow village artist carolyn hester on october the 26th 1961 nine months after his arrival in new york dylan was offered a contract with colombia yet the shelton article and his signing to a major label didn't propel the singer to the top of the village scene overnight in autumn 61 izzy young the owner of the folklore center had offered to step in as dylan's makeshift promoter yet his attempts to launch the artist as a major draw in his own right proved fruitless they would be in my store uh two three four five six musicians there all the time so then i could see hey this guy's really good she's terrific i can put a counselor with them so i had luxury i could choose what i wanted where the clubs in the village they had to wait till somebody could get 200 people or 400 people and so i was so sure that bob dylan would fill up a theater the small theater in carnegie hall and i said let's do a concert i was blowing my head off i took an ad in the paper i had a newsletter writing it i was telling everyone this is the best i've ever heard in my life i would have bet a million dollars to one that that place is gonna be packed up well there were some 300 seats or 320 or 280 something like that around 300 and 52 people came and 300 people remember the concert now shortly after this show dylan entered columbia studios to record his self-titled debut now keen to distance himself from familiar criticisms of being imitative the young musician decided to abandon his repertoire of guthrie songs and tackle folk standards and traditionals some of which he had appropriated from his peers although the lp would not prove a commercial success it nevertheless provided evidence that even at this early stage dylan represented something new and original in a scene that was so bound up in tradition [Music] [Applause] [Music] dylan's first album is an incredible record for a 20 year old to make and you look at the face staring out at you from the cover this baby face ingenu you know and then you listen to this white blue singer inside the record and you know i mean it's a record that's about dylan the performer really because there are only two of his own compositions on it but what a performer he is [Music] all my days [Music] if you listen to that record now i mean he was doing pretty traditional folk stuff you know there was a lot of humor in it though and there was you know a sense of an individual personality emerging which was something that you know in a certain way the idea of folk music like the people like not you the individual like there was an element in folk music that your kind of individuality was supposed to be kind of muted and you were supposed to be singing these songs as a kind of tribute to the larger community that they emerged from like dylan was not doing that from the very beginning dylan was doing bob dylan versions of these songs i mean some of which were you know good or some that were not that good but they were very much him there [Music] me he's astonishingly better than almost everything else around him people say he can't sing i think that dylan was until very recently when his voice really started to give out a great singer in about a dozen different modes and you listen to that early stuff and you hear humor and imagination and a sense of possibility and a sense that he really admires these songs he's singing but that doesn't mean he's their slave or that he wants to replicate them he wants to own them he wants to take these things he loves and make them better as he makes them his i was born in dixie in a boomer shack just a little shannon by the railroad track freight train wasn't taught me how to cry home another driver's a lullaby i got the freight train blue dylan at this point is the most incredible sponge and i don't use that in a derogatory sense because uh you only ever learn anything by being a sponge and soaking everything up and uh he has soaked all this up as a performer and then you've got his two first recorded compositions on there the best of which is his homage to woody guthrie which is heartfelt and already probably streets ahead of the songs that anybody else was writing at this time hey hey what he got for me i wrote you a song about a funny old world that's coming along seems sick and it's hungry it's tired and it's torn it looks like it's a diet and it's hardly been born you know in retrospect it's completely unsurprising and unremarkable that robert shelton should have walked into gerdy's and said holy mackerel i like folk music but then there's this you know he changed everything and i'm just talking about musically now which is supposed to be where he isn't where he's not doesn't have much of a voice and all of that crapola we're not talking about the songwriting which ultimately he's also the person who instigates that i mean there are exceptions there are other people writing their own songs by then but not like dylan and dylan's own songwriting output began to develop at a prodigious rate after the recording of his debut although he was composing occasional songs while back on the minneapolis scene his immersion in the greenwich village folk world fully liberated his creativity and by january 1962 on the back of the new material he was producing john hammond secured dylan his first music publishing deal this led to the recording of a seven track demo which collected together songs that the artist had mostly penned during the previous year i think the early bob dylan songs when there's only two on his debut album and you know i wouldn't have put money on him being the spokesman of a generation on that evidence but i mean he was writing prolific he was churning stuff out um you know on beer mats on napkins on envelopes i mean he was just churning this stuff out and a lot of the early dillon compositions were his lyrics to existing tunes i mean uh hard times in new york town came from a 30 song called down on penny's farm rambling gambling willie k latoon was from brennan on the moor by the clancy brothers and uh tommy macomb who dylan would have seen around greenwich village at the time oh new york city is a friendly old town from washington hats to haul a mom down there's a mighty many people in the middle and all around i'll kick you when you up and knock you when you're down it's hard times from the country living down in new york town well the weak and the strong and the rich and the poor together together yet where this early material lyrically conformed to either semi-autobiographical folk or traditional blues forms by the end of january 62 dylan's prolific pen turned unexpectedly towards contemporary protest songs this shift in subject matter was not only traceable to the times themselves but also to dylan's girlfriend during this period suze rotolo who had moved into the singer-songwriter's apartment at the start of the year when dylan met sues rotolo she was 17 years old but she came from this radical american italian family her sister carla was working for alan lomax so that opened certain doors and soos was uh you know full-on radical political activist she was working for the campaign of racial equality she was involved in anti-nuclear protests she was picketing woolworths in manhattan because their branches in the south had segregated lunch counters i mean i think dylan himself admitted that she was there before he was in terms of this this world of radical protest there's been rumors of war and wars that have been the meaning of life has been lost in the wind and some people thinking that the end is close by [Music] instead of learning to live they are learning to die let [Music] you know he was informed by a lot of his left-wing friends you know that's what susie rodol and people like that his girlfriend and uh the circle um albert mayor i think is and there was a few people that really influenced him politically because i don't think that was his number one agenda but you know he'd hear about all these outrages and these injustices and he had the ability to extempora uh well how should i say extrapolate from what he's what he'd heard and these things this kind of whole