Kmflett's Blog

Bob Dylan at 85: when did he first sell-out?

Bob Dylan is 85 on 24^th May

My late father was a fan so I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan since the 1960s. You can’t look back over Dylan’s career without mentioning what many saw and see as his various ‘sell-outs’. A hardcore regarded the signing of a record deal with CBS in 1962 as the start of a slippery slope. His switch to electric guitar- famously at the Manchester Free Trade Hall(now a Radisson hotel) concert in 1966- remains controversial.

However I think Ralph McTell’s 1972 Zimmerman Blues still sums matters up. Dylan moved from a musician who was part of a protest movement that wanted to challenge and change the world as it was to a someone who sang protest songs about it. That’s not the same thing.

There have of course been later sell-outs. He appears to have first started doing TV ads around 2004 and as recently as December 2020 he sold his entire back catalogue to Universal.

That’s not to say that the music doesn’t remain interesting and that his early years are now an impressive part of social history but as he sang in 2000 ‘I used to care, but things have changed’.