Pete Seeger Revealed the ‘Big Mistake’ He Made During Bob Dylan’s Newport Folk Festival Set
A Complete Unknown traces back to the start of Bob Dylan‘s behemoth career in the early 1960s. With every biopic, what differs from fact and fiction? What happened to Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan’s close mentorship?
In real life and A Complete Unknown, Pete Seeger was a huge mentor for Bob Dylan. It was Seeger that Bob Dylan was offered a spot at the renowned Newport Folk festival, “Pete Seeger, more than any of the other board members, had a personal connection with Bob Dylan: it was he who [in 1962] had convinced the great Columbia A and R man John Hammond, famous for his work with jazz and blues musicians, to produce Dylan’s eponymous first album, Bob Dylan,” fellow planning committee Bruce Jackson said. “If anyone was responsible for Bob Dylan’s presence on the Newport Stage [in 1965], it was Pete Seeger.”
But all of that seemed to fall apart when Dylan decided to do his set with the use of electric guitars, which seemed catastrophic in the eyes of the commitee. In the movie, Seeger (played by Edward Norton) pleas with Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) to not go in that direction. And with that, Bob Dylan continued to play electric, despite the contentious crowd. However, did it really play it out like that in real life?
What happened to Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger?
Pete Seeger tried to apologize to Bob Dylan for the Newport Jazz Folk incident. As for the reason why he wanted to pull the plug, it was because the instruments didn’t sound right on the sound system. “It’s true that I don’t play electrified instruments – I don’t know how to,” Seeger said in an Democracy Now interview before he died. “On the other hand, I’ve played with people who pay them beautifully, and I admire some of them. Howlin’ Wolf was using electric instruments at Newport just a few days before Bob did.”
The musician also wrote Dylan a postcard in the 90s about the incident. “Bob! Someone just told me that you too think I didn’t like your going electric in 1965. I’ve denied that so many times. I was furious at the distorted sound – no one could understand the words of ‘Maggie’s Farm’ – and dashed over to the people controlling the PA system. ‘No, this is the way they want it,’ they said. I shouted, ‘if I had an axe, i’d cut the cable’, and I guess that’s what got quoted. My big mistake was in not challenging from the stage the foolish few who booed. I shoulda said, ‘Howlin Wolf goes electric, why can’t Bob?’ In any case, you keep on. Best, Pete.”
Seeger also contributed to a Bob Dylan tribute album two years before his death. For Chimes of Freedom: 50 Years of Amnesty International, he performed “Forever Young” which was released on Planet Waves in 1974.