these vistas that had been shown to him and he was able to it was material to write whether he was really political um i don't know if i could say that but um he he could pin down a prop point it pin it down and pointed out and in beautiful powerfully political ways there's always been people that have to cause fear they've been talking about a war now for many long years i've read all that statements and i've not said a word but now lord god let my poor voice be heard talent for writing songs and seeing what's going on around them so at that time you can write about poor people people being starved people being killed so he was following the trend so to speak but he still made the trend better than it was and i've always felt that he was always interested in working his own career his own music and i'm not saying it's bad you know he did a good job with all the songs just about all of the songs he wrote more good songs i think than anyone i've ever heard down before mississippi not so long ago honey young boy from chicago town step three southern door this was faithful tragedy i can still remember well the color of his skin was black and his name was emmett till if you look at something like the ballad of emmett till it's quite a trite treatment of what was certainly not a trite subject is this this black kid who had dared to look at a a white woman had been killed and tossed in the tallahassee river which was already quite an old story by the time dylan commemorates it in song i think it happened back in 1955. i think the song ends with a line something about you know making this great land of ours a greater place to live you know it's it it's a worthy but a banal sentiment uh which he would very soon eradicate from his writings folks that thinks alike if we'd give all we could give we'd make this great land of ours a greater place to live you look at these early songs and if he was a great poet you'd say they were the juvenile of his work but it's the speed at which um he transcends being an imitator to being a a genuinely new and unique voice that is the most impressive thing about dylan at this period this focus of contemporary issues brought dylan directly into the orbit of one of the elder statesmen of the folk world despite only narrowly avoiding prison time following his appearance before the house un-american activities committee pete sega had remained a prominent activist closely associated with both the campaign for nuclear disarmament and the growing civil rights movement in february 1962 with fellow folk singer sis cunningham and her husband gordon friesen he founded broadside a magazine that would feature contemporary folk songs having heard his new material sega was keen to bring dylan on board for the first issue and over the next two years the young singer-songwriter would become the magazine's most regular contributor broadside was openly leftist not communists but leftists and they got a lot of the best songs that were written at the time and a lot of lousy songs too because they were getting songs you know eight or ten songs in every number and sometimes getting them a month apart i don't know how they did it that was a real labor of love it was really nitty gritty it was a workers left-wing worker type approach to everything they would print songs like from my song thirsty boots to blowing in the wind or i ain't marching anymore to like somebody complaining about the landlord or there's the waters leaking in my kitchen or those cockroaches are out of control i mean they printed everything it was very egalitarian in terms of democratic in terms of the kind of material the school teacher they didn't have enough heat in the room so that she'd write a song about that it was up for grabs everybody could write a song everybody had a song on them like merle haggard said you know every single person walks the face of the earth has at least one great sign on them and that they went out to prove it if dylan would soon prove that he had a staggering number of great songs in him a new composition that he penned in april 62 was quickly recognized as both his first major work and the first significant original to emerge from the post rock and roll folk revival blowing in the wind yet at an early performance of this track which would become an anthem for the civil rights movement he was keen to inform the audience that it was not a protest song when dylan said about blowing in the wind you know they're saying a protest song i think that you know i think he was beginning to understand the limits of the world that he was moving in the same time as he understood what the potential impact of a song like blown in the wind could be you know so that if it's a song you're kind of torn from the headlines that was about something that happened yesterday well tomorrow it might not be that important but if it's a song that kind of is elevated uh into something a little more universal than that while taking energy from what's happening in the headlines you know i think that's the sweet spot that dylan hit how many years before it is the sea yes and how many years and some people exist before they're allowed to be free yes and how many times must a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see the answer my friend is there are no specifics in blowing in the wind it's like we shall overcome you know it's it's an anthem that uh i mean i don't suppose dylan was actually thinking at the time he wrote it people will still be singing this in 60 years time but uh but they are and you can you can easily see why because he's distilled something universal something that uh transcends the the specific and the particular and this is where the whole problem that he will subsequently have with being the voice of a generation begins in that song he is casting himself whether he likes it or not as the voice of a generation although the song did not receive a commercial release in any guys until a year after it was composed its immediate impact on the folk scene itself was considerable attracting attention both as a prominent number in dylan's own live sets and published in broadside in may 62 blowing in the wind and his other recent output suggested to a number of his peers that original compositions had greater potential than the traditional folk and blues songbook sieger wrote songs and tom paxton wrote songs but it was not a dumb thing until dylan came along and dylan kind of signified a sea change and all of a sudden you wrote your own songs it was just sort of like automatic as opposed to no one even thought of doing that and then suddenly like everyone didn't really think of doing that as thought that's what you do that's how you do it you know the song also attracted the attention of impresario albert grossman who not only secured dylan a new publishing contract on the back of it but also signed on as his manager shortly after throughout the remainder of 1962 dylan continued to write new material and recorded several sessions for his second album and by the close of the year he took his first trip across the atlantic traveling to london for a tv performance during his brief visit he quickly immersed himself in the city's own thriving folk scene soaking up whatever he could from a homegrown musical tradition that stretched back to the late medieval era he came over to do a play for the bbc called madhouse on castle street and whenever any of his charges came over his manager who was albert grossman would would bring him around the folk clubs because there were quite a few folk clubs around and uh i was in a we called them we called them groups in those days was a group called the temp side four and we ran a club um in a place called the king and queen in foley street right by the middlesex hospital and he came there and he walked in the door and i recognized him because uh there's a place called collett's record shop on new oxford street which was the folk record shop and they had this american magazine called sing out his picture had been on the front and they printed an interview and three of his songs they printed song to