Bob Dylan: The 1966 Live Recordings - Sony 36-CD box-set - November 11th 2016

This official release is huge for every Dylan fan.

 

I will probably hold on to my "Genuine Live 1966" box anyway, but yeah, the official is way better.

 

8pm, Thursday 19th May, 1966. Odeon (demolished), Glasgow, Scotland.



According to Clinton Heylin, the Glasgow hotel room songs included in Eat The Document and The Cutting Edge were recorded during the daytime on the 19th (although to me, like Al Kooper said of Blonde On Blonde, they have the feel of the middle of the night). These are a mark of the rate at which Dylan's advancing: they don't sound much like the music on Blonde On Blonde, and they're obviously leagues away from The Basement Tapes. This is a period of Dylan's music that, these stolen moments aside, was never destined to be captured.



The next sound we hear in this collection, however, is the Glasgow audience applauding and whistling at a jaw-droppingly tender version of It's All Over Now, Baby Blue: final consonants - "sense/coincidence/streets/sheets" - beautifully drawn out; "home" as wounded as you'd expect, from a man who really wants to be home by now. He will say as much to John Lennon in a few days. He will say it to an Italian reporter, possibly in Paris: off his face and fearing burnout or death in a plane crash.

Mickey Jones' claim that Dylan was bored of the acoustic sets seems to ring less and less true with each passing show. Desolation Row is given the kind of care here that, frankly, it's always given. Possibly even more so. It's astonishing to hear the kind of value for money he gives his audience here that is so lacking from later in his career. He used to care, as he would sing 34 years later. Well, he cared in 1966.

Desolation Row cuts short and we're straight into Just Like A Woman. "My electric guitar never goes out of tune." They love that.

"Eeeeiiiit was raining from the first": again, Dylan has no rhythm to obey other than his own. The character in the song sounds tired and jaded. Not the song itself, but the man who's living it. The harmonica sounds like the last gasp of a dying man.

More applause and whistles.

"My weariness amazes me". Again, you believe him. Things are taking their toll. "Hey Mr. Tambourine Man" is starting to sound like "I, Mr. Tambourine Man" and therefore becoming an intriguing exercise in identity: Dylan is pleading with himself to play the song he wants to hear so that he can follow himself.

The harmonica solo gets a round of applause. Deeply appreciative audience. Unfortunately, we've been here before: it's the ones who love the first half that you want to be careful of.

The electric set takes nearly a minute to get going. It sounds more provocative earlier than at any time previously on the tour. The f**k-you to the audience that Dylan normally saves for the penultimate song is in full flow at Song 1. It's a post-"Judas" world now. This could get interesting.

"It could even be like a myth" no longer rhymes with "that last night I was with". It's more like "mEth". "Swayed" and "played" are shouted now, like insults. Dylan's picking a fight with potentially rowdy Glaswegians. "I'm leaving today" is declamatory.

The crowd likes it, though. Must try harder.

Robertson sounds like he's wrestling with his guitar rather than playing it.

There's a sexual desperation to "Yes, I'd do anything in this God almighty world/ If you just let me come home with you". No lyrical promises about what he'll do in the jingle jangle morning. He doesn't want the morning: he wants the night. This is perhaps the harshest deliberate inversion of his past: a popular folk cover version from his first album turned into a plethora of sexualised, proto-psychedelic imagery: "I'll buy you a gun that squirts/I'll buy you a velvet shirt".

Lots of shouting now, and what sounds like audience division. Straight into Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. No intro.

"Up on housing project hill/It's either fortune or fame/You must pick one or the other/Neither of them are to be what they claim". Dylan should know. You can pick your side: folkie or rock star - they're both a lie, and you're a fool to believe either of them.

A lovely jagged solo from Robertson. He sounds like he could play this song for another ten minutes.

The crowd are extremely restless now. As Dylan introduces the next song, you can hear him stifle a laugh. Is it out of resignation? Or is he enjoying this? Has he got them exactly where he wants them? It's enough for him to ponder going into the microphone babble earlier than usual. He sounds like teacher who's inciting a riot in his own classroom. The babble draws cheers from some of the audience, as if they're applauding his wilful act of confusion. It then sounds like he cups his hands over his mouth, or covers it to announce a song about a "brand new Leopard Skin Pill Box HAAAAAATTTT."

"Yes, I know..." he answers someone. I'm as bored of this as you are.

Robbie Robertson picks up where he left off: a little funkier than usual. Hudson and Manuel join the party. Tonight, this song swings. Dylan's on board too. It's like the weirdest honky-tonk in town.

The usual tape reel change and we're into One Too Many Mornings. "Dooooowwwwnnn the street the dogs are barking..." Suddenly it sounds cavernous. Dylan's drawing out the vowels: "gaaaze", "maaaahhhles", "maaahhhne".

