On Bob Dylan’s first four releases, the production was incredibly simple–a man with an acoustic guitar (or piano, occasionally) and harmonica sang songs at a single microphone with no overdubs.

And then, Dylan lashed out.

Subterranean Homesick Blues starts with a single harmonica that is immediately joined by a drum set, bass guitar, piano, and no fewer than two electric guitars. And instead of the socially conscious lyrics that made him the Spokesman of a Generation, here he spits nonsensical couplets (Don’t follow leaders/watch the parking meters), and when he is being coherent, he’s railing against that Spokesman position.

In Maggie’s Farm (which he opened his career-changing set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival) he declares, “I try and I try to be just as I am/But everybody wants you to be just like them,” over a harsh electric guitar riff. Most of side one is the same, with Bob Dylan and his band ripping through blues structures and spouting off surreal lyrics that say little of coherence, besides telling the folkies where to stick it.

In this way, it becomes the first in a proud heritage of albums written by artists making backfiring attempts to sabotage their success (see also: Kid A, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot). But it’s more than just an angry Dylan intentionally inciting his own establishment–it’s also incredibly good. He proves just as deft playing with a rock band as he is playing solo, which is no small feat. And his lyrics, though often lucid and surreal, are as eloquently crafted as anything he had come out with before (which isn’t a small feat either).

But Dylan’s arms must have gotten tired after an entire side of raising his middle fingers, because on side two, he tells the band to take five and concludes the album himself in classic Dylan style. Tambourine Man, his most enduring pop song, appears here. Gates of Eden and the seven and a half minute It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) even find him embracing the protest folk song format he spent the whole first half railing against.

The two halves, despite being opposed in just about every way, are in harmony with eachother, because even when taking up different forms of musical expression and writing styles, Bob Dylan fights, and whether he’s fighting against injustice or war or his own reluctant popular success, the Folk Singer and the Rock Star are different sides of the same coin, and Bob Dylan, even when fighting society’s notion of who Dylan is (perhaps especially so), is still Bob Dylan.