woody masters of war and i think they printed blowing in the wind i think they think that was in that one it was obviously you know big fuss was being made about him and there was that face that had been on the front of sing out so i went over and asked him if he wanted to sing and he said ask me later so i asked him later and he got up and sang he was just a fabulous performer absolutely fabulous performer completely in charge but then us english people were used to americans being good performers i think it must be something they do in school and um but he was just a bit better than pretty good he was extremely good and he came down to various other clubs that i was i was either performing in or was around and his repertoire was just fatty was was beautiful as impressive as dylan's repertoire was it mainly consisted of traditional american folk songs yet through martin carthy and the other musicians on the london circuit he was exposed to a new catalogue of material that he could adapt and interpret this would have a profound influence on his development as a songwriter we happen to get on really well you know it became quite matey but when it comes down to it he was hearing an awful lot of other people he had a guy a scots guy called nigel denver he heard a guy who's still around called bob davenport he had you know he heard loads and loads of people enoch kent all these singers who were around in in in london at the time and they all had a huge effect on him i don't think that ever enough attention has been paid to the change that occurred to his writing after he came to england he'd half recorded three wheeling bob dylan and he finished it when he got back and one of the songs he wrote either during or after was girl from the north country certainly because that's based on scarborough affair which i used to sing and bob dylan's dream [Music] he wrote songs around traditional songs i wasn't the only person he learned from he just learned he was a piece of blotting paper upon his return to new york in january 1963 and armed with this new batch of compositions dylan re-entered columbia studios to continue work on his sophomore lp eventually recording over 30 tracks for possible inclusion on the album issued in may 1963 the free wheel in bob dylan was a landmark release featuring almost exclusively original material and it signaled a watershed not only for the young singer-songwriter from hibbing but also for the folk revival and for popular music itself the freewheeling bob dylan was very important beginning with its cover i mean the cover became a kind of iconic image of that period this kind of young folky couple dylan and susie rotolo walking down jones street in greenwich village they're kind of huddling together it just kind of caught that kind of romantic you know beleaguered uh idealistic vision of you know kind of young people on the folk scene at that time then of course the album itself made a massive impact just these amazing songs that announced a very dramatic new talent well they know you sit and wonder why baby even you don't know by now and they know you used to sit and wonder why baby it'll never do somehow when your rooster crows at the brick a dawn look out your window and be gone you're the reason i'm traveling on but don't think twice it's all right freewheeling in my opinion is a truly great record and in part that's because he sings karina karina and and uh and uh as does don't think twice it's all right which is but no protest song just one of the greatest love songs or whatever it is ever written even for dylan the songs on that record are of exceptional quality and the performance is remarkable even for dylan who was to make a lot of other great records but that's certainly one of them collecting together both plaintiff love ballads and his most recent protest material the original songs on the record indicated that dylan had quickly ascended to the top of the new folk revival where contemporaries such as phil oakes fred neal and eric anderson were all performing their own compositions by the time of the album's release and tom paxton had been doing so since the dawn of the 1960s dylan's work was expanding the possibilities of the folk form itself it's a lesson too late for the made of sand made of sand in the wink of an eye my soul is turning in your hand in your hand there were other singers in greenwich village writing their material but did any of these people write a hard range gonna fall did they write oxford town or did they write masters of war no what dylan did was totally new and unique and original [Music] i head for the depths of the deepest dark forest where the people have many in their hands are all empty where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters and i tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it and reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it if you listen to that song it has very folk elements i mean you know it takes lines from traditional folk songs and takes a valid format that question an answer format you know where have you been my blue-eyed son where have you been my darling you're one and then the answer comes and then you know another question and another answer and another question and another answer but when you look so the the ballad form is is perfectly intact it's a kind of classic example of it but if you look at the lyrics the answers to those questions are this wild kind of like beat inspired torrent of images you know that is really nothing like traditional folk music and it's hard it's a hard it's hard it's hard it's a hard rain they're gonna fall that was kind of conveniently ignored at the time i think you know the song was really uh going in directions aesthetically that i don't think anybody wanted to think too much about what the implications of that were i'm your masters of war [Music] hear the build the big guns hear the bella death planes here that build all the bombs here that hide behind the walls it hide behind discs [Music] i just don't want you to know i can see through your masks the anger from early on seemed to single him out from his contemporaries i mean the the even the phil oaks protest songs are quite polite the packs and stuff is is quite gentle even though a song like lyndon johnson told the nation which is a very very early anti-vietnam song at a time when when johnson was seen as you know doing truly great work in the civil rights bill you know criticizing him was seen as quite a controversial thing um you know paxton was was not afraid of pulling punches but he sounded quite polite about it red dylan always sounded quite angry you must say that i'm young you might say i'm unlearned but there's a one thing i know i'm younger than you even jesus would never forgive what you do dylan recognize that this protest movement that sues rotello had brought him into was uh a fight to the death if you like you know it wasn't uh it wasn't a subject for the kingston trio and peter paul and mary to or even pete seeger to sing prettily about so it required that level of vitriol and venom that you hear in a song like masters of war when you know he says and i hope that you die and your death will come soon i will follow your casket on a pale afternoon nobody not even woody guthrie i don't think had written with this kind of emotional recuperation before so we are seeing something totally new and unique the freewheeling lp drew instant attention to dylan upon its release the wider music press recognizing that the singer-songwriter represented a new breed of folk artists his stock was raised even higher when a cover version of lead track blown in the wind was issued within weeks of the album by pop folk trio peter paul and mary a manufactured act concocted by dylan's manager albert grossman the single rapidly climbed to number two on the billboard chart and introduced dylan's work into the mainstream dylan's voice i love his voice i think he's one of the most expressive singers in the world and with great phrasing and he's actually always really on pitch but you'd have to say it would be an acquired