Wasn't much of a "riot".People were booing 'cause they thought he was "selling out".I love the footage of this,'cause Dylan totally ignored those assholes.Folk Nazis! Yes,his first album was brilliant,but so is "Bringing it all Back Home." I'm glad he's always been his own man.

As an addition to the other reviews on this item, Pete Seeger went bananas when he heard "Maggie's Farm," grabbed a fire ax to cut the power cord leading to Dylan's amp, and had to be restrained according to one history of the event that I read.

On the eve of the release of his album Highway 61 Revisited Bob Dylan hastily assembled what was essentially an electric blues band around guitarist Mike Bloomfield to play Maggie's Farm, premiere Like a Rolling Stone and It Take a Lot to Laugh It Takes a Train to Cry at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

The reports vary as to whether people were reacting to the under-prepared band, the terrible sound quality, or the fact that Folk Icon Dylan was playing rock and roll, but accounts include booing and heckling, things thrown at the stage, mass exodus and most amusingly Pete Seger allegedly approaching the stage with an axe to cut the cables to the sound board.

As time goes by most involved have down-played the event but it clearly caused a stir that rocked the music world. Most now claim that the boos were about the volume and poor sound quality and indifferent performance not the fact that a new style of music was being introduced.

For the two years previous Dylan had played the festival to rapturous response, first as the new unscrubbed sensation and next as the voice of his generation. By the third year, it was clear Dylan had tired of the attention and hoopla.

There are accounts that claim Dylan anticipated the reaction and even hoped to provoke it. He prepped the band the night before to set up and start playing quickly without a sound check so that the audience would be taken by surprise. After three songs he turned to the band and said "we're outa here" and stomped off the stage. But they actually hadn't rehearsed anything else anyway. He was 'coaxed' back to the stage and showed up alone with his acoustic guitar, asked to borrow a harmonica and sang "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" a fitting coda to his first era.

The fall out of that performance was felt a month later in concerts at Forrest Hills New York and particularly on a tour of England and Australia. Ritualistic booing, chanting and heckling began during the second half of the show when he brought out the Hawks for the electric set. According to the legend, the louder the boos, the louder and more raucus the performance he pulled out of the band. It was a duel every night, so much so that drummer Levon Helm bailed after a few shows.