Dylan

In Thursday's interview, William S. Burroughs talked about visionaries and forward thinkers such as Galileo, Cezanne, and James Joyce, and how their work and vision was not only initially misunderstood, but attacked, censured, and ridiculed until the shock of the new had finally worn off, and how, once the public's eyes had been opened, the creative process marches on.

Here's Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "delivering rock n' roll to the dissident soul of folk music and poetry."  Note the booing at the end of the set, as the audience was not yet capable of understanding the new version Dylan was presenting of their beloved protest music.  As Thurston Moore noted years later, "For many it was already a viable meeting, but Dylan set it on fire for the world to see."

It's easy now to dismiss those who were booing the "electric" Bob Dylan as being short-sighted and provincial, but one has to understand that they legitimately believed they were defending and preserving the purity of their cherished folk music.  Rock music fans today who react in a negative way to hip-hop, to electronic dance music, and to other cutting-edge forms of music are really no different from that critical audience of 1965, and rather than ridicule Dylan's hecklers, they should recognize them as their aesthetic predecessors.

Like A Rolling Stone has been hailed by many critics as the single most important American song of the 20th Century, and while that's certainly debatable, it's delivery and impact on arrival was unquestionably one of the most revolutionary.  According to NPR, Dylan had finished recording the song just 10 days before the Newport festival.  "As usual, he didn't bring arrangements or charts to the recording session. He came in, taught the musicians the song and then they recorded take after take, experimenting with different tempos. The version of Like a Rolling Stone that ultimately got released was six minutes long, almost twice as long as most standard pop songs. That made it difficult for radio disc jockeys to program, but they did." 

Well, some did.  AM radio station WABC, the dominant Top 40 station in New York at the time, didn't play it, and I never heard the song, or any Dylan for that matter, on the radio, although I was familiar with Dylan's name and the reputation.  I didn't actually hear his music until sometime around 1967 or '68, to the best of my recollection, when I purchased a copy of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits unheard, based solely on reputation and the press.  I was only 13 or maybe 14 years old, but I can still remember putting that record on for the very first time and hearing that nasal voice on Side 1, Track 1, singing "Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good. they'll stone ya just like they said they would",  and thinking to myself, "What the hell is this?"  I had never heard anything like that before and his sound took some time for me to get used to, but I stuck with it and by the end of Side 2 (Just Like A Woman) it had become my favorite album and I was forever changed.

Very shortly after that, around '68 and '69, FM radio came to my attention, first WABC-FM, a more album-oriented version of it's Top 40, AM sister, and then later WNEW, which departed even further from the commercial mainstream into what was then called "underground rock."  The FM stations played Dylan, as well as the Beatles and the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and The Who. It was the start of a musical exploration for me, a journey which I'm still on to this day. 

Not to get too far ahead of myself, but it was on WNEW where I first heard King Crimson (In the Court of the Crimson King), which led me even further down the rabbit hole. Over the next five or six years, the voyage took me away from the radio altogether and to the import bins at the back on the record stores, where King Crimson led me to Robert Fripp, and Robert Fripp led me to Fripp and Eno, and Fripp and Eno led me to Brian Eno, and then things really began to get interesting.

But that's another story for another day.