Coming off the back of his two masterpiece folk albums (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and The Times They Are A-Changin'), Dylan was heralded as The Spokesman of a Generation, a politically acute songwriter at the frontier of the burgeoning leftist revolution of the time. Dylan always hated having this moniker bestowed upon him, though, and always insisted he was apolitical. Trying to move away from the 'spokesman' tag, Dylan 'Went Electric', a term now famous in the lexicon of pop-culture. First, at the Newport Folk Festival, sandwiched in between a couple of traditional folk acts, Dylan and his backing band launched into Maggie's Farm, a new rock'n'roll song as far away from folk as one could get. After that it was 'Like a Rolling Stone' and a couple of others, before returning for a final two acoustic songs to appease the audience. Dylan certainly roused them - "electrifying one half of the audience and electrocuting the other", as the famous saying goes - with folk traditionalists like Peter Seeger allegedly trying to cut the sound with an axe (though he denies this was because of Dylan). Dylan's new status as a rock'n'roll star was established, and it astonished his fans, some positively, others not so much. After that it was his 1966 World Tour and the 'Royal Albert Hall' concert (actually recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall), which infamously heralded cries of "Judas" toward Dylan when he kicked into the second, electric half of his set. Dylan replied that the man was "a liar", before saying "I don't believe you" (the second 'e' drawn out to give the line it's famous drawl) and kicking into the quintessential performance of his greatest song, Like a Rolling Stone. Dylan's transformation lead to the greatest three (rock) album-run in history - Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde - and his decision to go electric is widely seen as one of the greatest artistic statements in the history of popular music.
