BOOING BOB (Or, EVERYBODY WANTS YOU TO BE JUST LIKE THEM)

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"I’m looking for somebody to sell my dog, collect my clip, buy my animal, and straighten out my bird."
~ Bob Dylan

It was probably in 2005 that someone posted the following on an Internet chat site where I regularly participated:

I never did understand the whole ‘Bob Dylan’ thing.

Although I didn’t take the time to do so, for several moments I considered posting a reply, expressing a similar view: Bob Dylan? What was the big deal about Bob Dylan? I don’t get it either.

Then in very early 2008 I borrowed from a friend of mine Bob Dylan’s album ‘Bringing It All Back Home’, which I hadn’t heard since selling my vinyl copy at least 20 years earlier. I was astonished to discover over the 47 minutes it took to listen to the recording that Dylan, and especially that particular album, had been the single biggest influence on my writing. No him, no me.

I guess I did get the whole Dylan thing, I just didn’t know I did.

So far, 2012 has been a miserably depressing year for me; I don’t know if I’ve ever felt worse.

A friend of mine recently Emailed me:

Stephen, please do something good for yourself over these next two days that you have off. Go out and buy yourself something that you have wanted for a long time (maybe that's a woman thing)

Well, taking her advice to heart, I went out and bought myself a darling pair of pink and black high-heels. Gee, that really did make me feel better!

No, not really. I’m not that kinda girl.

Well, I didn’t buy anything for myself until a couple weeks later. I had gone into my local Zia store (books, movies, music) to buy ‘The Last Waltz’ movie and soundtrack for someone, and while I was in there I decided to buy something for myself as well:

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For a couple years I had been thinking about buying a DVD of Bob Dylan’s performances at the famous (and infamous) Newport Folk Festivals. I finally splurged, took the plunge, dropped my dough and took home the prize.

Every Bob Dylan fan knows about that controversial appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan unveiled his new “electric” sound and was, for all intents and purposes, booed off the stage. I had often seen clips of those performances but I felt it was time I owned them in their entirety.

“I’m looking for a place to bathe my bird, buy my dog, collect my clip, sell me cigarettes and commission my bath.”

~ Bob Dylan

‘THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR: Bob Dylan Live At The Newport Folk Festival, 1963-1965’ captures those years when Dylan was transitioning from the talented "Folk Music Voice Of His Generation" into the full-blown genius of Roots Rock that he would become. And many of his earliest fans wanted NONE OF IT, booing him and the electric backing group, ‘The Paul Butterfield Blues Band’ (minus Paul Butterfield) at Newport in ’65.

But it wasn’t just at Newport and it wasn’t just in ’65 either. Dylan and his bands played before disgruntled audiences throughout his 1966 tour of the U.S. and England as well. Dylan’s sound and style, they were a-changin’, and some of his fans weren’t ready for it.

I find it truly fascinating to see in this documentary the change in Dylan from 1964 to ’65, and the 180-degree turnaround that took place among so many of his fans. His final performace of the ’64 Newport Festival was ‘Chimes Of Freedom’ and at the conclusion, pandemonium ensued as the crowd, hungry for more Dylan “protest songs”, nearly hooted and hollered master of ceremonies Peter Yarrow into a bumbling, stuttering nervous wreck.

The following year, with that infamous 1965 performance, Bob brought out his new electric sound for the Folk crowd, beginning with an inspired, raucously driving version of ‘Maggie’s Farm’ featuring Mike Bloomfield’s fret-melting electric guitar lines. Massive booing by a significant portion of the acoustic-lovin’ Folkie crowd is clearly audible. They didn’t want the new Dylan - they were still clinging to the old.

Well, I try my best

To be just like I am

But everybody wants you

To be just like them.
~ Bob Dylan

from ‘Maggie’s Farm’

‘Maggie’s Farm’ was followed by Dylan’s signature tune ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, and then ‘Phantom Engineer’, an early version of ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry’ (which is not shown in this DVD). As Wikipedia states:

After "Phantom Engineer", Dylan and the band left the stage. The sound of booing and clapping can be heard in the background. When Peter Yarrow returned to the microphone, he begged Dylan to continue performing. According to Robert Shelton, when Dylan returned to the stage, he discovered he did not have the right harmonica and said to Yarrow, "What are you doing to me?" 

Dylan then asked the audience for “an E harmonica”. Within a few moments, a clatter of harmonicas hit the stage. He then performed two songs on acoustic guitar for the audience: "Mr. Tambourine Man", and then, as his farewell to Newport, "It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. The crowd exploded with applause at the end, calling for more. Dylan did not return to the Newport festival for 37 years. In an enigmatic gesture, Dylan performed at Newport in 2002, sporting a wig and fake beard.

Bob Dylan - "Live at Newport Folk Festival" teaser

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0flePpD9NU

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I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

Well, I wake in the morning

Fold my hands and pray for rain

I got a head full of ideas

That are drivin’ me insane

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“I got a head full of ideas that are drivin’ me insane”. Indeed! In the documentary ‘No Direction Home’, while reflecting on that era when he was forever changing the face of Pop music, Dylan says:

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“I wrote a lot of songs in a quick amount of time. I could do that then because the process was new to me. I felt like I’d discovered something no one else had ever discovered, and I was in a sort of arena artistically that no one else had ever been in before...ever. Although I might have been wrong about that.”

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Not much. In 1965 and ’66 Dylan was mining the musical motherlode that his genius had somehow tapped into. ‘Bringing It All Back Home’, ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, ‘Blonde On Blonde’ – three masterpiece albums in two years! That quantity of brilliantly original and influential creative output in such a short span was probably matched in the arts only by painter Vincent van Gogh and actor James Dean.

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Is this the best musical performance that was ever booed?...

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MIKE BLOOMFIELD (1965)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izodh_djsUI

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The booing of Bob Dylan continued well into 1966 and it didn’t stop until Bob stopped. At the end of July that year he had a motorcycle accident and didn’t tour again for close to a decade.

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‘The Other Side Of The Mirror’ is a very interesting look at a musical genius in transition.

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It would be thirteen years before Dylan would piss off so many of his fans again by choosing to write and sing songs about Jesus.

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“I’m looking for a place that’s going to animal my soul, knit my return, bathe by foot, and collect my dog.”

~ Bob Dylan

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Link:

BOB DYLAN PET STORE

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~ Stephen T. McCarthy

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YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.

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