Young Bob Dylan: Getting to Know the Complete Unknown

Elijah Wald, whose book Dylan Goes Electric! inspired the new biopic A Complete Unknown, talks about the musicianship of an American icon. Plus: Music & Arts Gear & Book Guide

 

A funny thing began happening at multiplex movie theaters this past holiday season. Rock ’n’ roll experts and veteran musicians went to see a rock biopic and, rather than leaving the theater shaking their heads, they loved it.

The film in question is A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold and starring Timothée Chalamet as the young Bob Dylan, navigating his breakthrough years of 1961-65.

In 1961, Dylan arrived in New York City from his native Minnesota and began his ascent as a solo folk performer in the cafés and clubs of Greenwich Village. He found and befriended his hero Woody Guthrie, a titan of American folk music, and was mentored by the folk musician and activist Pete Seeger. Dylan also caught the attention of music-industry legend John Hammond, who signed him to Columbia Records in October of that year.

When the label began releasing Dylan’s original songs in earnest with his second album, 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, his music earned acclaim for its poetic expression of the cultural and generational shifts that came to define the 1960s. Dylan became a celebrity, recognized for both his songs and his slippery, mysterious personality, as well as an icon of the acoustic-based folk revival that had flourished in the Village.

But as he approached the middle of the decade, he began recording momentous new music with a rock band. Some members of the tradition-minded folk community felt betrayed by Dylan’s use of electric instruments and his stylistic turn toward rock ’n’ roll. As covered in A Complete Unknown, these issues came to a head during Dylan’s historic performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he played three new songs with a rock combo followed by two solo numbers on acoustic guitar.

A Complete Unknown was inspired by Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric!, a great in-depth look at Dylan’s journey and this unforgettable period in American musical history. Wald, a Grammy-winning author, educator and musician based in Philadelphia, recently spoke with Music & Arts about Dylan’s sound during these formative years and the musicianship that shaped it. We chose highlights from our conversation to come up with this list of five takeaways from the singer-songwriter’s meteoric rise—a time when, as Wald puts it, Dylan “was very young, he was changing very quickly and he was learning an awful lot.”

As for the movie, “I liked it,” Wald says. “I think they did the music very, very well, and give a good sense of the times and the people. Most of the specific scenes are invented, but they got the details very, very right—there are a couple of little things where I go, ‘Nah.’ But by and large it’s amazing how well they’ve recreated that world.”

Dylan Learned From His Fellow Folkies

When we talk about how promising young musicians learn their craft in 2025, we often speak about schools and programs that teach contemporary music and a giant industry of educational resources. But as Wald explains, Dylan’s vital period of development in the early ’60s occurred mostly through his peers in informal settings—and many decades before play-along tracks were a click away. In fact, you might say the story of his folk education is the story of a community.

“Any list we make of Dylan influences we’re going to base on records,” Wald says, “but he was learning infinitely more from the people who were hanging out with him at the [Greenwich Village clubs] Cafe Wha? and the Gaslight and so on than he was learning from records.” In New York, Dylan would’ve picked up techniques and ideas from folk singers like Dave Van Ronk, Mark Spoelstra and Fred Neil, and guitarist Bruce Langhorne. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, he spent time playing with Eric Von Schmidt; in England, singer and guitarist Martin Carthy.

“If I have to pick one influence, it’s Ramblin’ Jack Elliott,” says Wald, referring to the Brooklyn-born singer and guitarist who both shared and impacted Dylan’s love for mythic, old-timey tales about America’s past. But Dylan was terrific at combining his influences. “He was always mixing stuff,” Wald says. “That version of ‘Highway 51 Blues’ on his first album, he’s mixing a Jack Elliott riff with the riff from the Everly Brothers’ ‘Wake Up Little Susie.’”

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He “Went Electric” Way Before Newport

“Let’s remember that Dylan ‘went electric’ in high school,” says Wald, who also points out that the singer-songwriter’s first major influence was rock ’n’ roll. “He had an electric guitar when he was 15.” In fact, Wald continues, before he broke through with the release of Freewheelin’ in 1963, Dylan recorded Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right” in a style modeled after Elvis Presley’s rockabilly version for Sun Records. Dylan strums acoustic on those takes, but the rock ’n’ roll spirit is undeniable.

By the time Dylan played his groundbreaking hit “Like a Rolling Stone” with his band at Newport, the British Invasion had taken hold and rock was on its way to becoming the dominant form of popular music. As Wald recounts, when asked who his favorite bands were in Newport in 1965, Dylan said the Byrds, who’d innovated folk-rock with their version of Dylan’s song “Mr. Tambourine Man”; the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, whose fantastic guitarist, Mike Bloomfield, also played in Dylan’s electric band; and the Sir Douglas Quintet, a more curious choice that “may say more about his personal taste,” Wald notes.

To Dylan, Blues Is King

Throughout his life, Dylan has channeled endless inspiration from the Black American blues tradition. “He sought out Black musicians back to his Minnesota days. That was who he was,” Wald says. “People have forgotten that.” The blues can be found throughout Dylan’s early history. On his debut album for Columbia, Dylan covers blues greats including Jesse Fuller, Bukka White, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Tommy McClennan. A bit later, between his first and second albums, he recorded a bunch of blues-focused tracks that have yet to see official release.

In his first professional performances in New York, he opened for John Lee Hooker for two weeks at Gerde’s Folk City, and the two became friends, jamming and drinking in Hooker’s hotel room. And in an early recording session, he accompanied Big Joe Williams on harmonica. “Both of them claimed that they had played together before Dylan got to New York,” Wald says. “I’m dubious, as is everyone else, but they both said that, and he fit very well with him.”

He Turned Heads With His Harmonica-Playing

It might be tempting to think of Dylan’s harmonica playing during the ’60s exclusively as accents to his songs, and indeed his heartfelt blowing elevated his performances. But when Dylan hit the Greenwich Village folk scene, his harmonica skills were a relative rarity, and his playing improved quickly as he played more and more within the community. “His harmonica was actually much more valued than his guitar playing,” Wald says. “Because it was a world full of guitar players with relatively few harmonica players. His harmonica playing was what he was singled out for. He was hired to do sessions on harmonica.”

As an accompanist, Dylan played in the “cross harp” style common in blues, country and rock music—“he could do a pretty good imitation” of bluesman Sonny Terry, Wald says. As a solo performer using a harmonica holder or rack, he played more in the “straight harp” style of Woody Guthrie.

Before He Became Known as a Game-Changing Songwriter, He Was Acknowledged as a Musician

Today, Dylan’s earth-shattering ability as a songwriter overwhelms his reputation as a singer and musician. But Wald is quick to note that when Dylan began working in New York, it was his musicianship that allowed him to make a living. “He was originally signed as a singer and musician to Columbia Records,” Wald explains. After Dylan wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary had a hit with it in 1963, Wald says, “the narrative shifted to ‘He’s not a great singer or musician but he writes these amazing songs.’ But he was originally signed because he was a very interesting singer and musician.”

What’s more, he was known as someone who could draw audiences in through his artistry and charisma and deliver a song in a way that stirred the soul. “He was always noted as someone who was an electrifying performer, from when he first arrived in the Village,” Wald says. “Not everyone thought of him that way, but many did.”

“He was the whole package,” Wald adds. “That was the thing about Dylan. Mike Bloomfield, when he first saw Dylan perform, his reaction was, I thought Ramblin’ Jack Elliott was the best performer I’d ever seen for someone just getting across to an audience solo. But Dylan was even better.”

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