By
Published: Tuesday, 21 January 2025 at 12:10 PM
‘Judas!’: how Bob Dylan enraged the Sixties folk scene
With A Complete Unknown – the new Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet – hitting our cinema screens, we thought we’d look back at two major turning points in the folk music icon’s early career.
The climactic scene of A Complete Unknown follows the infamous moment when the young Dylan ‘went electric’ – and introduced the electric guitar into his live performances. This was a pivotal moment in the history of popular music. For America’s nascent folk music scene, it was deeply divisive.
Dylan first took up an electric guitar during his performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, and this is the moment towards which A Complete Unknown inexorably builds. Dylan’s decision alienated some of the singer’s traditional folk audience, who saw him as betraying the authenticity and purity of the folk genre.
‘They were booing Dylan going electric’
The film shows us the moment when, as the festival’s headliner, Dylan performs his first electric set since high school, backed by guitarist Mike Bloomfield and organist Al Kooper. Dylan had performed at the festival in both 1963 and 1964, playing acoustic sets. This time around, though, the rising star’s decision to go electric is met with a mix of cheers and boos. Dylan and his band famously quit the stage after just three songs.
Fascinatingly, there’s some doubt about exactly why a section of the crowd started booing. Many agree that these fans’ displeasure was absolutely caused by Dylan’s decision to ‘plug in’, thus betraying folk’s more pure, unadorned, and perhaps pre-industrial feel. ‘I absolutely think that they were booing Dylan going electric,’ said Murray Lerner, who filmed the performance.
Other people, though, maintain that the crowd were simply voicing their displeasure at the set’s poor sound quality and its short duration.
What is A Complete Unknown about?
Set in the early 1960s, A Complete Unknown follows the fortunes of the 19-year-old Bob Dylan (played by Timothée Chalamet) as he arrives in New York City from his native Minnesota. Freshly arrived in NYC, the young Dylan sets about meeting some of the icons of the mid-1960s Greenwich Village folk scene.
The film follows his blossoming creative exchanges with folk music icons like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger (both featured in our list of the greatest folk singers of all time), as well as his relationships with girlfriend Sylvie Russo (portrayed by Elle Fanning) and singer Joan Baez (played by Monica Barbaro).
Timothée Chalamet turns in a gripping performance, singing and playing 40 Dylan songs live on guitar and harmonica. And the film’s climactic section is that controversial electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, on July 25, 1965.
When was Dylan called Judas?
It was almost a year after that divisive Newport gig that Bob Dylan famously came up against some more resistance to his electric sound. During the electric portion of Dylan’s concert on May 17, 1966, at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England, an audience member shouted ‘Judas!’ at the stage.
What was Dylan’s response? Well, it was calm, and it was defiant. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re a liar,’ the folk star famously countered.
He then turned to his band and instructing them, in the ultimate gesture of defiance, to ‘Play it f***ing loud!’ The band then launched into a blistering performance of Dylan’s song ‘Like a Rolling Stone’.
You can watch the incendiary moment below.
What happened next?
Amazingly, bootlegs of Dylan’s legendary Free Trade Hall concert were sold for years as The Royal Albert Hall Concert. It wasn’t until years later that the performance was confirmed to have taken place at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall. The recording was officially released in 1998, within the set The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert.
Both the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and 1966 Manchester Free Trade Hall concerts are seen as crucial turning points, not only in Dylan’s own career but also in the wider evolution of pop music.