As Dylan moves to the piano, the crowd every night have their greatest opportunity to get involved. Tonight there's more than the usual amount of vitriol. But Dylan doesn't want them to feel unique. This happens to him every night. "Yes, yes. Yes, yes yes. We know all about it...yes...this is...come come. Come on now. Come ahn, come ahn. Come ahn. Shhhhh. This is a Steinway piano..." Settle down, children. Your comments have been noted and will be passed on to the correct department.



"You try so hard/But you don't understand/Just what you're gonna say when you get haaaaahhhhhhhwwwmmmme" This level of derision is where he's been all night. But there's still further to go: "Yes and you're positive that something's happening/And you better find out what it is/You know that, don't you, Mr. Jones?"

"We want Dylan! We want Dylan!" Two audience members: the first sounding particularly like a petulant child that's been promised something and still hasn't got it; the second sounding just plain cheated.

"Bob Dylan's backstage, now: he couldn't make it for the second half."

More protests.

"Nah, nah...Bob Dylan's backstage...now, he got very sick. I'm here to take his place...He just can't come on...He can't come out...if he could, he would. I'm sorry..."

What an act of self-sabotage: even if you've enjoyed the second half, I'm here to tell you that you've only seen the understudy. I'm sorry. Even if you think you like it, you haven't.

Like A Rolling Stone, again, is sung at the top of his voice from the highest mountaintop. He loses himself in the song as he never has: he stops singing at one point and then returns to repeat parts of the song that he's never repeated. He sings it with the triumph of someone who has nothing and yet nothing to lose: of not letting anyone else get his kicks for him.

In two days, he would declare, "I'm gonna get me a new Bob Dylan. See how long he lasts."

There’s footage of Dylan, in NDH, leaving Glasgow the following morning. “Come back soon” the fans plead. “I’ll be back in a month or two” he tells them. No one could know that it would actually be 23 years.






Footage:

Hotel room songs:

What Kind Of Friend Is This, ETD

I Can’t Leave Her Behind, ETD
On A Rainy Afternoon, ETD
On a Rainy Afternoon - Elston Gunn

Ballad Of A Thin Man, ETD (3rd section; first two are Newcastle and Cardiff)

Fans: “come back soon…”, Glasgow Queen Street Station (presumably 20.5.66)

 

SN, you are now surpassing yourself with these reviews! Do you have plans for a Ki*d*e book by any chance....???

Re: Glasgow

Ron McKay wrote this in Glasgow Live in October 2016. I don't remember hearing about the incident with the waiter before, or the apparent theft from the tour bus. Anyone?

So when he and the party checked into the hotel – it was the North British then, owned by British Rail – he probably wasn't looking forward to the gig at the Odeon cinema later that evening. From the darling of the folk purists he had become an object of pure hatred and the barracking had become part of the spectacle on the tour. Glasgow's Young Socialists even dragooned as many members as they could to go along and boo, but they were overwhelmed and largely drowned out by the positive response. There were some walkouts and chants, perhaps organised by the YS, of “We want Dylan”, to which Bob replied, “Dylan got sick backstage. I'm here to take his place.” In the ABC in Edinburgh next night opponents even turned up with mouth organs to try to drown out the electronic explosion, to no avail.

On YouTube you can find footage of Dylan, with Robbie Robertson, in the hotel bedroom in the NB playing a so-far unreleased song, What Kind Of Friend Is This? That room was later to be the scene of a sadly typical Glasgow event. A waiter arrived at the door bringing food and suddenly screamed, “F**k him” at Dylan, accusing him of being “a f**king traitor to folk music”. Dylan's driver-bodyguard Tom Keylock quickly bundled the man out of the room. He recalled: “He pulls a knife on me. I've still got the scar to prove it. So I gave him a good kicking.” The band's tour bus was also tanned, with recording and hi-fi equipment stolen.

#

 

Please let it be true.

Mickey might have been getting bored, Bob may have been expressing his boredom offstage, but that's simply not at all what we're hearing.

To borrow an observation, there's something happening here, and I don't think Mr. Jones knows what it is.

This is the phenomenon that has yet to be accounted for from this tour. Why, if he's trying to taunt audiences in the second half, is he taking such care, with such intimacy, in the first? He's still exploring these songs himself, diving more deeply into these than perhaps any one man/one guitar performances in human history. He's not rushing, not pandering, and even when he's playing around (see especially Paris), he's treating the songs with a reverence that would have to be seen as almost psychotic if the audience wasn't holding them in even higher reverence -- and still with room for both him and them to laugh at the jokes!

What does this have to do with a scorched-earth tour meant to burn his folk legacy to the ground? Nothing at all. Still, 50 years on, it's inconceivable to me that the same guy did 2 tours this different, and beyond inconceivable that he did the tours simultaneously, every night.

No wonder he disappeared after this. Where else was going to go?

You've pointed out before that the scorn that we talk about him directing at the audience isn't necessarily there in each performance. We're Mickey Jones-ing, I think. It might not be there in any of them, really. It may be as simple as this, a young god enjoying his power.

