Dylan Goes Electric!: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture A Complete Unknown

I thought when I saw this book why would I want to read another Bob Dylan book. I had read every book about him that had been written. But, I finally ordered it. Guess what? It was great. I did learn some things I did not know and I thought this book gave a very honest look at the man we call Bob Dylan. I enjoyed it very muchI saw Dylan at Emory University right after he finished his first album. I was fifteen years old. I had never heard of him . The concert was not in a large hall. My friends and I had front row seats because not that many people were there. The lights went out and a small, young looking man/boy walked on stage carrying a guitar and a stool. He had that funny little cap on. He opened his month and began to play and sing and in that one second I traveled from a southern girl growing up in a very small southern town into something totally different.I came home and took a bus to Nashville and bought his first and only album. Came back home, put it on the turn table and began to hear Bob's voice float into my room. My daddy came into the room and ask me what was that awful noise, thought he sounded like a communist and took the record away. I never saw it again. But I was hooked. I have seen Bob Dylan more times than I can count, I have every record he every recorded and every book or magazine article written about him. Therefore, I can greatly recommend this book. My daddy was defeated in his quest to stop me from listening to Dylan .

No problem

If you are a Dylan devotee, this book is a detailed, readable, objective account of Dylan's life through that famous/infamous night at the Newport Folk Festival. Wald does an excellent job of tracing the times and the people that in sum-total lead to the inevitability of this 20th Century Icon plugging a cord into his guitar. The story articulates: the rise of folk-rock as a synthesis of its foundational forms (including blues), the juxtaposition of Dylan and Pete Seeger leading up to the cultural transformation, and the impact Dylan's music has had on so many musicians (of many genres) who came after him. Only small criticism is that one group, The Grateful Dead, is not mentioned in the discussion, and probably should have been. A great cultural history of the 1960s.

At 50 years, I guess this famous sixties event seems about as pertinent as a Reformation church schism, but the book is entertaining. Wald uses the wide lens and possesses the requisite historical imagination to attempt to describe the campfire crew that was the butt of the joke. This isn't easily done because it's hard to imagine today's analogy to that innocence (Apple fanboys?). I suppose Joe Boyd was a little closer to the mischief in his description in White Bicycles but essentially the small group responsible for the sound seems to have wished to give part of the audience a little poke in the eye before watching it be buried in the sand of history. Dylan comes off like a mist driven by storm, creating what he can with scarcely a thought toward marketability (which was definitely part of the charm) and this is a big turning point in his performing biography: the ensuing ten months or so got nasty enough audience response that drummer Levon Helm quit to work on an oil rig. Dylan persisted to the end (and his motorcycle accident) but seldom seemed comfortable with his audience when he resumed performing ("all I see is dark eyes").I think Wald had yet a more interesting book but there's such an industry in Dylan biographies that he took the deal he could. He's especially good at perceiving and explaining all the social fissures within the broad folk "movement." And having been close enough to Dave Van Ronk to finish his autobiography Mayor of McDougall Street, Wald certainly has the inside scoop. He understands the commercial angles and he's listened to all the bootleg tapes. Finally, he's enough of a wit that there are plenty of laughs. Not your standard "artist versus audience" triumphal Dylan book and that's a good thing.

If you know the back stories of Pete Seeger and Dylan, you'll find the first half of the book a bit tedious. So much of the book is the back story leading up to the famous concert at Newport. A good read--I'm glad I read it--but not a great read.

A bit long, but very well-observed bio of Dylan and the whole folk/blues scene of the '60's that I grew up with in New York City. Lots of memories for me, and great background info on so many of the artists who were on the scene at this important time.

Wald does what so few writers on popular music manage to do--he offers an historical argument. There is as much here about Pete Seeger and the folk revival scene as there is about Dylan. Reflecting his deep immersion in a variety of source materials, Wald contextualizes Dylan's (in)famous electric kiss-off better than any other writer I've read. In the process, he demythologizes and historicizes it. This is no simple-minded paean to Dylan-the-Genius. Instead, it is a brilliant exposition that illustrates how committed yet precious many of the Newport folkies were, yet also how diffident and careless Robert Zimmerman already was by 1965-66. As befits a truly great book, it offers no easy or definitive answers, and leaves the reader with more questions than when he first opened it.

This is a fantastic book about a moment in popular music that many people, including myself, thought was settled. Wald incorporates multiple source materials to show how the career paths of Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan both converged and diverged to culminate in the conflict over folk music that happened in Newport in 1965. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the book is when Wald lets various participants, including fans, recount their experience during Dylan's "electric" performance. The reader can then easily see that how music history remembers this moment is tied to the claims and stakes made about folk music. Maybe Wald spends a bit too much time getting to the 1965 performance, but the payoff is immense. Well-written and enjoyable overall, especially if like me you love reading about the history of American folk and popular music from around 1945-1965.

Just when you thought there could not be another scrap of insight wrung from the cloth of Dylan's life, up comes Elijah Wald with new insights into the most seminal moment in Dylan's career…a must read for all Dylanophiles.We Are As The Times Are - The Story of Café Le Hibou

The book is a very complete, although perhaps a bit painstaking, account of many of the issues that come into play when (at long last in the book) Dylan goes electric. One gets some very good perspective on what "folk" meant to the anti-establishment, non-commercial players and fans. It becomes easier to see why so many people were so upset about the move of Dylan going electric. I think the book has more potential to be interesting as a trip down memory land for oldsters than to get young listeners excited about the folk era of the 50's and 60's (downloads of Peter Paul and Mary's "Puff the Magic Dragon" or Seeger's "If I had a Hamer" are not likely to soar). But I enjoyed reading this chronicle.Speaking of which, a better book by far is Dylan's Chronicles, Volume 1, which has a bit more stye and pizazz. And it seems strange that Wald quotes so many lines from this book as verifiably true (since the veracity of autobiographies is notoriously unreliable--and how much mores for a work by Dylan!)

Interesting only in flashes - unless you have a special fascination for the American folk scene. The insights into Dylan are hardly original. I recognise a labour of love but was often tempted to skip.

Elijah Wales book was a very good read. It was well constructed and covered all the bases and more and though I thought it hard on Dylan I also thought it endeavoured to bring what happened and what may not have happened into the clearing for those interested to make their own judgements on events and the people involved. The book is a worthwhile purchase.

I like the authors balanced and evidence based approach to his various writings. This is in keeping with his 'historian style. This may not suit everyone, especially if you want the highly opinionated perspectives of many 'pop' authors. Recommended.