The little-known story of the first time Bob Dylan ‘went electric’ – and it wasn’t in 1965
“Dylan goes electric” – a moment so seismic and controversial in the history of guitar music that it even has its own Wikipedia page. From the moment Dylan brought in a band to accompany him on 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home, the response to his seeming betrayal of his folk and protest-singer roots would etch itself across rock ‘n’ roll history – the hurled insults and beer bottles that followed him across the world in its wake would become as iconic as they were invigorating for Dylan as a performer.
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Just listen to the end of the No Direction Home documentary. An audience member at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall famously shouts “Judas!” at Dylan, to which he responds, “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar!” before turning to his band and declaring, “Play it fucking loud!” as they launch into one of the finest renditions of Like A Rolling Stone you’ve ever heard. There’s a reason the Strat he used to electrify the Newport Folk Festival would later sell for nearly a million dollars – this was a moment that fired a jolt of electricity through everyone involved that would become a turning point in the history of music.
For Dylan, however, the decision to pick up an electric guitar and cause a stir wasn’t even an original one – he’d been doing it since he was a young Jewish kid growing up in a small town in Minnesota in 1950s. This is the story of the first time Bob Dylan went electric.
Bob Dylan playing a Fender Stratocaster at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965. Image: Alice Ochs/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Mining For Gold
Bob Dylan was born in Duluth, Minnesota, but grew up in a small mining town called Hibbing. Dylan has expressed a sense of detachment or ambivalence about his upbringing there and, having grown up near there myself, I can certainly understand that. Unless you’re comfortable with life as a miner, Hibbing is generally a place you’d be eager to leave in search of a broader world of culture. Nonetheless, the town played a crucial role in Dylan’s formative years as a person and as a performer. It’s where he learned to play music and was exposed to his earliest musical influences via the radio and his peers.
Dylan, himself very rarely mentions his hometown. The most he has ever said publicly about it was in his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, where he describes Hibbing as an isolated and cold place:
“Hibbing’s main street looked like something lingering from the Middle Ages. The town didn’t have a rabbi, and it was the kind of place where people went to bed early. It was a rugged, bleak area.”
During his high school years, Bobby Zimmerman (as he was known then) learned to play piano, guitar and harmonica. And he even played in a couple of bands during that era – The Cashmeres, and The Golden Chords. In 1957, The Golden Chords played a loud, rock and roll cover of Danny and the Juniors’ Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay at a talent show at Hibbing High School. Zimmerman was on piano that night, but the band delivered a spirited and unapologetically loud set – the first time that Bob went electric.
It’s perhaps no surprise that Zimmerman’s idol at the time was Little Richard and he performed with all the energy that his hero was known for. This reportedly upset some members of the conservative crowd of parents and teachers. I’ve heard a couple of eyewitnesses claim that the principal actually pulled the curtain early to end the performance.
Bob Dylan playing a Fender Telecaster at the Westchester County Center on February 5, 1966 in White Plains, New York. Image: Alice Ochs/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
No Way Home
While many musicians fondly recall their hometowns in their memoirs and often return for events, when Zimmerman left the cold mining town and changed his name to Bob Dylan, he only came back on rare occasions, once in a while, to come to visit his mother, who later moved to Minneapolis and lived there until her passing in 2000.
Today, Hibbing has a yearly celebration called Dylan Days – they named a street and a bar after him, although the bar has since been renamed. Still, it’s extremely rare to hear the icon even mention the name of his hometown and there’s a certain bitterness in his voice anytime he does. Perhaps this is why many residents of Hibbing seem just as cold towards Dylan. Dylan was also part of a small Jewish community – his father was not a miner, and these facts alone probably isolated him from many of the other kids.
All of which is to say that it’s not hard to see why Dylan grew up with a sense of being an outsider – becoming comfortable with that outsider persona was essential to his survival in an Iron Range town.
Bob Dylan playing a Gibson Les Paul in November 1979 at the Fox Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, California. Image: Larry Hulst/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Wussies Complaining
This persona would serve him well, the next time he famously went electric in 1965, he was ready for the boos. Dylan later commented on the event in a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone,
“Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff. It’s an old thing – it’s part of the tradition. It goes way back. These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equatable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell.”
While some like to think that Dylan’s turn from mild-mannered folk hero to acid-tongued electric rebel began the moment he plugged in at Newport, there’s no doubt that he had plenty of that in him.
Even as a teenager in a small Minnesotan mining town, he wasn’t afraid to upset those who placed expectations on him, and certainly not afraid to play it loud – he’s always done exactly what he wanted to do creatively. And that’s what makes him a true treasure of modern music.
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