He cares about every second in the first half. He sticks every landing. What kind of ecstatic state must he have been in to be so transported, yet so thoroughly grounded, to keep doing the work to keep growing these songs night after night?

That's the same guy doing the second half. I think we can gain a lot by following your lead, @Somebody Naked, and assume that he's taking the same level of care. It wasn't his fault that the audience wasn't coming along for the ride. After all, he could dive all the way down into the acoustic material, and soar the heights of the second half's roar. Why couldn't they? He was fully engaged with both.

I think with Bob there's always been a very thin line between hurt and anger. And I think that people's interpretations of Bob tell us more about them than about Bob....but this is becoming my obsession, to unify the vision of who he was in both halves of the show, and reinterpret them as the same guy, doing the same thing, for the same reason, in both halves. He loves both halves, and is frustrated when audiences don't.

Six thousand five hundred and ninety-four posts into the thread, and this is one of the best observations yet.

I've got bunches of Bob playlists, and this is one of the only two songs that I have two versions back to back. (The other is "Lay Lady Lay", the versions from Budokan and Rolling Thunder.) I made this particular playlist when BS 4 was the only version we had, and I'm fine sticking with that version. I love that he includes the spoken intro crediting Eric Von Schmidt and the joke about Harvard, although I've also always wondered why. Maybe to establish just how thoroughly he's stealing the song? I mean, he's basically saying, "It used to go like that, but now it goes like this."

These 1966 versions of "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" are my favorite electric numbers, even more than "Ballad of a Thin Man" (never liked it - too on the nose, and finger-pointing in the most boring and obvious way possible) or "Like A Rolling Stone" (I won't fight anyone who calls it the best rock and roll song of all time, but stripped of context, the performances don't add THAT much to the incendiary studio version). This is the one that feels giddy, night in and night out, and does much, much more than just throw on some electric geetars and crank the noise. The organ is the instrument that punches me in the face (why not more yelling about THAT, I have no idea), but I especially love the acrobatics of his voice, and you're right, the lyric changes are more just different words, they're time travel.

But, again, I don't hear it as harsh. I hear it as glee. It used to sound like that. Now it sounds like this.

Hey, @Somebody Naked, I also love that of all the lines you could have called out, you picked "I'll buy you a velvet shirt" -- also inadequately accounted for me on this tour is the phenomenon of Bob as Dandy. So many great shots of him shopping for clothes on this trip. Because he used to look like that, but now he looks like this.





God help me, I live for this thread.

 

^ This, this and THIS. ^

 

I've had the same thought and felt the disappointment recently, at the last few concerts I attended. Paying big money to hear Bob Dylan sing cover versions of Sinatra is not my idea of a good time. Audiences in general, although excited to see him in person, feel the same disappointment I've observed. I tell myself I should make allowance for his age and lifetime of achievement, but then that damn pedal steel kicks in, and the Sinatra songs start ....

 

7.45pm, Friday 20th May, 1966. ABC Theatre (demolished), Edinburgh, Scotland.




“Come on, Robert” that evening’s Edinburgh concert begins. It’s only a passive-aggressive heckle: there would be worse to come. And he’s off, punctuated by some rather odd screaming from a fan who seems to have wandered in from a Beatles concert.

Two songs in and Dylan needs a D harmonica. The old one “got filled up with…dirt” (he gives this word the same emphasis as he did in Birmingham). He’s given one. “It’s a Scottish one, huh?”

Dylan sounds tired. These acoustic songs are starting to sound like a burden.

It’s the most languid, formless performance of Visions Of Johanna Dylan’s given to date. It’s still fascinating to listen to, as it unravels before you; but it starts without momentum and ends without structure. The peddle-fiddler, indeed.

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue lags, unusually. Dylan sounds like the man singing this song has really given part of himself: he's no longer a complete person. Wounded, bruised, battered. "The carpet too is moving under yoooouuu" takes on a life of its own. It's all more than a little sad.

After an intro that seems to go on forever, Desolation Row gets underway. It's sung as if performed to an empty theatre: gently, sadly mused to himself. There's still immense care in this performance; but also, depths of fragility thus far unexplored.

As lines go, "The Titanic sails at dawn" has a certain finality. But surely it's never sounded quite this final. The song fades out shortly afterwards, which is a shame: this is the most beautifully nihilistic Dylan has ever sounded. It's the sound of a man bidding farewell and not giving a damn.

This fragility continues. The songs have never sounded like this before. Dylan sounds as if he's gently telling the story of his own annihilation to a small child: carefully, slowly and precisely; and with a clear, emotional truth that would carry the air of warning if he had it in him. This must have been a huge shock to the Edinburgh audience - Highway 61 Revisited this is not. Once again, Dylan completely redefines these songs for an audience who surely, by now, no longer know what to expect.

Mr. Tambourine Man must carry some degree of familiarity, right? Possibly. But no one applauds when they hear it. It's too delicate: if they make a noise it might break right in front of their eyes. Ready to fade is about right.

