Why was Bob Dylan booed off the stage in 1965?

Question

Did his music go to commerial and pop-like or was it some other reason?

Answer 1

He wasn't booed off the stage.

Answer 2

The settled fact is that Dylan, met with a mix of cheering and booing, left the stage after only three songs. As one version of the legend has it, the boos were from the outraged folk fans Dylan alienated by his electric guitar. An alternative account claims audience members were merely upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set.

Answer 3

That summer Dylan made history by performing his first electric set (since his high school days) with a pickup group drawn mostly from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, i.e. Mike Bloomfield (guitar), Sam Lay (drums), Jerome Arnold (bass), plus Al Kooper (organ) and Barry Goldberg (piano), while headlining at the Newport Folk Festival (see The electric Dylan controversy).[40] Dylan had appeared at Newport twice before, in 1963 and 1964, and two wildly divergent accounts of the crowd's response in 1965 emerged. The settled fact is that Dylan, met with a mix of cheering and booing, left the stage after only three songs. As one version of the legend has it, the boos were from the outraged folk fans Dylan alienated by his electric guitar. An alternative account claims audience members were merely upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set. Whatever sparked the crowd's disfavor, Dylan soon reemerged and sang two much better received solo acoustic numbers, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Mr. Tambourine Man", although his choice of the former has often been described as a carefully selected death knell for the kind of consciously sociopolitical, purely acoustic music that the cat-callers were demanding of him, with "New Folk" in the role of "Baby Blue".

The significance of Dylan's 1965 Newport performance is still debated, whether or not he purposely outraged the folk music establishment.[41] Ewan MacColl wrote in Sing Out!: "Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside traditions formulated over time... But what of Bobby Dylan?... Only a non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel." On 29 July, just four days after his controversial performance at Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York recording "Positively 4th Street". The song teemed with images of paranoia and revenge ("I know the reason/That you talk behind my back/I used to be among the crowd/You're in with"), and was widely interpreted as Dylan's put-down of former friends from the folk community, friends he had known in the clubs along West 4th Street.

Answer 4

He played an electric guitar. Some people thought folk should stay acoustic.

Answer 5

Some other reason, read the other answeres, they seem to know the other reason.