taste for a lot of people you know peter paul and mary had a more homogenized and kind of airbrushed whitewashed version the song is brilliant and stands on its own i mean no matter who would be singing it but they just made a more accessible user-friendly version [Music] the answer is it spread word of who he was but you know the fact that it was a pop hit i don't think that the people who propelled that song into the pop top ten thought very much about who wrote it i think they thought it was a good tune with a nice lyric i i i think it would be a mistake to believe that it made him a star in itself except in so far as it attracted the press because he really began to get pressed then and that was an important factor and i'm sure that blown in the wind by peter paul and mary was an important aspect of that yet even more significant in raising dylan's profile both within the folk community itself and in the national press was his endorsement by the most prominent figure on the entire scene joan byers then at the height of her fame with two albums in the chart and an appearance on the cover of time magazine the previous year buyers first performed with dylan in may 1963 at the monterey folk festival it was at the second newport folk festival in the july however that she made the young singer-songwriter the star of the show and their subsequent relationship further thrust dylan into the spotlight joan byers is already a star it's not hard to see why really i mean she had this pure almost operatic voice i mean she looked like this sort of unearthly angelic being you can't underestimate her significance on the folk scene at this point there's a middle-class quality there there's a purity to the voice the sort of slightly operatic style of delivery it's it's the high art end of folk music it's not the scruffy hobos riding a train with a guitar strapped on their back so this is acceptable in carnegie hall and new york town hall and these great halls of high culture [Music] in his autobiography chronicles writes about having said some very cruel things about her over the years finally he puts the record straight in in chronicles and says that he was pretty much in not only in awe of her but that you know she was only six months or so older than him but she seems so much further down the road as an accomplished performer and an established star that he actually says that she made him feel completely useless they became this kind of romantic couple you know it was possible to see them as the kind of king and queen of folk music you know and that was that imagery was very important to dylan you know i mean joe baez was already huge i mean she was a massive star but her giving dylan uh you know two or three songs at various performances his opening for her his coming out and singing with her on stage you know that was huge this is a ballad of sorts it tells a story if you you like stories [Music] well maybe he doesn't do anything maybe it doesn't tell a story after years of dylan's kind of irratibility it's really hard to recover just how charming he was back in those days there was this kind of impish quality that he had and just seemed to delight in the attention and delight in joan baez's affection for him and you know delight in bringing his songs to people there was a lot of humor in his songs and in his presentation in a kind of twinkle in his eye that i think you know made audiences feel good [Music] dylan needed guidance you know he needed something he was beginning to get this level of attention you know you know in his small world of greenwich village you know he was already a star you know he learned what it is to play in front of a big audience and how you do that and you know we learned under the guidance of someone who genuinely loved him and appreciated him as a writer and an artist and wanted the best for him about as much coverage as the media could muster for it back in those days they mustered for it and if you were interested in music or folk music or even politics you know you pretty soon knew who bob dylan was because of uh you know his relationship with joan baez dylan was now part of the folk aristocracy his songs becoming fixtures on the repertoires of both established and aspirant musicians across america as well as prominent protest anthems the civil rights movement in particular adopted blowing in the wind and unlike in the early to mid 1950s when its leftist political allegiances essentially sent the folk scene underground a decade later things had changed the state sanctioned racial discrimination of the jim crow laws in the american south have become one of the key domestic issues of the era and with president john f kennedy's administration itself actively opposing segregation the focus politics seemed to chime with a growing desire for widespread social change the greenwich village musicians themselves not only composed material about the injustices being enacted by the establishment of the south but also joined the front lines of this conflict to support the cause of disenfranchised african americans the one thing at least can get the people to vote and release the fighting chance so i went down to mississippi and with jack newfield was a writer for the village voice and we stayed with black people this guy named steptoe when you were down there and boy you see a full moon going through the mist and you're driving down highway route 66 going down it's like you know you felt like it was scary land i'd rather sleep with a with a gator than run into one of these rednecks this is a place not one person registered to vote and steptoe he was trying to rally to get him he wasn't afraid he was trying to get people to vote people were scared i mean very scared because the week before somebody got shot down at the mill you know just like a mile away jack newfield he got shot at you know for hanging up signs i went into a drug store you know an upper tech place to buy toothpaste i didn't even open my mouth i walk up to pay didn't say a word and the lady the way it kind of says and what part of new york are you all from you know how you just want to hightail it out of there and run into the woods yet until 1963 dylan himself had had little involvement in political activism his new partner joan byers however like pete sega before her had been a notable participant in marches and demonstrations since the late 1950s in the months following the newport festival dylan's presence at political events increased first making an appearance at a registration rally in mississippi with pete sega and on august 28 1963 performing alongside buyers of the historic great march on washington yet these were isolated events and despite his peerless ability to articulate pressing social issues in song dylan favored writing over marching one of the reasons why dylan emerged out of that scene so powerfully is that he saw politics as a subject he didn't see it as like you know i believe this with every core of my being he saw it as something to write about he went to demonstrations and he performed and i i don't mean to take that away from him but i think he understood it as a writer he understood it as an artist whereas artistry was not something i mean you weren't even supposed to talk about artistry on the folk scene for the most part it was supposed to be again like something that naturally emerged from you know the the people but you know dylan was an artist you know and that's you know i think he was able to render those issues in as compelling away as he did because he saw them in artistic terms yet even if his activities themselves were limited as a songwriter his work had made him a luminary of the left and between august and october 1963 with the folk scene at the height of its cultural significance dylan entered the studio to record the defining work of the protest movement the times they are changing if your time to you is worth saving and you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone or the time it is from the outside in it it's very much the folk protest album of its time even today um you listen to you