The Magic Years

When Bob Dylan Shocked the Newport Folk Festival in 1965

On May 4, my new book will be published. It’s called The Magic Years: Scenes From a Rock and Roll Life, and it chronicles my fifty year history of producing music and movies with artists like Bob Dylan and The Band, George Harrison, Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders. What follows is an excerpt from the prologue.

Strapped to a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, Bob Dylan launched into the opening chords of “Maggie’s Farm” almost before the band was ready. The Newport Folk Festival of 1965 was going to close with a commotion. I had just turned eigh- teen, and was an apprentice road manager for Dylan’s manager. This explosive moment launched me on a lifelong journey, one beyond anything I could have imagined at the time.

I was standing in the stage wing, transfixed, ten feet from the band. Mike Bloomfield, acting like bandleader, brought his Butterfield Blues Band rhythm section — drummer Sam Lay and bassist Jerome Arnold — into some approximation of sync with Dylan’s rhythm. Al Kooper, in a loud polka-dot shirt, hunched over the Hammond organ and did his best to fill in the spaces, but it wasn’t starting well. I ran out toward the mixing booth in front of the stage, where Peter Yarrow had commandeered the board. It was worse out front. In his nervousness, Bloomfield kept…