And fade is exactly what happens. It's oddly appropriate that we don't get to hear what the audience thought of this strange, wounded set. At times simply lost, at others overwhelmingly personal; it gently fades out, testimony uttered to and heard by no one.

The first sound heard in the electric half, before any musical instrument, is whistling; followed by slightly boorish cheering. And, what sounds like someone who has brought a tambourine with them. Once again, almost no audible audience whatsoever has switched to your typical, rowdy Friday night crowd.

The Hawks give Dylan the momentum that he was lacking. They drive and propel him through the music; but his voice sounds ragged and tired. He misses the occasional note. The crowd loves it. More whistles.

On the next two songs, Dylan is starting to show the bite that he's been lacking. He simply can't just obey his own rules when he's backed by a group of this force.

That said, he's keeping them on their toes: he's doing things that he's never done before in terms of pausing, breathing and stretching out certain notes. After listening to nearly twenty of these concerts, it suddenly makes things very exciting: unpredictable, even dangerous.

A few shouts follow Dylan's intro to Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat. So, just for good measure, he throws in a dedication - "of course" - to the Taj Mahal.

Slow handclaps. "Go back to (where you're from?)". The band respond by making their counting in of the song pretty much like a particularly aggressive slow handclap.

This has real bite. Robertson is on form. Dylan's spitting out words as if for the first time. Manuel's riding the wave.

"Rubbish!"
"Shhh."
Something about Bob Dylan.
Something inaudible that makes the crowd laugh.
And a drumbeat to silence them.

In terms of Dylan's performance, this is a night like no other. He's experimenting with phrasing; aiming for notes that are often shouted, and shouting notes that he often sings. There's even a snatch of melody at the end of One Too Many Mornings that seems entirely new.

There's at least one fan out there; who shouts, in a beautifully thick Scottish accent, "Come on Bobby D!"

As he sits at the piano, the crowd seizes the opportunity to make themselves heard. "Bobby!" "Go home!" And then, just in case that was aimed at them rather than Dylan, someone gets really angry. In the film of this moment, Dylan can be seen knowingly gesturing to the audience. Let the children say what they want to say: they'll tire themselves out soon. But he's not quite as placid as he seems. He follows this with a stern “You must learn to control yourselves”. (I say that: it sounds stern on the tape. But this entire sequence was filmed and is in NDH. He seems remarkably unbothered.)

"Is this on?…Is this one on? Check. Richard. Is this mike on?" asks Dylan "Richard...Richard?" (Alderson, that is: not Manuel.) Someone interrupts him; “Get off, Bobby!”

Honestly. That anyone was still referring to him as Bobby shows how little they’d moved on.

"How about switching it off?” yells one bright spark, his cockney accent somewhat incongruous.

More insistent this time: "Richard..."

Oh. It's on.

The version of Ballad Of A Thin Man that follows has been known to fans since 2005, since its inclusion on the No Direction Home CD. Although, unlike that, this is in the harsh, naked mono of Alderson's soundboard. It's pretty good (although I'm saving my superlatives for the following night). Hudson excels himself again. There's a certain part of the song that's growing and growing. Tonight it's "And you're positive something's happening/And you know you gotta find out what it is!" Bits of this version have made their way into various music documentaries: Dylan baptised by a crown of light, Pennebaker as close as he can possibly get.



Someone, I guess, refers to Dylan’s glass of water. “It’s all whisky” he replies. “Yes, I happen to be a drunkard…fiery water.”



Like A Rolling Stone is starting to take on a new level of vitriol. Propelled by Mickey Jones’ opening drumbeat - which, between now and a week later, will acquire a defiant finality - the pace seems to assume a sado-masochistic quality: dragged out over some 9 minutes. Triumphant but vicious.

Dylan ends by telling Edinburgh that they’ve been “very nice to us…the best audience(s)”. He sounds genuine, but you never can tell. The following night, they’re due to play Newcastle. After that, it’s just Paris and London: three concerts stretched out over a very civilised six days. During which, Dylan will also turn 25.


Footage:

Ballad Of A Thin Man (final section - others are Newcastle, Cardiff, Glasgow), ETD
Ballad Of A Thin Man, NDH
Ballad Of A Thin Man, CCDLB (Criterion Collection Dont Look Back)
Various bits of onstage footage edited into many other clips

 

I've just spent quite a bit of time trying to pick out the Edinburgh footage from the Newcastle footage. It's fiendishly well edited together and quite confusing, but I think I've reached some conclusions.

Two concerts, 24 hours apart. Similar-looking stages and similar wardrobe choices. But there are some clear differences and pointers.

The key remark is by Richard Alderson, in NDH, backstage talking to Dylan and The Hawks about the reviews. "From what town?" asks Dylan. "From the last town" says Alderson; "Edinborrow". Right: that means that the entire sequence of backstage clips, that pop up in various places - this clip, the "don't worry, Mickey, I'll protect you" remark, Robbie Robertson examining his fingernails, Dylan asking Alderson how it's going to sound tonight - are all from Newcastle on May 21st; probably in the interval, I'd say.

