Izzy Young attacked Dylan’s electric turn as draining protest from rock

Evidence

Alongside a report on Ed Sanders’s bust, the first issue of the East Village Other (October 1965) contained Young’s remarkably bitter attack on the new Dylan: “He returned to the great hope of American music—Rock and Roll,” Young wrote. “He electrified his guitar.” … He took the raw force of Rock and Roll. He took out the protest and vivacity and statement and hope. He added his personal bitterness and loneliness … He screams from the bottomless pit and it is truly heart-rending. But it is like sharing something dirty. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1955

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the reader’s turf-war / scene-formation material: the East Village Other is itself an artifact of the whole scene infrastructure this book maps.