This is where Dylan makes it big. This is the Dylan that everyone knows. The one constantly wearing sunglasses and being a complete jerk at every press conference. The one with the crazy hair. The Bob Dylan who was booed for “going electric.” The one that they would try and make into a movie starring Timothée Chalamet.

And this is undeniable one of the very best, top-form, all-time great Bob Dylans. In fact, he was operating at such a high level at this point, that many Dylan fans have a hard time getting past this and enjoying anything else he’s done since. Which is hogwash. There are some really weird and interesting periods coming up in the future. But this is certainly the Dylan cemented his reputation with and gain the clout and cultural capital necessary to make all the subsequent left turns and about-faces.

Despite flirting with playing in a band earlier, Dylan really kicked off this period with the opening shot of Subterranean Homesick Blues with its famous one-take, B&W, non-lip-syncing video where he just hold hand lettered signs of his lyrics. As usual, the song title is not actually in the song itself. Sometimes you have to tell people that it’s called Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 and not “Everybody Must Get Stoned.”

This is where Bob recorded Like A Rolling Stone and did not record Eve Of Destruction or Stuck In The Middle. Even if he still wasn’t having #1 hits, everybody now wanted to be Bob Dylan. For every die-hard folk fan who turned their back on Bob, he gained five acolytes who shamelessly copied him when he “went electric”.

And there are some really good music. Usually it’s just three chord blues structures married to these Kerouac-influenced lyrics and stretching way beyond the usual three minute limit for a pop song.

Bob had become a huge rock star, and the number of concerts and recordings and appearances would be impossible to pull off without a steady stream of hallucinogens and psychedelics and amphetamines. And there was no way to keep this up forever. Bob needed an exit ramp from the fast lane, and there was going to be a bit of burning up upon re-entry. But it may have been necessary for survival.