The performance of Like A Rolling Stone in NDH - and included as an extra - is also from Newcastle.

BUT. This is where it gets clever. The performance is mainly shot from two different concerts. Newcastle is where we see Dylan sweaty, pale, twitchy, making exaggerated movements with his mouth, dressed all in black and in front of a red curtain. He's shot from very close but not actually on the stage.

Edinburgh, on the other hand - I'm now convinced - is the stuff where Pennebaker is actually on stage with them (the opening of One Too Many Mornings NDH extra, the pan across Garth Hudson's keyboard, the shots of the audience, etc). This is certain from the Ballad Of A Thin Man sequence in NDH: which, usefully, contains a single pan shot of Dylan sitting at the piano, helped by Richard Manuel (vacating the stool for him). We can see the colour of the curtain, which is kind of a beige/orange colour. I'd always assumed that this difference was just down to lighting; ditto Dylan's clothes. But no. In Edinburgh he's wearing a dark blue matching velvet suit and shirt, which in Newcastle is black. Robbie Robertson seems to have dug out his purple shirt for both nights; again, which had me confused for a while.

This also backs up the theory - can't remember where I read it - that Dylan allowed Pennebaker to get up close with his cameras for one night (Edinburgh) and then regretted it by the next night (Newcastle).

Everyone still with me? Here are two screenshots, both from the NDH Like A Rolling Stone, that appear almost immediately consecutively.

Edinburgh, May 20th:



Newcastle, May 21st:

 

I just dont get the idea that a guy in his mid 70's still doing 60+ shows a year does not care. His shows to me show a lot of care and attention to detail. I paid to see 2 shows on the recent tour and felt I received value for money.

He does not care that people often dont like what he's doing (eg Sinatra) ... that much I can see (and its what I love about him). That's rather different though.

 

Got to agree with your there. I just saw him the once this time around, twice in 2015. The performance of Love Sick from Bournemouth this May demonstrates a huge amount of care in the performance, to give but one example.

 

8.30pm, Saturday 21st May, 1966. Odeon, Newcastle, England.




This, for Dylan, is the last day of a punishing schedule: ten cities - and only two days without concerts - since Bristol on the 10th. And, of the times that I can track down, this is the latest scheduled start. They won't finish until after 10pm (only Birmingham, which was delayed until a 9pm start, ie 10.30/45 finish, would have ended later).

There's immediately a discernible focus to Dylan's playing and singing tonight, compared to Edinburgh's uniquely strange acoustic set. On 4th Time Around, he manages to split the difference; employing his own sense of rhythm and emphasis whilst not losing the thread entirely. And a welcome laugh on the "gum" line.

Visions Of Johanna (partially viewable in No Direction Home), too, seems to benefit from having momentarily lost its way in Edinburgh. It feels like it's been reborn, to an extent. You can see in this clip, on the line "he speaks of a farewell kiss to me", the exaggerated shapes that Dylan makes with his mouth in this concert - also in the almost complete performance of Like A Rolling Stone: also viewable both in No Direction Home and as an extra on the DVD.



Warm applause for It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, and for Desolation Row. Again, tonight he's doing things to words - like "carnival" - that he's not done before. Something that Dylan has done throughout his career is to deconstruct his songs so that he can rebuild them on stage. It's been frustrating, sometimes, but it appears to be his way of keeping his music alive.

Lots of things are different now. Just Like A Woman is introduced as "Hamlet Revisited". Mistakes notwithstanding - "Everybody knows/That baby can't be blessed" - It's among the most beautiful versions of this song committed to tape. Somehow, it manages to sound tender and accusatory at the same time.



Mr. Tambourine Man's harmonica solos seem to take off to somewhere else entirely. They're abstract, mercurial. When Todd Haynes chose to use this playing as the only footage of Dylan himself in I'm Not There, it was with good reason. Dylan, in these solos, seems like the jester that Don McLean gleefully called him five years later – a label that Dylan openly rejected in 2017. His harmonica playing seems like a baffling trick; a smokescreen identity, a playful alter ego for anyone who thinks they understand him.

And then it's the loud Dylan, the rock Dylan, the Saturday night Dylan. In fact, in the mix, it's Dylan himself who seems to take a back seat in Tell Me, Momma. The Hawks are there, each identifiable by their instrument, man for man. They're a true band: momentarily upstaged neither by their leader nor their guitar player, as is sometimes the case in this song.

Enthusiastic yet polite applause gives way to an early heckle "(Bring your horns?), Dylan!"

"Shh" seemed to work last night. It's Dylan's default response tonight. We then have either an inaudible edit, or the only time that Dylan doesn't introduce I Don't Believe You. The song sounds different, too: sedate in places, but controllably barbed. It's not as wild as it can be. Robbie Robertson sounds like he's noticed this and is trying to give it a helping hand towards the end.

