And it wasn't that Dylan "abandoned" protest. It's that he simply had taken it as far as he possibly could in about 3 years of songwriting until at a certain point he felt he'd done everything to express himself in that particular way, and then he wanted to do something else instead...to break new ground. He went through a whole bunch of changes like that, because he didn't like standing still, artistically speaking, and just endlessly repeating himself (as many musical acts do...they become like a museum exhibit of themselves). This ended up producing many different phases in Dylan's music all through his career, and it's one of the things that makes him so interesting.

Ochs also did that, by the way, he went through some musical changes too, but people don't tend to notice that as much in his case, because they're just not as observant of Ochs as they are of Dylan.

And as far as protest...Dylan has actually returned to protest again and again over the years, but people don't seem to think he's doing it unless he does *nothing BUT protest songs*. And that's kind of silly. He wrote stuff after the "protest" period that in my opinion protested just about everything. The song "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) " is a spectacular example of that, and so are other songs like "Gates of Eden", "Desolation Row", "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)", "Changing of the Guards", "Blind Willie McTell", "Clean Cut Kid", "License to Kill", and many others. He once quipped to the press in 1965 or '66, "All my songs are protest songs", and he wasn't too far off from the truth in saying that...although he just said it because he was annoyed with them for asking the same dumb questions over and over again ("Why don't you still write protest songs?". Bob Dylan is not a one-trick pony.