Bob Dylan was right to not let folk musicians put him in a box

In A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan makes one thing clear: He’s a musician. He doesn’t accept the labels people want to put on him. And doing so hurts only those who try to put Dylan in a box. Honestly? He’s right for it.

When Dylan meets Pete Seeger, they talk about music. Dylan is talking about rock music and Seeger asks him if he is a folk musician. Even then, moments after the two met for the first time, Dylan makes it clear that he’s not just one thing. But for whatever reason, that doesn’t seem to be enough for those who helped Dylan in the beginning.

Men like Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax (Nobert Leo Butz) saw a way to make folk music popular again. But Dylan didn’t want to be pigeon-holed into one type. Even Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) tried to let Dylan be but she had her limits with him. Baez, unlike the men who controlled the Newport Folk Festival, didn’t try to force him to do anything. If Dylan didn’t want to sing “Blowin’ in the Wind,” she would.

But what I love about A Complete Unknown is the way that James Mangold paints both sides of the “Dylan goes electric” issue. Was Dylan wrong for forcing the change on the Newport Folk Festival? Or were they wrong for telling him what he can and cannot do? That’s the conversation it allows those who love Dylan to have after the movie. I also think it says a lot about Dylan as a creative.

“All I can do is be me, whoever that is.”

My favorite Dylan quote is one from the same year the film ends in. In 1965, Dylan did an interview where he said “All I can do is be me, whoever that is.” That quote really embodies what he has told everyone about his work. Dylan did not say he was a folk musician. So when he went electric and brought us “Like a Rolling Stone” on Highway 61 Revisited, no one should have been surprised.

And he was right for pushing back at those who wanted him to be one thing. “Like a Rolling Stone” is widely considered Dylan’s most famous song and we wouldn’t have had it without him bringing an entire band in for his work.

I don’t think that A Complete Unknown paints what happened at the festival in a negative light. I think it was the meeting of two minds clashing together and leaving a tension between friends. Seeger and Dylan ended up being fine with each other and even reunited. But Dylan’s electric moment was a pivotal part of his career. It shifted how we view folk music and many of his relationships in the folk scene.

I do think it also made one thing abundantly clear about Dylan as a performer: He is going to do whatever he wants. He won’t sing what YOU want to hear, he’ll play what HE wants to play and that’s why I love him as a performer.