Baby, Let Me Follow You Down sounds a little rushed in places. But you can hear Dylan trying to fire himself up on lines like "I'll buy you a velvet shirt".

A few whistles and shouts; and straight into Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. It's a rather split performance: a cautious, slightly guarded first half - "I don't have the strength to get up and take another shot" - is starting to sound literal; but going into Robertson's solo - "left looking just like a GHOST" and the two minutes or so that follow, the song takes off. When his energy flags, Dylan seems to take real strength from The Hawks. When he sings "everybody said they'd stand behind me when the game got rough", I'm reminded of the comment that he made in No Direction Home - how he thought that they were "gallant knights" for sticking with him.

More rowdy heckles. Boos. Slow handclaps. It's that very evening - either before the show, or in the interval, that Dylan joked about that booing sound; and how the papers claimed that, at one concert, "everybody walked out". But, at the same time, he seems genuinely exhausted and concerned about the slim likelihood of being shot. You get the sense that he's using the last bits of his strength to not let himself take any of this too seriously. But that's by no means a battle that he will definitely win.

The intro to Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat is the most perfunctory and exhausted he's sounded. More boos: "...come on..."

"You're talking to the wrong person". I'm not who you think I am. In the light of that evening's comment "I'm gonna get me a new Bob Dylan and use him", you can't help but wonder if Dylan is trying to walk away from the whole thing - looking down on himself as he limps through these last few dates.

And then: distantly in the audience, someone calls him Judas. "Liar" Dylan fires back, laughing with Robertson; The Hawks in on the joke. There have been various people involved who claim that a large part of the booing was down to fans reading in the papers what had happened at previous concerts. Surely this clinches it. The most famous heckle in history was only four days old, and it - and the reply - had already acquired notoriety.

The tape doesn't capture the next batch of inter-song exchanges, so one can only imagine where it goes from there. What a few days it's been: Liverpool was only a week ago.

After One Too Many Mornings, Dylan coughs and tries another tack: "Come, come...no, I'm a sick man, come on, don't do that. Leave me alone."

He plays the opening notes of Ballad Of A Thin Man. "Shhhh..."



In 1996, the BBC screened their definitive series Dancing In The Street. A US co-production, it's been very difficult to find since; particularly in its original broadcast form. I recorded it that summer, however, and quickly gravitated towards the third episode 'So You Wanna Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star': the story of Dylan, folk, rock, folk-rock and The Beatles. The very end of the episode played out with footage of my favourite version of this song: previously viewable in Eat The Document, but only since the release of this collection do I know that it's from Newcastle (in Dancing In The Street, it’s mixed with Edinburgh). That opening "Shhhh" is the identifying mark. Robertson's midnight blues licks. Danko's bass comes in like the Grim Reaper knocking. Hudson's organ sounds like voodoo. Dylan looks exhausted: hooded eyes, pale countenance. The look of a man (to paraphrase Neil Young: 24, but so much more) who's lived too long, seen too much, been awake for days. I do believe he's had enough. I was only really familiar with the opening few lines, but the rest of the performance is just as good. For me, this is the one. It's not dark yet, but...

The song builds and builds to those ever-shifting lines. Tonight it's a sly combination of "Isn't that right, Mr. Jones?"; "Yes, and you know something is happening/And it's happening to YOU/Isn't it, Mr. Jones?", followed by "Yes, and you're POSITIVE something's happening/And you know you must find out what it is/Don't you, Mr. Jones?" There's an increasing desperation and cruelty in these words that builds with every verse and every performance.

What follows is a quiet riot, and most of it indiscernible.

Not forgetting to switch the Newcastle CD for the Cardiff CD, the performance of Like A Rolling Stone that follows is well-known to Bobcats. Pre-2005, it was unheard. In that year it was included in No Direction Home and, in almost complete form, as an extra on the DVD. It's not one of my favourite versions, but it is hypnotic to watch. Dylan appears pale, sweaty, manic: the odd, exaggerated movements of his mouth punctuating a performance that oscillates between twitchy and triumphant.

On the CD, what's immediately fascinating is the time that he takes to start the song. Well over a minute elapses as he indulges the crowd to say whatever they want; and, given where we are in the set list and what happened earlier, I can't resist the notion that he's goading the crowd with his silence; almost willing someone to cry out "Judas!" again so he can really give them both barrels. However, no one does. There are shouts, for sure, but not the heresy he was perhaps hoping for. He has to channel this fighting spirit into the song instead.



This is music on its own terms. The Hawks set a majestic pace: cocksure but somehow almost regal. Dylan plays the town crier: broadcasting the news. He gives the song nothing it needs, because it needs nothing. It has its own power, and he's learned that in the year or so since he wrote it. Even so, the song audibly transports him.

A sheepish "Thank you very much", some boos, the National Anthem.

This time next week, it'll all be over.


