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The new Bob Dylan biopic, A complete strangerdoesn't hit theaters until Christmas Day, but hype for the new film has sent a seven-year-old audiobook about the singer back on the charts.
Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties was originally released in 2017, but the audiobook returned to the top of Audible's music charts following the upcoming release of the film.
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Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties
Written by music historian and journalist Elijah Wald (and narrated by Sean Runnette), Dylan Goes Electric follows the upheaval caused after Dylan took to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 backed by a electric band, instead of his usual acoustic setup. Kicking off his set with an amped-up version of “Maggie's Farm,” Dylan roared through his rock 'n' roll hit, “Like a Rolling Stone,” much to the dismay of what the book describes as “folk purists and political activists who had hailed as their auditory prophet.”
Dylan Goles Electric traces the genesis of this performance and traces the fallout from the performance, described as “a combination of shock, booing and scattered cheers”. The singer did not return to the Newport Festival for 37 years after that night. Was Dylan indebted to the folk community for making him their star? Or was the artist free to explore his musical independence and forge a bold new path?
As Wald writes in the book, “It was the shot heard around the world – Dylan's declaration of musical independence, the end of the folk revival and the birth of rock as the voice of a generation – and one of the defining moments in the 20th century. music of the century.”
The publisher notes, meanwhile, that “Wald explores the cultural, political, and historical context of this seminal event that embodied the transformative decade that was the Sixties,” diving “deep into the folk revival, the rise of rock, and the tensions between traditional and avant-garde music to provide new insights into Dylan's artistic development'.
Dylan Goes Electric is now available in audiobook for $15 through Amazon. But you can listen to the book for just $0.99 as part of a new Audible deal, which gives you three months of access for just $3. The offer ends on December 31st, so we recommend that you sign up for the Audible offer while it's still live. See all the details here.
THE Dylan Goes Electric The audiobook has a running time of 11 hours and 56 minutes. The Timothee Chalamet-led A complete strangerIn the meantime, it hits theaters on December 25.
