A Bob Dylan Anecdote

Perhaps the most influential of the new generation of Greenwich Village folk singers was Bob Dylan, viewed early in his career as the heir of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Indeed, on his 1962 debut album Dylan included an original contribution in homage to Guthrie. He quickly  established a reputation as a “protest singer.” Soon, however, he introduced a more private and personal element to the lyrics of his “folk songs,” which liberated others to do same.

Bob Dylan was also a crucial catalyst in the transformation of “folk” into “folk rock” in the mid-Sixties. Illustrative of this dynamic is the evolution of the song “House of the Rising Sun,” a traditional ballad rearranged by folk singer Dave Van Ronk. Dylan learned the song from Van Ronk and then recorded Van Ronk’s version for his 1962 debut acoustic album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” A new British group, The Animals, part of the “British Invasion” which conquered American music in the wake of the Beatles, picked up the song from Dylan’s album, electrified it, and released it as their second single. It became a #1 hit on both sides of the Atlantic in the summer of 1964.

But Dylan had actually first heard the Animals version of “House” during his 1964 British tour. It was a revelation to him. “You ought to hear what’s going down over there,” he told his friends when he returned to America. “Eric Burdon and the Animals...he’s doing ‘House of the Rising Sun’ in rock. Rock! It blew my mind!” And, evidently, Dylan soon made up his mind to do the same to his own music.

On July 25, 1965, Dylan performed at the Newport Folk Festival, the foremost venue for folk music in America and a place where Dylan had been a star performer in 1963 and 1964. His performance is famous as the one where Dylan “went electric,” performing rock versions of his songs while backed by the hard chugging Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

Soon thereafter, everything changed. The Byrds, a Los Angeles band, quickly released an electrified version of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” which topped the charts. Folk singers throughout America began exchanging their acoustic guitars for electric, and folk rock groups such as Simon and Garfunkle, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and (sometimes) Young, and West Coast bands such as the Eagles became some of the most successful performers of the late Sixties and early Seventies. Thus, the British Invasion broke down the insular and parochial walls of folk, turned it into “folk rock,” and as folk rock, transformed American popular music. Folk music endures today as a defining element of what has simply come to be known as “rock.”