Footage:

Visions Of Johanna, NDH (second half, from “little boy lost” - first half is London 26.5.66)
Mr. Tambourine Man, ETD/INT

Backstage:

“everybody walked out…”, NDH
“how’s it gonna sound tonight…”, 66US
“don’t worry, Mickey: I’ll protect you…”, NDH

Baby, Let Me Follow You Down, NDH (mixed with Edinburgh footage)
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, NDH (third section - “and picking up Angel…”)
Ballad Of A Thin Man, ETD (first third; then Cardiff and Glasgow)
Like A Rolling Stone, NDH

 

Bob Dylan getting threatened - 1966
"Like a Rolling Stone" - No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

 

STOP PRESS: Mickey Jones is wearing a different shirt in the Newcastle backstage clips from the one he's wearing in the "I shouldn't be singing/I'm gonna get me a new Bob Dylan" sequence. Maybe the latter isn't Newcastle...

 

I can't wait for the next installment! Approaching the finish line...

 

Really enjoying Dublin at this moment. Nice sound, until it gets a bit boomy on the electric set. No complaints though; great stuff.

Baby Let Me...is interesting in its 'chugging right along' beat.

 

'Chugging' is a good word for it. LSPBH never sounded like it did that night - see footage in No Direction Home.

 

9pm, Tuesday 24th May, 1966. L'Olympia, Paris, France.




After landing in Paris on May 22nd, Dylan was subjected to another surreal, inane press conference the following day; as seen in No Direction Home.

The show, on May 24th - Dylan's 25th birthday - is unlike anything else on the tour. It's chiefly notable as the one show where the acoustic set causes more consternation than the electric half.



The audience, before Dylan even touches his guitar, are at the level that most crowds don't reach until the end of the electric set. Cheering, shouting, you name it. She Belongs To Me silences them initially. And well it should: it's stunning. The final vowel of "the law can't touch her at all" lingers beautifully. The harmonica playing is uniquely inventive.

More shouting; and more shouting at the shouting. A small, dedicated bunch strike up a rowdy chorus of "Happy birthday to you..."

Well, this is new. "Who is that...?" Dylan responds; half "what the hell?" and half "oh, you shouldn't have". And we're only one song in.

"Uh, this is a request...requesté..." He laughs at his own attempts to make up words that sound like French - "bon choi?" - and then settles on "er, 'request' song". Which, of course, it isn't: he's been playing it every night for months. But hey. He's in a playful mood. 4th Time Around seems on the verge of falling apart; but in a good way. Possibly it's the guitar that he's having trouble with.

"Er: havez-vous du boeuf?", which I guess is Dylan Franglais for "you got a problem?"

"Just what I thought".

If anyone should understand Visions Of Johanna, surely it's the French. This is the country of Rimbaud, after all; of Marcel Duchamp and the Dada moustache. It's the city of Mona Lisa inside the museum. This is how you do a song at four in the morning, after the mother of all parties, when only the most dedicated are still there, still awake or still alive. Again, his tentative guitar playing threatens to make it all come crashing down; but it makes him put more emphasis on his vocal rhythms - it's almost a cappella. And yet it's the guitar that doesn't know when to stop.

"Is there anybody out there that understands English?"

"YEAH!"

"Oh...that's wonderful; that's wonderful."

"We love you!"

"It gets so lonesome sometimes."

Guitar trouble. "Well, I try here. Uhhh. Oh, god..."

More guitar trouble. And, out of nowhere, he decides to discuss his command of the language.

"I was saying it all day in the halls today; I say it to the cab drivers...so I can say it. But, if I don't have to say it, I'd just as soon not, you know..."

Cheers for It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. They know this one. But, once again, the guitar Dylan's playing is threatening to undermine everything; like tightrope walking on a slack piece of string.

It's one of the more intimate-sounding concerts. At times, it sounds like Dylan's playing in a Greenwich Village coffee bar.

An decipherable heckle that sounds something like "Water big drink, please".

"Welll...I must keep drinking this water: it's hard to sing such a long song, I don't know if I can keep it up, you know. Great water here. Some of the best water in the world; I don't know if anybody has told anybody here that, but..."

"O-lympia...this is Olympia, huh? It's a very nice place, isn't it?"

The battle with this guitar is not one that he can win. Finally, that line he's been throwing out for months has found its true place: "You see, my electric guitar never goes out of tune". Ba-doom tish.

More applause for Desolation Row. A slightly knowing quality on the lines about Ophelia's 22nd birthday. And a premature fade out.

"This is a request; another request song. I often do a lot of request s...I can only do so many, now..."

Just Like A Woman starts. Sort of. "Whaaaat?" he incredulously wonders. This guitar seems to stay in tune for less than a minute at a time. He's getting tetchy now, and so are the audience.

"I'm doing this for you. I don't care...if you wanna hear it that way, I'll play it for you that way, you know?"

A heckle. In French.

"Ah, merci, merci...You just can't wait, can ya? Just can't wait...you have to go to work at ten o'clock, huh? Oh, it's a drag (for) me too, you know...that's folk music for you. Folk music, it does this all the time..."

