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Bob Dylan’s Electrical Treason



I watched the Martin Scorcese documentary about Bob Dylan tonight, No Direction Home, or everything up to the last half hour, when I got a phone call. It was really awesome. Actually, I guess it was only the first part of 2, with the second airing tomorrow night. My favorite thing about it was how they kept splicing in footage of that fateful concert of his in England in 1966 when he first started* playing electric guitar in public with a backing rock band (The Band, as it were). And then they would show footage of all the fans who were all pissed off about how he’d betrayed them and all that silliness. I don’t know if they covered it in the series or what, but if you listen to the recording of the concert there’s this one part in between songs where an audience member screams out: “JUDAS!” before Dylan launches into the next tune.

And I realized this tiny but huge moment is exactly what I was trying to encapsulate in that interview I did recently:

[…] a lot of times when you try to fix yourself into a particular format of living, of art, whatever, it eventually doesn’t depict you accurately. At least, that is, if you’re growing and changing all the time — which I hope I am. The other weird part is that other people can get fixed on the outward form, the persona that you convey, and when you try to change it, there can be a backlash. I guess it’s because when you create a public persona, on some level, it’s not just a part of you, but a part of everybody who interacts with it.

I’m not trying to compare myself to Dylan or anything, but I could really resonate with the struggle on all sides that went into that whole moment. So much packed into a single moment. That’s history. Definitely gonna try and catch the second part of that tomorrow night.

* I realize that may not have been the first time ever, but it was certainly pivotal and polarized his fans. More info available here.







10 Reader Responses

  1. James Russell Says:
    September 27th, 2005 at 5:01 am

    The really odd thing about the “Judas!” business is that so many people have come out of the woodwork to claim they were the one who shouted it. It doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing you’d want to take credit for.

  2. alistair Says:
    September 27th, 2005 at 7:48 am

    it is frowned upon to say anything disparaging about dylan but i find most poetry put to music less than the sum of it`s parts. people ignore the ham-fisted strumming and the suck-blow harmonica parping to hear the thinly-vieled socialist musings.(and i didn`t even mention the singing.) granted his history is the history of america from the beat generation to the end of the vietnam war, but that`s more politics than music. i see that emerging again with simple plan and the “new” green day. even the rolling stones are climbing on the anti-bush bus. spray painting shit gold does nothing for the smell. mozart and paganinni have persisted without a political stance, as have hendrix, zeppelin and black sabbath.

  3. alistair Says:
    September 27th, 2005 at 8:12 am

    mmm, black sabbath. now there`s some occult ramblings worth scrutiny, my child of god`s creation, and all that. they even had a go at the military/idustrial complex (war pigs) but were best at ghost imagery and incantation.

  4. Gina Says:
    September 27th, 2005 at 9:46 am

    Any artist that sits poised on the edge of changing peoples consciousness, challenges systems, whether that system be the power system or the anti -establishment system. In the beginning its self preservation and fear of a new meme that drives the polemics Eventually the artist either A) sells out or feeds the emerging new meme or B) continues challenging himself and ignores outside opinion. Though I don’t personally find Dylan aesthetically appealing, what he offered the youth of the 60’s was an honest reflection of their lives and times, in a sense I think Jesus did the same. The difference being Christ fed the meme, by social activism whereas Dylan just happened to be mirror the life and times and let people make of it what they would. So yeah calling him Judas when he changed his artistic journey fits in perfectly with this. JMHO

  5. james Says:
    September 27th, 2005 at 7:56 pm

    You need a little perspective on this thing. Dylan didn’t just do one concert this way– he did an ENTIRE TOUR tour in 1966, Newport being one of the important stops. And every night, he was being called “Judas”, while standing in front of hundreds if not thousands of fans who paid to hear folk music.

    Listen to the recently released “Live 1966″ CD, and when the legendary “Judas!” comes out from the crowd, Dylan replies, “I don’t believe you!”

