Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan, 1963, © Jim Marshall
Bob Dylan famously “went electric” at the ’65 Newport Folk Festival, to a somewhat mixed response.
When I first heard the “Biograph” set in ’85, which I got on LP before buying my first CD player, I was stunned by the pairing of these two songs.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/AUG/Biograph.mp3]“Mixed Up Confusion” was recorded in 1962. ’62! With “Tombstone Blues” Dylan was just picking up where he’d left off nearly three years before. When I first heard this I felt as though Dylan hadn’t caught up to Folk Rock, but that he had, in fact, secretly invented it.