know your sons and your daughters are beyond your command you know and the old you know all this stuff just just seemed to resonate in in in when it came out on its release and then you had songs that was god on our side which nobody'd ever heard before i remarkably mature song for someone who was about 22 when he wrote [Music] the it i'm feeling ain't no tongue can tell their words fill my head [Music] the next the times they are changing is the ultimate protest album it's everything that freewheeling was and more the songwriting has reached a further level of sophistication the anger is still there i think the timing and poise as a performer is still growing the songs themselves are the greatest protest songs ever written some of them are very specific some of them like the title track of course are light blowing in the wind built on that universal vernacular theme then you've got songs like lonesome death of hattie carroll and only a pawn in their game that that refer to very specific events williams hotel society gathering and the cops were called in and his weapon took from him as they rode him in custody down to the station and booked williams [Music] but here's the difference by this time dylan's arch history is so finely attuned that whereas we probably are not going to listen to the ballad of emmett till now and we see that as a song that was of its time it was about a racist atrocity in the 1950s you know you can listen to the lonesome death of hattie carroll and you can listen to only a paul in their game today and even though the events they describe are quite specific and particular and took place half a century ago they still have this enormous power and potency i wasn't particularly tuned in to the faction that were singing topical songs so i didn't spend a lot of time listening to it i was rehearsing with uh annie bird at the third side her boyfriend let us sit there during the day and rehearse the place was closed and bob came by and so we were there and knocked down the window and we let him in and he had cut his finger and he was all concerned because he said man i have a gig tonight i don't know if i'm going to be able to play so we took him in the back and and you know cleaned it up put a bandage on it made him some coffee and we're sitting there on some crates in this funky kitchen of this little folk club and he started playing only a pawn in their game a bullet from the back of a bush took medgar evers blood if finger fired the trigger to his name a handle it out in the dark the handset the spark two eyes took the aim behind a man's brain but he can't be blamed he's only a pawn in that game and right in that moment i had an epiphany it was like a light bulb went off because previous to that hearing that song most of the protest songs and the were very polemic and they were very self-righteous and besides being musically boring they were they were oh the rednecks are so terrible because they hate the negro and they're so wrong and we're so right and you know it just wasn't my thing to listen to but this song there was such a cosmic overview that he showed in that song where where he instead of blaming the poor white redneck who was uh attacking the black people in the south he's he saw them as a also a pawn in a larger game i just saw it as such a cosmic overview that my opinion of his music changed drastically in that moment and i've been a huge fan ever since because that's the kind of song that really moves people in the end the deputy sheriffs the soldiers the governors get paid and the marshals and cops get the same but the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool he's taught in his school from the start by the rule that the laws are with him to protect his white skin to keep up his hate so he never thinks straight about the shape that he's in so it ain't him to blame he's only upon in that game there's no song illustrates better how dylan is just streets ahead of the competition than only a pawn in their game phil oakes writes about the same story the murder of the civil rights activist edgar evans phil oakes does it like a newspaper report which is fine and there's a a rich and uh worthy tradition of folk song being the journalism of its time set to music his name was evers and he walked his road along like emmett till and thousands more whose names we'll never know they tried to burn his home and they beat him to the ground but deep inside they both knew what it took to bring him down too many morators and too many dead but look at the way dylan tackles the meds story he just turns the whole thing on its head it's not just about you know some white racist cracker pointing a gun and killing the civil rights leader he turns it into a commentary and an analysis of the entire social structure that has created this situation how it came about phil oakes ends up his song saying something like the the country gained a killer and lost a man which is just banal dylan says yeah but hang on who is this character who fired the gun you've got to look at what lies behind that and you've got to look at the whole edifice of state governors and marshals and sheriffs and cops that have created and support and sustain this system of jim crow laws and and and allows these injustices to be perpetrated the increasing desire for significant political and social change that dylan articulated on the album and which resonated particularly among the younger generation was in part a result of a new optimism in america since kennedy took office the country had entered a period of unprecedented economic growth and although the threat of nuclear war with the soviet union loomed large during this period the young president seemed to represent a new era of peace both domestically and internationally this optimism was shattered however on november 22 1963 i think the assassination of jfk scared the out of dylan if i'm allowed to say that that they could gun down in broad daylight they whoever they are the president of the united states um it must have been running through his mind i'm being called the voice of generation i'm being put up there as a spokesman i'm singing all these radical songs you know i'm attacking the whole racist infrastructure of american society if they can shoot the president in broad daylight what are they going to do to me one dark night when i step out of the stage door of a club where i've just sang these songs that were going to drive them absolutely mad into some dark alley he certainly started contemplating where all of this might end up and it's at this point i think you can trace the beginnings of a more elusive dylan someone who is going to protect himself there is you know a real fear there that um plays over into both the songs and the way he conducts and bears himself uh and in fact the outcome of that is he moves on to a a whole new level of of creativity and expression and so it's it's enormously positive even before kennedy's assassination dylan's creative urges had already been directing him away from folk traditions and the protest form during the latter half of 63 he had begun to read obsessively focusing both on the bible and the works of the french symbolist poets and these literary influences inspired him to begin writing free form prose and poetry of his own in december he met beat poet allen ginsburg for the first time and the pair struck up a close friendship and rapidly dylan's focus shifted from political to aesthetic concepts and ideas and although he was initially investigating new approaches to content in 1964 a revolution occurred that made him re-evaluate musical form the coming of the beatles and the british invasion reawakened the dormant rock and roller not only bob dylan but a large number of other greenwich village artists who had abandoned electricity in the late 1950s it would change everything cool people didn't admit to liking rock and roll for a long time something happened to pop music uh about in 1962. you had carol king you had phil spector you had all these awesome girl groups he had the beach boys suddenly the stones form other beetles