Frank, "Like a Rolling Stone" has to be the first non-authentic authentic electric folk song ever recorded, because it's the most unpremeditated--it was caught in one take. When you listen to the outtakes from "Highway 61," you hear "Like a Rolling Stone" in many forms, most notably a crippled waltz. What Dylan wanted was the Byrds, not blues, as exemplified by his famous admonition to Bloomfield, "I don't want any of that B. B. King shit." And what Bloomfield plays on the record is by far the most pop music he ever committed to wax, nothing else he ever did addresses the larger audience in anything approaching the same way. I interviewed Peter Yarrow for the book. Here's what he told me about the animating spirit of music, which I guess you could equate to "authenticity" if you count pride of place and tactile impressions as "real," I know I do:
Talking about the 1965 Newport Folk Festival fifty years later, Peter Yarrow remembered Dylan’s set as an experiment that had gone wrong. “The only song that worked at all was ‘Maggie’s Farm,’” he said. “I was mixing it at the time, so I know what it sounded like. It sounded horrible. There was so much leakage that it was ridiculous.” In Yarrow’s estimation, the controversy over Dylan going electric had everything to do with Dylan’s intentions, not his use of amplified guitars. “Looked at in retrospect, why would it be OK for the blues singers to have amplification?” he asked. “Well, it was OK because that was part of the way they performed anyhow. So where do you draw the line? The point was, it wasn’t a line. It was the spirit with which something was shared.”
Newport
I interviewed Peter Yarrow for the book. Here's what he told me about the animating spirit of music, which I guess you could equate to "authenticity" if you count pride of place and tactile impressions as "real," I know I do:
Talking about the 1965 Newport Folk Festival fifty years later, Peter Yarrow remembered Dylan’s set as an experiment that had gone wrong.
“The only song that worked at all was ‘Maggie’s Farm,’” he said. “I was mixing it at the time, so I know what it sounded like. It sounded
horrible. There was so much leakage that it was ridiculous.”
In Yarrow’s estimation, the controversy over Dylan going electric had everything to do with Dylan’s intentions, not his use of amplified
guitars. “Looked at in retrospect, why would it be OK for the blues singers to have amplification?” he asked. “Well, it was OK because that
was part of the way they performed anyhow. So where do you draw the line? The point was, it wasn’t a line. It was the spirit with which something was shared.”