Folk Rock

The designation “folk rock” rather obviously referred to rock derived from folk music sources. Bob Dylan’s controversial “electric” performance at the Newport Folk Festival on 25 July 1965 seems now to be a reaction against the arch-conservatism of the folk movement, for which electric instruments were considered “inauthentic.” The first major folk-rock hit, The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” was released in April 1965, quickly following the release of Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home the previous month, on which the song had first appeared. Early on, folk rock managed to avoid charges of being meretricious by virtue of its lyrical content, which reflected the left-liberal bohemianism of the folk movement it largely supplanted. (The music of the folk revival prospered in the coffee houses and intimate clubs near college campuses and in the bigger cities.) The Byrds’ follow-up to “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” released later in 1965, with lyrics derived from Ecclesiastes and a melody by Pete Seeger, is a good example of folk rock, as musically it sounded similar to the Beatles, although lyrically speaking it was reasonably sophisticated--and the inspirational source of the lyrics gave it a certain prestige. It may be that folk rock sought to bridge the college campus and the general, popular culture, then in the throngs of Beatlemania. “Topical” songs, such as Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” (also 1965), betray the demand for “relevance” that sought to appeal to the campus and the coffee house. (As a “topical” song, McGuire’s hit has aged badly, unlike the music of the Byrds.) Why did the popularity of folk rock last only for a short time? Perhaps the reason lay in the influence of Modernist aesthetics, which demanded the singular perception of a discrete, that is solo, artist. Hence folk rock gave way to the “singer/songwriter” movement, revealed in the subsequent careers of certain members of folk rock bands such as The Lovin’ Spoonful and Buffalo Springfield: the former launched the career of John Sebastian, the latter Neil Young.