get their first hit obviously like the music had come back with [Applause] [Music] inventions [Music] [Applause] [Music] on one hand a lot of people realize that they were something special and something really good on the other hand a lot of people said you know that's not music that's just noise they they wave their hair and they go yeah yeah yeah [Music] what happens in english rock is essentially an america loving rock and roll phenomenon here i the only thing you can say about the great rock american rock groups of the of the late 60s um is that the chief feeder for that world was the folk world janice joplin was a folkie obviously the birds and john sebastian and john phillips were folkies jerry garcia of the grateful dead was a folky marty balin was a folky grace slick was a folkie on and on and on what the beatles really do is they open up the aesthetic of those people many of whom it seems to me were not purist at all that this was where the action was they went to it they listened to their harry smith in some cases they certainly learned their guitar picking moves then they said oh well there's more to life than this i like the beatles too uh and they started doing it in their own way the beatles were obviously turning pop music on its head i mean there are stories that dylan is going around greenwich village in the early days of the beatles saying uh it's just bubble gum but i think he quickly realizes uh there's there's more to it than that um i think there's one particularly significant moment which doesn't involve the beatles but he's part of the british invasion and that is when he hears eric burnham the animals version of house of the rising sun [Music] [Applause] [Music] and god i know i'm one it's clearly based on his version of the song on his first album which he in turn of course had nicked from from dave van ronk but that's the nature of folk music but he hears his song as he's come to see it reinvented by these guys from newcastle in little old england and they've put this organ on it and this base and these drums house the rising sun by the animals you could make out a case that this is actually the first folk rock record [Music] [Applause] dylan hears this and i think that possibly is at least as significant as the influence of the beatles on him when dylan returned to the studio in june 1964 that influence wasn't directly apparent on the album that resulted save for some small musical motifs referencing the beatles work yet another side of bob dylan recorded in a single night presented a very different artist to the archetypal protest singer of his previous release gone were the finger-pointing songs highlighting injustices and gone too were the references to political and social change replaced by a more introspective focus and a diffuse symbolist style upon its release in august 64 the album proved a commercial disappointment and it received heavy criticism from some in the folk press who considered that for the celebrated voice of a generation it was an abdication from duty erwin silber wrote a piece at that time to say that somehow bob dylan had lost contact with his audience and i think that's completely and absolutely wrong i don't think he'd lost contact with his audience i think he'd found himself and was writing songs for himself songs that were not necessarily influenced by other people bob's rejection of the folk protest movement is summed up on several songs on there my back pages where he literally says i was so much older than i'm younger than that now and also it ain't me babe which is clearly a song that's about relationships but so many of bob's songs have got two meanings and it ain't me babe could definitely be looked at as also in addressing the uh the folk process movement at the time go away from my window leave at your own chosen speed [Music] i'm not the one you want baby i'm not the one you need you say you're looking for someone who's never weak but always strong to protect you and defend you whether you are right or wrong someone to open each and every door [Applause] but it ain't me b no no no it ain't me b it ain't me [Music] people thought that politics was the important thing and full music was a way to like like like help it along whereas like like music is the thing and politics is this kind of like like creepy little thing is trying to cr on the back of this wonderful beast you know when dylan did another side of bob dylan like a lot of people got offended by the fact that he wasn't doing this political stuff anymore and i thought like finally he's got it now he's got it now you know now now he's really doing it was it was my take you know like like his music just took a giant step as of that album [Music] [Applause] simplify you [Music] is baby be friends with you for whatever reasons the protest elements are largely absent where they are present they've taken on a new deeper form i'm thinking of a song like chimes of freedom which personally i would still characterize as a protest song but it's it's clearly a very different kind of protest song from something like the lonesome death of hattie carroll or only a pawn in their game far between the finnish sundown and midnight's broken toe we ducked inside the doorway as thunder went crashing as majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing another side of bob dylan there's two strands to it i think one is that it is in a sense he's a dear to the to the folk movement i think that was addressed on restless farewell that closed time zero change in album you know he's moving on i think that's that's that's one element there are certain themes and and keys and certain lines that you can pick out from songs on that another side of record that would seem to be dylan distancing himself from the phone room but also i think it's him championing it a bit and wanting to go electric i think you can you can imagine the electric instrumentation certainly only date me babe if you soap it up a bit on all i really want to do there are certain songs you could imagine the animals or two guitars bass and drums backing him on so i think i think it's him i think he's very restless on i think you know it's recorded in one night i i kind of get the feeling he was kind of bored with the whole thing and he wanted to do something very very different and i think that probably meant leaving the folk movement behind and also going electric yet dylan's withdrawal from the scene was not immediate nor had his crown slipped at all when he performed at newport in july 1964 despite the new material betraying his other side and one song in particular that he unveiled at the festival and which had been recorded but not included on his latest album provided a true indication of the quantum leap that dylan was making creatively though i know that evening's empire has already [Music] but still not sleeping my weariness amazes me i am branded on my feet i have no one to meet and the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming hey mr tambourine [Music] to me it's his greatest song i think it's it's it's my all-time favorite song um i think there is something truly majestic about it and i think it is is proof positive of bob dylan as a poet there is something just transcendent about that song and it takes popular song to a whole different level and again you know youth he was what 24 when he wrote it hey mr tambourine might play a song for me in the jingle jangle morning mr tambourine man is one of the great landmarks in songwriting dylan has already done it several times in his young life at this stage but he does it again here he actually expands the vocabulary of what you can say in a song and this is where you know the symbolist poet really emerges in exchanges yet the true transformation and the withdrawal from the folk movement was still to come and dylan initially proceeded with caution when in january 1965 he entered the studio to begin sessions for a new album he recorded solo as always yet the tracks he completed on the first day would be immediately discarded and the following day he returned with a full electric band