It’s late afternoon at Fort Adams in Newport, R.I., and we’ve just been warned again not to take any pictures. Near the front of the crowd, one would-be photographer quips: “Is Bob afraid we’re going to steal his soul?”

A woman nearby responds: "He sold his soul a long time ago; I don't think he's worried."

On so many levels, this statement rings true. But if Bob Dylan sold his soul, was it to the devil at the crossroads, Robert Johnson-like, in exchange for some finger-picking goods? Or was it a more literal transaction, a betrayal, a cold-cash liquidizing of ideals? I'd say yes, and yes (and no, and no), and there's time and tide to prove it every which way. Bottom line is this: in the 37 years since Dylan Went Electric, at his last Newport Folk Festival performance, all the rules have changed. So it's impossible for even the cynical not to regard this return as an Event.

What happened that faraway Sunday has been recalled, recounted and reconstituted so doggedly as to enter the realm of popular folklore. Bob Dylan -- rambling heir of Woody Guthrie, crown prince of the topical folk song -- mounted the Newport stage clad in black leather and carrying an electric Fender guitar. Backed by members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, he opened with "Maggie's Farm," an electric blues jeremiad with an insolent lyric. To the authors of the folk revival -- who prized authenticity and disparaged indulgence -- this was a sacrilege on several levels. Already the Butterfield Band's plugged-in performance at an afternoon blues workshop had brought Alan Lomax (the venerable folkways musicologist) and Albert Grossman (power broker for Butterfield and Dylan both) to physical blows. Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" was playing on transistor radios across the fairgrounds, but the folk faithful still clung to the rustic purity championed by Pete Seeger (who, with George Wein, had founded the festival as a living ideal). Butterfield organist Barry Goldberg would muse afterwards that Newport "was the last outpost, and the feeling was that the barbarians were at the gate."

In those first moments, as his audience registered their shock, Dylan sang: "I wake up in the morning, fold my hands and pray for rain/ I got a head full of ideas that are drivin' me insane/ It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor/ I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more." The Newport Folk Festival, with its crafts workshops, studious song circles and socialist pay scale (every performer, from the lowliest banjo picker to Joan Baez, received a flat $50), had become a Maggie's farm of earnest expectations. And Dylan, with his head full of ideas, was declaring independence. No more songs tailor-made for a cause, despite the fact that they were his stock in trade. "It was honest," he would later say of his Newport stand, reducing the revolution to an expression of personal truth.

All these years later it's clear that there are many such truths, none greater than the other. The Dylan who now returns to Newport is manifold: rebellious poet, caustic observer, wounded troubadour, wayward soul. He walks straight out of a Grand Ole Opry hallucination -- in a wide-brimmed Stetson, white satin sleeves, black vest and matching slacks -- and, flanked by tall strangers in country-preacher black, sings "Roving Gambler" in a good old-timey style. Then without pause, he resurrects "The Times They Are A-Changin'," acknowledging both an irretrievable past and the irrepressible future. He goes on to play a set and a half of personal standards (from "Desolation Row" to "Girl of the North Country" to the rarely heard "Subterranean Homesick Blues") in a vein too clear-eyed to be nostalgic. When his crack band plugs in, on the Delta-tinged "Down in the Flood," there are, predictably, no catcalls.

His voice has constricted to a literary rasp, and his melodies have been reigned in accordingly. But with the exception of "Mr. Tambourine Man," which seems reduced without its keening cry, Dylan's repertoire hardly suffers from this treatment. (Think of the latter-day Miles Davis, who replaced fluid lines with jabbing, exclamatory fragments; Dylan has made a similar virtue of technical limitations.) He solos often, on both acoustic and electric guitars, in an effective sort of lyrical shorthand. And again, he's buoyed by a band that achieves the miraculous feat of seeming both raw and utterly polished.

The sun sinks into Narragansett Bay as Dylan encores with a telltale "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Blowin' In the Wind," soundtracks respectively marking the end and the beginning of his Newport romance. He's offered no greetings, no reflections, no conciliatory gestures; everything that needs to be said is in the songs. Yet Dylan seems intent on reminding us that even this fragmented persona, this assemblage of confessions, is a smoke screen no more authentic than his glued-on beard, or the wig peeking out from under his hat. The man won't pretend to be sincere, won't insult us with a plea for our trust. (One wonders whether Al Gore, clean-shaven in the wings, is taking notes.)

What he does reveal are stolen glimpses of where he's coming from -- a ramshackle road map with stops at Charley Patton and Little Richard and Elvis and Woody and Hank. They're all there, absorbed and transformed by Dylan's unremitting self. Turns out the man did encounter a devil at the crossroads, with one path leading to folk song and the other to rock 'n' roll. The former promised faithfulness and redemption, the latter glory and relevance. What made Dylan a renegade then, and a prophet now, is that he came to this fork in the road -- and took it.