Bob Dylan, Newport, 25 July 1965: three elements that, put together, have changed the history of music forever. On that summer evening, the former minstrel folk challenged a Fender Stratocaster and, with a short but fulminating set, split the audience of the Newport Folk Festival in two and marked the beginning of a new era. That moment, now legend, is the beating heart of “The day that Bob Dylan took the electric guitar”, the essay by Elijah Wald that Vallardi brings back to the bookstore a few days after the release of “A Complete Unknown”, the biopic dedicated to period of transformation of the Duluth icon.
Wald, guitarist folk blues and among the most authoritative signatures of American musical journalism, builds a dense and documented portrait of Dylan's “betrayal”, collecting testimonies, recordings, interviews and reconstructions of the time. The book is not limited to retracing Newport evening, but pushes itself deeply into the America of the sixties, between social ferments, political tensions and cultural transformations, restoring the image of an era in the balance between the past and the future .
From the fury of Pete Seeger, who is said to have threatened to cut the cables of the amplification, to the timid applause of those who glimpsed the change, the essay tells an evening that shook the world of folk, but also the parable of an artist who, challenging Expectations reinvented himself and rock music.
It is not only the story of a discussed concert, but the story of a feverish decade, in which Dylan passed from being the spokesperson for a generation of protesters to escape every label. Wald analyzes the historical and musical context with lucidity, reconstructing the transition from “The Freewheelin 'Bob Dylan” to “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited”, and demonstrating how its “electric turning point” was inevitable.
Between the soul of the blues and the courage to break with the past, Dylan in Newport made more than a simple concert: he wrote a page of history. And the day that Bob Dylan took the electric guitar is the perfect book for those who want to understand why.
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