during the same week on the west coast of america a group containing three folk musicians also went into the studio to record a cover version of mr tambourine man fusing the sound of the beatles with the lyrics of dylan when bringing it all back home was released in march followed by the birds breakthrough single weeks later which reached number one in both the us and the uk popular music was changed forever despite a side of acoustic material there was nothing on dylan's new album that was even remotely connected to the protest scene he was spearheading only two years beforehand and having witnessed the impact that the beatles and the british invasion had made worldwide he effortlessly jumped out of the political world and landed directly into the heart of pop culture i think the announcement of dylan as the hippiest creature on earth is subterranean homestead blues which kicks off the electric side of uh bringing it all back home that's that's the that's that's the statement that's the announcement john is thinking about the government [Music] bringing it all back home is is the shock of the news and you have to remember at the time there was a very clear distinction before music offered authenticity and purity and pop music was vulgar and and really was left that was shut out of the room and by marrying those two together this was many saw this as a betrayal it was dylan selling out literally selling out to to get commercial success six times [Applause] [Music] if it is dylan saying goodbye to acoustic music and the folk movement you wonder why he didn't put the acoustic songs on first and then people might you know have a slight bit of bruce langhorne guitar on side one then go to side two and have a full impact of electric rock and roll but no as ever you know as ever bob did what he wanted to do and it's he rams it straight in with with some subterranean homestead blues and and then goes on and on in this sort of almost electric crescendo and then it is more subdued on side too but it but it's a very different acoustic deal and it's not you know tambourine man gates of eden it's all right ma this this isn't the bob dylan of uh the ballad of hollis brown or uh the lonesome death of hazy carroll darkness at the break of noon shadows even the silver spoon the handmade blade the child's balloon eclipses both the sun and moon to understand you knew too soon there's no sense in trying as pointed threats they bluff with scorn suicide remarks are torn from the fool's gold mouthpiece the hollow horn plays wasted words proofs to warn that he not busy being born is busy dying the kind of acoustic songs on bringing it all back home i think are just monumental it's hard to find 20 minutes of music as strong as that you know 20 minutes of writing that's as strong as that i mean that i mean those songs are just perfect as far as i'm concerned so don't fear if you hear a foreign sound to your ear it's all right mom [Music] among those four songs i mean it's really like reading shakespeare or something you know where every single line you know can kind of is can be pulled out you know take what you have gathered from coincidence um you know even the president of the united states sometimes must have to stand naked um money doesn't talk it swears i mean like there's i mean i mean you know if if i could stop and think for a minute i could probably pull out 15 other ones out of those four songs it's a level of writing that i don't think anybody else really in rock and pop or folk music for that matter has ever really approached you must leave now take what you need you think we'll last but whatever you wish to keep you'd better grab it fast he understands your orphan with his gun crying like a fire in the sun look out the saints are coming through and it's all over now baby blue dylan essentially was saying to folk artists you know i don't care if this bothers you or you know this is what i'm doing and it was you know that was the end it was you know it's all over now baby blue you know um you know you must leave now take what you need you think will last whatever you wish to keep you better grab it fast you know it it's you know there's a poignancy and i think i think dylan felt that i think that was genuine but it was also there's no turning back now you know it's it's over it would be a painful separation in late april 1965 dylan headed to the uk for a brief tour accompanied by albert grossman and a small entourage all watched over by the apparently objective lens of filmmaker d.a pennebacker despite still exclusively performing solo acoustic sets dylan was fast becoming a mainstream figure in the uk thanks in part to his endorsement by the beatles and both the press and the public were treating him not like a folk poet but like a pop star this newfound fame spread into his life backstage with crowds of hangers on attending endless parties fueled by cheap wine and methamphetamine he had invited joan byers along for the tour yet refused to ask her to join him on stage at any of the shows and the queen of folk was totally lost within the chaotic hedonism of this new rock and roll lifestyle dylan himself began to treat her with mild contempt a hangar on from an older scene incompatible with this new environment and buyers wasn't alone in feeling the force of his scorn alongside the musical development of bringing it all back home the tour and pennybacker's subsequent film saw dylan forming a new irascible public persona he was smack in the middle of a phenomenon that is disoriented thousands of other popular geniuses he was becoming a celebrity it is an impossible thing to get your mind around and and people have been saying this for 60 years and uh and and you look at some of the latest teen pop stars coming out of the disney factory and you see exactly the same thing happening people do not know what to make of it it's too much he'd been at the top of his game for god it was only a couple of years but i was really feeling the pressure he said fame is like a million invisible people pressing you against the wall and you know everybody wanted a piece of him everybody wanted you know they really felt he had the answers so you know on concert tours and an interview and the fans just want they wanted the truth from dylan and you know he was as mixed up as anybody as a character as a personality he's changed irrevocably that's what he leaves behind with the folk world that that the open bob dylan the bob dylan that we see the impish bob dylan we see laughing and joking on stage at newport in 63 you know that that's where um perhaps i was so much younger than he is older than that now despite his caustic new persona and his harsh treatment of individuals to whom he had previously been close dylan had yet to fully sever his ties with the folk movement itself although he had clearly alluded to his withdrawal from the scene in song it took a personal appearance at newport in 1965 to drive the message home he played an acoustic set on july the 24th to a huge audience apparently the good humid performer of the past yet with his set the following night which closed the festival he emerged with a full band and the event would become legendary to the dismay of the old guard and to a chorus of boos in a single show dylan broke away from the movement that had nurtured him certainly bob wanted to make a statement and uh to open with maggie's farm that is the ultimate statement i ain't gonna work on maggie's farm no more i ain't gonna do what people want me to do [Music] [Applause] [Music] and it's a song that bob has played a number of times in concert the original recording that we were able to hear from newport was pretty damn muddy and covered in feedback but more recently it's been available to us in good quality and it's interesting to me that that performance of maggie's farm is probably the strongest that bob has ever done um that was at the time almost of its birth i'm going to make this statement now and that shows in the performance it's extremely powerful and i don't think he's ever bettered [Music] well at that time i thought it was