    That could never happen in today’s musical climate: too many corporations with too much say-so in a performer’s affairs, too much money to be lost…

    Watch “Don’t Look Back” by DA Pennebaker, a documentary that came out right before Dylan made the switch. There’s a scene where he’s looking at electric guitars in a window shop. There’s also a great scene where he one-ups Donovan in a hotel room surrounded by hangers-on. Classic.

    Or better yet, read his book, “Chronicles”. Excellent reading. Hear it from The Man Himself.

  6. Tim Boucher Says:
    September 27th, 2005 at 7:57 pm

    Yeah I saw that movie a long time ago, but the details escape me. I’ll have to see it again.

  7. Drew Says:
    September 27th, 2005 at 10:45 pm

    i just can’t even listen to anybody saying i like dylan’s poetry, but not his music. it’s like, i put on albums and stick my fingers in my ears. i go to the movies and close my eyes. he wasn’t a poet or an author or playwrite or whatever, he was a rock and roller. you can’t just pick and choose. it’s rock and roll. it’s about the performance, the music, the words, the people there, the history, it’s everything.

    it’s like the discussion about that website beliefnet and people saying they don’t care what it looks like because they like it’s content. whatever.

    i liked in the movie how they talked about the crossroads myth. where the singer or guitar player disapears or reinvents himself and goes to meet the devil at midnight down at the crossraods. and he exchanges his soul for awesome talents and success. i think robert johnson is considered one of the first to say that’s where he got his skills.

  8. Tim Boucher Says:
    September 27th, 2005 at 11:11 pm

    SERIOUSLY. I’m glad somebody else said it besides me.

    And yeah, I was thinking about how maybe I should go to the crossroads…

  9. Gina Says:
    September 28th, 2005 at 9:39 am

    Man, we’re all going to the Crossroads at some time or other, you just gotta chose how fast and loose you want your earthbound trip to be.

    If you want to make a contract with the devil . . . Take a black cat bone and a guitar and go to a lonely fork in the roads at midnight. Sit down there and play your best piece, thinking of and wishing for the devil all the while. By and by you will hear music, dim at first but growing louder and louder as the music approaches nearer . . . After a time you feel something tugging at your instrument . . . Let the devil take it and keep thumping along with your fingers as if you still had a guitar in your hands. Then the devil will hand you his instrument to play and will accompany you on yours. After doing this for a time he will seize your fingers and trim the nails until they bleed, finally taking his guitar back and returning your own. Keep on playing; do not look around. His music will become fainter and fainter as he moves away . . . You will be able to play any piece you desire on the guitar and you can do anything you want to in the world, but you have sold your eternal soul to the devil and are his in the world to come.

    I thought this was an interesting description of the crossroad myth:

    In Africa, the god of the crossroads is known variously as Legba, Eshu, and many others. Although Christianity regards any trickster god as being synonymous with Satan or his lesser demons, the beliefs of the Yoruba hold that it is only through this trickster God that you can gain access to the higher Gods. Thus, a crossroads is the best place to gain access to spiritual forces that will allow the believer to gain one of many different skills, be it gambling luck, dancing ability, various work skills or the ability to play music better than one’s rivals.

    The good/evil duality of Christianity has no allowance for a more complex polytheistic system like those found in Africa, so Legba becomes Satan and a rather benign ritual is equated with eternal damnation. Robbed of the original context for what was a partially remembered ritual, many African Americans came to accept the equating of Legba with Satan, further exiling the bluesman, or anyone else beyond the Christian mainstream, from respectable society.

  10. Stephen Says:
    September 28th, 2005 at 5:51 pm

    I can somewhat relate to the audience, whose expectations of Bob Dylan was shattered by him playing the electric guitar. I guess the audience point of view of Bob Dylan was him staying on being a Folk Artist writing Folk Songs playing an acoustic guitar for the rest of his life. But the guitarist and the artist in me is saying is that what he did back in 1966 in England is the most courageous thing he every did in his career and possibly his life. He was Evolving. In order to evolved one has to changed completely shedding one’s own past and embrace the present and the future. That night was the night that Bob Dylan became a Rockstar. And he certainly looked like it and sound like it too.



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