In 1965, when Pennebaker followed Bob Dylan to London to shoot Don't Look Back, the wall dividing pop culture from art was getting hammered on all fronts by the young cineastes of the French New Wave, who spun B-movie conventions into delirious flights of fancy; by Andy Warhol, who turned consumer-culture detritus into the stuff of portraiture by virtue of a frame; by Tom Wolfe's journalism, Pauline Kael's criticism, and Kenneth Anger's howling-mad juxtapositions of boytoy bikers, the Crystals, and Jesus. Even so, rock 'n' roll was pretty much regarded as kid stuff--hardly serious documentary material.

Pennebaker and his collaborators--an all-star team that included his production partner, Richard Leacock, and Albert Maysles--were among the first to realize what a rich documentary subject rock 'n' roll made. Prior to the mid-1960s, rock 'n' roll movies were the Hollywood musical's bastard stepchild. They were set up basically the same way--with musical numbers contained within a loosely scripted framework--because nobody knew the extent or character of rock's appeal. Nobody made documentaries about rock stars: Who cared what pop singers had to say about anything? People didn't go to Frank Sinatra movies to hear Ol' Blue Eyes pontificate.

Bob Dylan changed all that--and by hanging on his every word in cinema-verité style, so did Don't Look Back. It was Dylan who inspired hipper-than-thou academics and tweedy critics to treat rock lyrics as poetry, and who forced cultural arbiters to parse his gnomic, often inscrutable songs for clues to the mind-set of young America. (You can picture some pipe-smoking pundit sitting by a turntable: " 'I met a white man who walked a black dog'--heavy.") By the time of the 1967 Monterey Pop festival, however, rock music was directly linked with sweeping changes in youth culture, in politics, in fashion. In Don't Look Back and Monterey Pop, Pennebaker treated rock 'n' roll as what it really was: breaking news.

That you-are-there immediacy makes Don't Look Back particularly fascinating. An unforgettable all-access pass behind the scenes of Dylan's '65 British tour, Don't Look Back hangs with Dylan and his entourage (including Joan Baez, Alan Price, and the droll Bob Neuwirth) as they move through a blur of indistinguishable hotel rooms and concert halls, pursued by highbrow journalists who want to talk to the oracle. Yes, the concert footage of the young Dylan in his punky prime is electrifying: When he sings "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" in full close-up, spitting William Zanzinger's rich-boy crimes into the camera as judge, jury, and executioner rolled into one, he elevates private resentment to the level of prophecy. He's heart-stoppingly cool--the zenith of beat glamour.

The most fun comes from the privileged glimpses of Dylan's sadistic wit. Sick of being analyzed, Dylan plays fearsome head games with a hapless Time reporter and a middle-aged interviewer. Lightweight folk-rocker Donovan drops by Dylan's room to play a wispy ballad for the gang. Dylan smiles coolly, asks for the guitar, then dashes off a little something called "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." See ya in hell, folkie. The other priceless offstage moment belongs to Albert Grossman, Dylan's manager, who provides a casual lesson in how to weasel extra money out of the BBC. It's nice to know the Sex Pistols didn't invent great rock 'n' roll swindles.

When Pennebaker and his fellow filmmakers went to Monterey Pop, they covered it as if it were the Democratic Convention, focusing on the audience as much as the main attractions. Monterey Pop hasn't dated as well as Don't Look Back, perhaps because the style Pennebaker and company pioneered has been imitated and, frankly, improved over the years. The herky-jerky camera gets across the excitement of the event, but there's too much jiggling around when you just want to see the performance--especially when Otis Redding hits the orgiastic climax of "I've Been Loving You Too Long."

Nevertheless, when you see Pete Townshend kill off "My Generation" with an epic bout of guitar-smashing, or you see Janis Joplin writhing orgasmically in the thrall of "Ball and Chain"--not to mention Jimi Hendrix raping his amp and torching his ax in the spectacular fit of aggression that is "Wild Thing"--you're watching rock 'n' roll iconography develop in the camera. It's startling to see this many oft-cited performances captured in the same movie.

Seen back to back, Don't Look Back and Monterey Pop serve as ground zero for the past 30 years of rock 'n' roll documentaries, in ways that aren't always good. D.A. Pennebaker's films are the obvious ancestors of classics like Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz and Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense (and his upcoming Storefront Hitchcock). At the same time, though, whenever you see pretentious pop stars wanking off about current affairs in shaky close-up--remember the insufferable Rattle & Hum?--it was Pennebaker and company who helped confer legitimacy on their ilk. Don't Look Back and Monterey Pop gave mixed blessings to rock 'n' roll, to be sure. But after 30 years, we're still blessed to have them.