wrong to go over from one thing to the other thing if he believed in in electricity he should have started that way if he was really doing it right why didn't he do it because there wasn't any real market for at that time so that's what i would say about it i was there when he uh became electric uh at newport i was there i remember when pete seeger was so furious and i was furious and a lot of us you know we we got used to something we thought it was important and the only thing that was important and you know bob dylan wanted to go that way so did phil oakes so you know you're talking again about there was an age differential you know pete seeger and ota lugoff and harold evans a lot of people you know out there who were who grew up on you know on the old on the old coca-cola they didn't want the new coca-cola [Music] [Applause] right [Applause] [Music] i was there when he sang at the newport festival and he came down from the steps there he finished his set and he said to me uh where's pete because he knew he was upset and at that point pete was in the back somewhere but i said you do your thing you know no i've never been the truth the purest of the traditionalists people went ballistic it's unimaginative that's my beef what happens is that that initially the musicians are in charge and then they will go out on the road and committees take over and committees draw boundary lines that's my view of it uh and it's hugely generalizing it but that's basically what happens um the thing gets compartmentalized uh and you're supposed to stay in your compartment well that's not music people thought he belonged to them like because he had written songs uh these were so-called protest songs and they they thought that bob belonged to them and they were outraged the fact that they said they didn't which is insane i think insane it's so reactionary it's everything that you're against those kind of responses how does it feel like a complete unknown he's now on a very uh personal journey this is what great artists do they don't allow themselves to become specifically aligned with with a place and time and movement there has to be space for growth and creative development so i would see it as a very personal impetus on dylan's part where it becomes problematic and where the animus comes in that develops between him and his old folk crowd for want of a better term is that they're outraged that he should want to move on he's not saying i'm the pied piper you should all come with me give up your acoustic guitars and and pick up an electric guitar and never mind singing folk songs all become symbolist poets like me that's not what he's saying at all he's saying you know fine what you do is valid he's not invalidating it in any sense whatsoever he's just saying that's a phase of my life that i've come through and i'm now moving on somewhere else please allow me to to do so with dylan departed the folk scene was left without its icon and as an entire youth counterculture emerged across the western world within this new domain of psychedelic drugs extroverted fashions and progressively louder amplification the very concept of a folk movement began to seem quaint and outdated new singer-songwriters emerged over the coming years yet the emphasis was always on introspection over social commentary and those artists who had once been dylan's contemporaries followed his lead in an attempt to progress into this brave new world every one of those purists becomes impure they all start recording with bands uh i mean many of them continue to uh uh hue to their uh silly romantic solipsism but uh but they do it uh with a beat or some attempt at a beat and with a cleaner production and a more elaborate instrumentation than had previously been either permissible or in fact affordable in that world in terms of its cultural centrality you know that was over it would become a niche music and that happened very fast it was a form it was a genre it was something that you could look into it and make a record that incorporated some of that but you know it was no longer the kind of music of the moment you know that that is what dylan ended if the music quickly faded in relevance conversely the culture of protest that had been reinforced by the folk movement grew substantially stronger in the late 60s yet without a coherent musical scene to hold it together greenwich village itself lost its vitality still a center of bohemian life and artistic activity it nevertheless became a domain for a number of different subcultures and many of the folk musicians moved on a lot of people that had been in new york city wanted to move out of the city for various reasons you know the greenwich village started to become a theme park of itself you know people started coming in from from the surrounding areas new jersey the bronx brooklyn and so forth and because everything was so you know free and easy down there well it was well known you could smoke pot and that you know you could prob the gals down there you could probably get laid you know because everything was you know free love and all that so it just became a theme park of itself and very very crowded and so you know the real artists always can feel that people moved to the coast people left they dispersed they were making money getting record deals i think we kind of outgrew the scene and also the scene in the village was changing you know there was like jimi hendrix came around the cream played frank zappa had a thing going you know the mothers had a thing going that original simplicity when the clubs couldn't pay people and it went it evolved into on on other levels of entertainment you know um muddy waters and or bb king and the johnny winter they bring in these big they're to be bands and it was it was getting more um sophisticated and and i think and then you realize it was time to move on it was like our apprenticeship was over you know we could go and go on and on we what we we learned it we what we had to learn and go on and go on with our lives and we could practice what we learned but i mean all the good that came you know on all the writing and all the care the concern the risk in the end you know you got nixon you got the war went on you got reagan you got george bush you got dick cheney you got all these these beautiful people these beautiful and i mean you'd have to safely say that the good guys lost yet if the progressive political efforts of the era were seemingly thwarted by the brutal dominion of modern neoconservative capitalism the music produced during the folk revival has endured and despite his work in the decades that followed in which he has drifted in and out of genres performance styles and even personas bob dylan's output during the 1960s remains not only the highlight of his own career but one of the key achievements in the entire history of music you go back and listen to those early folk songs because i often do i mean i have to say i mean there was nothing about dylan going rock and roll that erased the significance of those early songs but if you go back and listen to those albums i mean you will have quite an experience you know because that was the trajectory of a hugely important artist out of one hugely important form of music into another that was the arc of someone who was culturally on fire not just a major talent but just kind of riding the rhythms of the zeitgeist with such precision and joy and intensity and force that it's it's almost hard to absorb it all to this day

Channel: Amplified

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Keywords: Amplified, amplified channel, music, pop culture, culture channel, documentaries, music documentaries, pop, film, music interviews, film interviews, bob dylan, folk music (musical genre), folk rock (musical genre), bob dylan documentary martin scorsese, bob dylan documentary full, bob dylan documentary youtube, documentary, blues rock, bob dylan tour, bob dylan concert, bob dylan live, bob dylan nobel prize, bob dylan (musical album)

Id: -Hj3qK9_mns

Length: 118min 0sec (7080 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021