37 years later, Dylan goes unplugged at Newport

NEWPORT, R.I. — This time, Bob Dylan knew better than to walk onstage at the Newport Folk Festival with an electric guitar.

The legendary singer-songwriter last played Newport in July 1965, when he famously "plugged in" for the first time, smashing barriers between folk and rock, and was booed by folk-music purists.

Thirty-seven years later, Dylan returned to Newport, and fans had nothing but applause as he walked onstage around 5:30 p.m. yesterday, slung an acoustic guitar over his shoulder and, with Al Gore standing offstage, led his four-piece backing band into an acoustic version of "Roving Gambler."

Dylan, 61, these days is more Nashville than Greenwich Village. He wore a white cowboy hat and a black vest and managed a shuffling two-step during a few songs.

Next came countrified takes on "The Times They Are A-Changin'," "Desolation Row," and "Mama, You Been On My Mind," before the band traded their acoustic instruments for electric ones.

The band, which included Tony Garnier on bass, Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell on guitars and George Ricelli on drums, matched Dylan in Hank Williams Jr.-style black.

They switched between electric and acoustic several times during a 90-minute set that included 15 songs. Highlights included a hard-rocking version of "Down in the Flood," a song dating to Dylan's days with The Band, and an acoustic rendition of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere."

Jim Sullivan of Falmouth, Mass., who was 7 the last time Dylan played Newport, brought his 14-year-old son, Ben, to witness a bit of history yesterday. Both wore hats and T-shirts from Dylan's current tour. Like his father, Ben is a big fan, and he belongs to an Web chat group devoted to Dylan.

"I was a Dylan fan all by myself for my whole life," Jim Sullivan said. "Then he was born, and I made sure he was a Dylan fan. Now I have someone to go to shows with."

After a 10-minute break, the band returned for a four-song encore that began with "Not Fade Away," and "Like a Rolling Stone," a song that hit the airwaves days before Dylan's last appearance at Newport and would became an anthem of the 1960s. "Blowin' in the Wind" and "All Along the Watchtower" rounded out the encore.

"He's in better form than ever," said Mark Kunkel, a 51-year-old longtime Dylan fan who drove 1,300 miles from his home in Carrollton, Ga., in a 1977 Volkswagen microbus to witness Dylan's return to Newport.

The 10,000 tickets to yesterday's show sold out faster than any other in the festival's history.