Now they have electrical instruments (some of them) and backing bands. That was unknown at the time. It also meant more folk entered what we'd call rock n roll. Hell, name one person you know who doesn't know who Bob Dylan is. Even your kids know who he is.
That's a huge change. There's a reason so many people cover Dylan songs. He was that influential. Also, anyone can cover a Dylan song and make it better than the original! (I kid... I kid...)
It's possibly a bigger singular change from one person than has ever been accomplished in music. It might be on par with how the Beatles changed rock fandom. They didn't change rock so much as they changed how fans interacted - a change that lasted a decade, and influenced the fandom even longer.
It's not like Dylan was using distortion pedal and cranking that folk into something completely unrecognizable
No, but I don't think it requires a distortion pedal to change music? I don't actually think that's a requirement?
In fact, unless you use Google (or remember my articles about Hendrix) you don't even know who first used distortion in rock.
But you know about Dylan at the folk festival...
I meant how it would have sounded nothing at all like folk music if he had done that. Playing an electric guitar with no effects through an amp and then playing the same songs you were previously playing on an acoustic guitar really does not seem like a monumental change in music to me
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