“Bob Dylan Electric. Newport 1965, from folk to rock. History of a coup ”(Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split The Sixties), by Elijah Wald, translated from English (United States) by Emilien Bernard, Rivages Pocket“ Rouge ”, 544 p., 11 €.
“The invisible Republic. Bob Dylan and clandestine America “(Invisible Republic. Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes), from Greil Marcus, translated from English (United States) by François Lasquin and Lise Dufaux, Les Belles Lettres,” The taste for history “, 368 p., 17 €.
“Rolling Thunder. On the road with Bob Dylan “(Rolling Thunder Logbook), by Sam Shepard, photographs of Ken Rejea, translated from English (United States) by Bernard Cohen, Les Belles Lettres,” Foreign Domaine “, 248 p., 17.50 €.
The show is in the room, It is often said. So, the roles are reversed, and it is up to the public to create the event by its overflowing adulation or its protests, strident whistles and mounted with blooming in cries of love or in lords of insults. If we immediately think of the battler creation ofHernani at the Théâtre-Français (February 25, 1830) or “Spring massacre” (May 29, 1913) At the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées with its composer refugee behind the scenes and its inaudible orchestra, we think less of the Newport Folk Festival, on July 25, 1965, of the putschist Bob Dylan. There, there is no need to distort the Alexandrian or to have the splendor of pagan Russia swept on stage, just connecting his Fender Stratocaster to the generator, hardening the tone and raising the sound. So the bad trick is played, the electric ver in the sweet acoustic fruit. It was already there, moreover. The crime of lèse-rurality that in three songs Bob Dylan committed that day, Elijah Wald tells us with a crazy scholarship and fervor. Within a community “Folky”grouped around the good giant Pete Seeger, adonnated with the cult of the acoustic cantor, in love with the good old days and committed to the hard in the union combat, Dylan, Ray-Ban opaque, leather jacket and steel strings, sends another message: the times change, the sky takes care of Watts and Da Nang, we no longer pick the fruit on the tree. But the electrocuted folk people do not agree. “Judas”we cry out to the black man who is expanding after a quarter of an hour. Nothing will be quite the same for the enchanted world of American popular culture. Innocence, revolutionized mentalities, “Here come the time of the assassins”from Jim Morrison to Nick Cave. Prophets of unhappiness against merchant of happiness: the question remains.
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