Dylan did not "abandon" anyone when he plugged in. They abandoned him. The folk purists made the common mistake of confusing style (rock music) with substance. They assumed that all rock music was by definition without serious substance. They were proven VERY VERY wrong about that by Dylan most of all, and by a number of other artists as well. Dylan was simply so far ahead of his audience that he left half of them breathless in the dust. Like the Poor Immigrant they "heard but did not see". Dylan did what absolutely had to be done, and he was the one who had the courage to do it first. After Dylan they all did it. "I made shoes for everyone, even you, and I still walk barefoot". Dylan is not just a folksinger, though he has been a folksinger at times...he has been just about everything that a songwriter can be...except typical or predictable or mainstream. Dylan is the most profoundly revolutionary thing that has happened in popular music in the last 100 years. Judy Collins refers to him as a "national treasure". Gordon Lightfoot calls him the "best songwriter of them all". So does Joan Baez, and she should know. Dylan's folk audience in 1965-66 was blissfully unaware of the fact that Bob had already been a country singer (a la Hank Williams) when he was in his early teens, a rock and roll singer and band leader (a la Little Richard) when in High School, a blues singer (a la Leadbelly, Blind Willie McTell, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee, Robert Johnson, etc., etc.) in his later teens, a Woodie Guthrie fanatic around 19 to 21 years of age, a folksinger par excellence for the next couple of years (whereupon he became very famous), and then by God something unlike anything anyone had ever seen or heard of before when he did 3 utterly astounding albums in 1965 to 1966. Who else has written such songs as "It's Alright, Ma" or "Gates of Eden" or a host of others too numerous to mention. Who else keeps rewriting the old songs, with new words, new music, new inflections...busy being born, not busy dying. When Dylan plugged in in '65 he was simply returning to a kind of music he already knew very well (from his High School days) and taking it into whole new realms of awareness that touched on every serious human issue you can mention. To listen to the Live 1966 ("Royal Alber Hall") concert is just incredible. You've got this audience with a collective consciousness that stops functioning when the same guy plays the same brilliant stuff...only on an electric guitar instead of an acoustic. Man, what a pompous and superficial bunch of people. Now I'm not giving anyone at Mudcat a hard time here, I'm just looking back to how it was back then. Dylan did something incredible. He broke every rule, and he scared the daylights out of people. When people get scared, they get angry...but there was nothing to fear. All they had to do was shut up and listen. David Bowie saluted Bob for that..."he led some people forward and put the fear in a whole lot more". Yeah, Bob, by God you paved the way for all of us, and no one can put a value on what you did, and no one who was there to see it will ever forget it.