In his 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties, Elijah Wald described what apparently happened in the world of U.S. folk music, historically, in the summer of 1965--during the same year when the Democratic Johnson Administration ordered U.S. warplanes to bombard North Vietnam on a daily basis and sent over 200,000 U.S. soldiers to wage war in South Vietnam, in violation of international law:
"On the evening of July 25, 1965...Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival...carrying a Fender Stratocaster in place of his...acoustic guitar...The New York Times reported that Dylan `was roundly booed...' Many were dismayed and angry...
"In most tellings, Dylan represents youth and the future, and the people who booed were stuck in the dying past. But there is another version, in which the audience represents youth and hope, and Dylan was shutting himself off behind a wall of electric noise, locking himself in a citadel of wealth and power, abandoning idealism and hope and selling out to the star machine. In this version, the Newport festivals were idealistic, communal gatherings, nurturing the growing counterculture...and the booing pilgrims were not rejecting that future; they were trying to protect it...
"...1965 marked a significant divide...The weekend Dylan walked onstage with his Stratocaster, President Johnson announced he was doubling the military draft and committing the United States to victory in Vietnam.
"...Dylan...spent the rest of the decade making...albums that seemed willfully oblivious to the events...in the headlines...In 1968, pressed by an old friend to explain why he was not more engaged in the Vietnam protests, he responded: `How do you know I'm not...for the War?'...
"In 1965 Dylan was...24 years-old...When he turned from sharp topical lyrics, followers who had hailed him as the voice of a generation lamented...
"...Seeger and Dylan can stand for the two defining...ideals: Seeger for the ideal of democracy, of people working together, helping each other, living and believing and treating each other as...equals...
"...There is some truth in the simplification that Dylan was a cynical careerist..."
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