Dylan Goes Electric! Quotes

“The Beatles were particularly prominent examples, and Dylan’s central position in rock history is rooted in that brief period when he and the Beatles were running neck and neck. He released Bringing It All Back Home in the spring of 1965, Highway 61 Revisited that summer, and Blonde on Blonde a year later. Rubber Soul, the first Beatles album conceived as a cohesive artistic statement, was released in December 1965, followed by Revolver seven months later. In commercial terms the Beatles were in a different league: on the American market, they released four LPs of new material in 1965 and two in 1966, and each spent more than five weeks at number one on Billboard’s album chart, while Dylan would not have a number one album until the mid-1970s. But they were evolving from teen-pop hit-makers into mature, thoughtful artists, with Dylan as their acknowledged model. McCartney recalled playing him a tape of their new songs when he came through London in the spring of 1966: “He said, ‘O I get it, you don’t want to be cute anymore!’ That summed it up. . . . The cute period had ended. It started to be art.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties

“Many people in the early 1960s shared a sense that things had gone horrifically wrong, without having a clear idea of how or when they would change.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties

“Mladí muzikanti stále berou do ruky banja a akustické kytary, stále zakládají rockové kapely, stále si osvojují staré styly a píší nové písně, stále se ohlížejí do minulosti a hledají své místo v budoucnosti.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties

“Ty nejlepší nové písně se zapíšou do paměti, budou putovat od jednoho zpěváka k druhému, vylepšovat se a doplňovat. A za sto let možná přijde nějaký folklorista a nazve je folkovými písničkami. Náš prach proti tomu nebude nic namítat.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties

“Ta práce byla čistá prostituce... prostituce může být zcela v pořádku pro profesionál(k)y - ale je riziková pro amatéry.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties

“Charlie Gillett wrote that “folk existed in a world of its own until Bob Dylan dragged it, screaming, into pop,” and while folk fans might frame that the opposite way—Dylan had dragged pop, screaming very loudly, into their world—it was the iconic moment of intersection, when rock emerged, separate from rock ’n’ roll, and replaced folk as the serious, intelligent voice of a generation. In the process, rock fans adopted many of the folk world’s prides and prejudices: Rock ’n’ rollers had worn matching outfits, played teen-oriented dance music, and strove to cut hit singles. Rock musicians wore street clothes, sang poetic and meaningful lyrics accompanied by imaginative or self-consciously rootsy instrumentation, and recorded long-playing albums that demanded repeated, attentive listening. Those albums might sell in the millions, but they were presented as artistic statements, and by the later 1960s it was considered insulting to call someone like Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin “commercial.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties

“For northern liberals, Vietnam was a much more divisive issue than voting rights and integrated drinking fountains, and many supported Johnson’s effort to stem the spread of international Communism.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties

“To blues purists, the Chambers Brothers, Lightnin’ Hopkins—even, at a stretch, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry—were authentic exponents of an ethnic folk culture, while Bloomfield, Butterfield, and Bishop, talented as they might be, were interpreters. That Butterfield had two black musicians in his band proved he was genuinely linked to the tradition, not that he was genuinely part of it.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties

“The idea that the English rockers were steering white Americans to authentic African American traditions would become a commonplace of rock history, but very few people were making that case in 1964 or 1965, and certainly not at Newport, where Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker were familiar faces.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties

“We were learning firsthand that the so-called national ‘folk boom’ had more to do with celebrity than with any deep grassroots interest.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties

“As Dylan’s reputation grew over the next couple of years, those traits went hand in hand. Shelton had previously called him “one of the most compelling white blues singers ever recorded,” but now wrote, “His voice is small and homely, rough but ready to serve the purpose of displaying his songs.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties

“What happened at Newport in 1965 was not just a musical disagreement or a single artist breaking with his past. It marked the end of the folk revival as a mass movement and the birth of rock as the mature artistic voice of a generation, and in their respective halves of the decade both folk and rock symbolized much more than music. Fifty years later both the music and the booing still resonate, in part because Dylan continues to be an icon, in part because the generation that cared then has continued to care—but also because the moment itself has become iconic. This book traces the strands that led to that moment, sometimes seeking to untangle them, sometimes emphasizing how tangled they remain, sometimes suggesting where later chroniclers may have imagined or added strands that did not exist or were not visible at the time, sometimes trying to explain, sometimes trying to make the story more complicated, sometimes pointing out how different a familiar strand can seem if we look at it in a new light.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties

“You don’t need a weatherman—to know which way the wind blows.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties

“when Doc Watson met the young flatpicking virtuoso Clarence White for the first time and the two performed a series of sparkling duets.”
― Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties