The forgotten man
It wasn’t a deliberate strategy to make Bob Dylan the centerpiece of this blog over the last six months.
But as 2015 unwound and the world began to take notice of the 50th anniversary of key milestones in rock history, we couldn’t ignore the creative destruction that Dylan unleashed in the summer of 1965 that is still being heard and felt today.
For starters, his mind-bending surrealistic song poem, “Mr. Tambourine Man” became #1 for The Byrds in June of that year, followed by his own sneering six-minute put-town of a socialite, “Like a Rolling Stone,” which hit #1 a month later. The boundaries of pop music were suddenly eviscerated, as reflected by the blockbuster hit records that followed—"Get Off My Cloud,” “Turn Turn Turn,” “The Sound of Silence,” and Rubber Soul. This was no longer your father’s Hit Parade.
But before we put a wrap on the Dylan chat for the year, let’s revisit Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald one more time and note the subtitle of that book: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties. This refers to the July evening in 1965 when Dylan, dressed like a British rock star, mounted the Newport stage with Fender Stratocaster in hand and belted out three songs with a loud electric band to a chorus of boos.