A lot of people get the idea that Bob Dylan 's transition from folk singer to literary rocker happened overnight—a light switch occurrence where Dylan “went electric” one day in 1965 and suddenly there was the new electric Bob Dylan. But it was actually an arduous process, one of Dylan struggling to find his voice, his style, his own original way. In the early '60s, besides toiling with external pressures from the recording industry to make hits, Dylan had to remember his fans, who had their own demands of the folk-singing “Bob Dylan” they had come to know and love. Would they accept or reject a new sound? Could Dylan be himself and follow the muse wherever it led and still be successful?
Evolve or Stagnate?
By 1963, Bob Dylan had already begun outgrowing his status as a folk singer and musical activist in the civil rights movement. During acoustic performances, audience reactions were predictable as he played the same songs night after night. He'd grown tired, even resentful, of being expected to make political statements with his songs—a major aspect of the folk music through the ages. Ever hungry and creatively restless, championing causes was hardly the end of the road he envisioned for himself. It was merely the beginning, and like any 22-year-old, Dylan's worldview was evolving. His interest in Beat literature and the French modernists were expanding his own artistic vision, but his experimental literary voice could not be squeezed into the folk genre he'd been working in. The choice was simple, either evolve or perish.
The result was 1964's Another Side of Bob Dylan, an album that featured more personal songs, differing greatly from the topical social commentary mold of everything he'd previously recorded. In July of 1964, Dylan would perform “Chimes of Freedom” and an early rendition of the as-yet unrecorded “Mr. Tambourine Man” at the Newport Folk Festival, a heresy that inspired Singout! magazine editor Irwin Silber to publish “An Open Letter to Bob Dylan,” where he complained of Dylan's new work being “all inner-directed now, inner probing, self-conscious,” beckoning Dylan not to forget his folk responsibilities. In response, Dylan had his manager inform Silber that he would no longer be sending his new lyrics to Singout! for publication. With Another Side, Dylan drew his line in the sand, embarking on a journey of self-discovery as an artist.
Behold, the Literary Dylan
Inspired by poetry like Allen Ginsberg's “Howl,” and listening to everything from the Beatles to Hank Williams, Dylan's influences ranged widely during this epoch as he wailed away at the typewriter. “Chimes of Freedom,” extracted from a poem Dylan wrote the day of President Kennedy's assassination, was significant in demonstrating his musical evolution. With its “majestic bells of bolts” as “the sky cracked its poems in naked wonder,” like the rest of the album, the song reflected Dylan's literary growth in his writing style while remaining rooted in the folk tradition, at least in song structure.
But even that anchor would be short-lived. Released in March 1965, the half-acoustic-half-electric album Bringing It All Back Home would signify Dylan's continuing evolution as he took another giant step away from traditional folk. The bluesy rockin' opening track “Subterranean Homesick Blues” along with “On the Road Again” were obvious plays on Jack Kerouac novel titles. Meanwhile, stuffed with entendre and symbolism, “Maggie's Farm” was Dylan's satirical protest song that protested protest songs, with lyrics hammering home his disenchantment with a music industry and those pressuring him to continue on as a hit-making folk singer.
Highway 61 Leads Everywhere
As Dylan toured America and then Britain that spring, his boredom with folk music and touring had grown to the point that he was ready to quit the music scene altogether and become a poet and novelist. When writing, he would pound out these long amphetamine-drenched free-form screeds which he found impossible to translate into popular music. That is, until he wrote the “long piece of vomit” from which he extracted “Like a Rolling Stone.” Released as the opening track on his August 30, 1965 release, Highway 61 Revisited, “Like a Rolling Stone” was, and remains, the biggest breakthrough of Dylan's career. After much struggling, he'd finally found a way to use popular music as a vessel to communicate the new plateaus he'd reached in prose and poetry. “I knew I had to sing it with a band,” Dylan told Ralph Gleason in December of 1965. “I always sing when I write, even prose, and I heard it like that.”
With the opening track in place, Dylan wrote the rest of the album in this same manner, plucking lyrics from longer prose pieces. As Dylan explained, writing songs now felt like writing novels. Except for one track, the entire album was electric, and more than anything released before, Highway 61 Revisited was a smorgasbord of culture, brimful with literary allusions, as Dylan soaked up influences and churned them out in song. Teasing the title of Kerouac's recently published novel Desolation Angels, at over 11 minutes long, “Desolation Row” (the only acoustic track on the record) was again a nod to the beats in this Felliniesque tableau with its gamut of characters ranging from Ophelia and Dr. Filth, to Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. The album cracked open the possibilities of popular music, inspiring major acts like the Beatles' to push the limits of weirdness, releasing psychedelic masterpieces such as Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.
More than any album before, Highway 61 Revisited was the final cornerstone of a stylistic foundation that would carry Dylan through the rest of his career. As “Like a Rolling Stone” slid straight up the Billboard chart to No. 2 in the summer of 1965, Dylan was suddenly in the company of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as America's own pop music icon. Folk music, although never far from his breast, would remain a part of the equation, but no longer the dominant factor. The cycle was complete, opening the door for Dylan to follow the muse anywhere it led him.