This is getting ridiculous. No matter how hard he tries, this just sounds like one of those tiny children's guitars that never stays in tune. Anything would be better than this. Anything.

"...another guitar? Is there another guitar out there? Does anybody have another guitar? You have another guitar? Can I have your guitar? My guitar's broken; it broke on the way here...it's happened many times before: it's nothing to be alarmed about. Did you bring a magazine to read, or something?"

More jeers/cheers.

"Oh, I love you. You're all so wonderful."

"Do you have that guitar or not? You have it? D'you have a guitar? You said you had one. You were just...you were fooling me, huh? Well, I'll play this guitar, but I can't play it for you outta tune. I can't - I can't play this guitar for you outta tune. I'll put it in tune as soon as I can...in the meantime, you can...you can go to the bowling alley or something."

And then, a defiant and slightly patronising "It doesn't matter."

"Is it true that one...one Frenchman is worth a thousand lives? Is it?...I've always thought that..."

Nearly there. Maybe.

"Aw, come on - I wouldn't behave like this if I came to see you...I'm very sorry, but...ahhh.."

"Why must you...oh, don't be so bored, please. It's fun: just watch me tune it!...I'm trying to kill time; I wanna get outta here as fast as you wanna get outta here: I'm just trying to get this..."

A quick note about the mike for Richard Anderson; and finally, after nearly six minutes of fighting - and losing - with this agonisingly poor guitar: "Nobody feels any pain..."

After which, straight into Mr. Tambourine Man. Not going through that again. It's a measure of Dylan's talent that he can still produce a performance like that after all those problems. And, on a day when he must be more aware of the passing of time than on any other, he puts something extra into "Let me forget about today until tomorr....

...row..."

And he's off. Part Two awaits, after a Part One that seemed to go for hours.

For reasons best known to himself - satire, irony or just good old-fashioned provocation - Dylan had got hold of a massive American flag and had it draped over the upstage wall for the entire duration of the electric set (it's actually there in the first half: it’s visible in the acoustic set, in 66US at 9.43; but it’s better lit in the second half, and far more in the audience’s face). In both the remaining shows after this, he makes a point of telling his audience that this is American music that they're listening to. Maybe he was making the same point in Paris. But it's another thing that makes this show unique. And uniquely surreal.



The electric set kicks off with all the force and precision of a locomotive. The Hawks are as tight as they’ve ever been. I can’t hear and anger or bile in these first two songs tonight: only confidence, celebration and a certain playfulness. Tell Me, Momma doesn't often sound like you could dance to it; but it does here. There's a beautiful melodic melancholy to Richard Manuel's piano. Dylan seems to be building a kind of wall around him, however. The intro to I Don't Believe You no longer sounds like he's trying to start a fight; merely that he expects one, and he can barely be bothered to show up for it. Also, bearing in mind that Dylan hasn't had a show in three days, his singing voice is exhausted. Things are really taking their toll.

Robbie Robertson plays some beautifully spiky guitar on Baby, Let Me Follow You Down. Dylan is starting to sound as bored of the Tom Thumb intro as I am. Inside the bubble, it's only done for his own amusement, seemingly; and it doesn't even do that any more. There are a couple of points in this show where he says something in between songs - or even in the middle of a song - that's purely for the benefit of the musicians: no one is allowed to penetrate the nucleus of this particular party any more.

On phrases like "I cannot move" or "I don't have the strength" his voice is shot - or "shaaaaaaahhhhhhaaaattttt". He's getting near the end of his rope now: and, to turn some recent lyrics on their head, this is turning him into an old man, and he's only just 25.

Obviously, I only have the recording to go on, but something strikes me about this electric half: there's no booing. No shouting. No heckling. It makes me start to wonder the role the British media played in stoking this particular fight; because there's remarkably little of it in Paris. Perversely, the crowd play a huge role in the first half, but seem to be behaving themselves impeccably for the second. Maybe the point is not that no one understands American music. Maybe it's limited to the British Isles.

Despite all this, they sound exhausted. One Too Many Mornings has the feeling of a man's last gasp. And not just Dylan: there's a finality to Danko's singing, and to Manuel's playing.

Applause. Nothing but applause.

As is increasingly becoming the case, Ballad Of A Thin Man is the most interesting point. It's hard not to read something into the way Dylan wails the word "home" in tonight's performance; and in exactly the same word in that pleading clip with the Italian reporter, that may well have been recorded in Paris too.

The song is staring to sound like a funeral march; and the wheels are about to come off the hearse. Little interjections reveal themselves: "You're very well-read; yes, it's well known"; "Yes, but something is happening, ain't got nothing to do with it, and you don't know what that is, do you, Mr. Jones?"; "Yes, and you really begin to wonder what's happening...why don't it include you, don't you, Mr. Jones?"

Like A Rolling Stone is now permanently dedicated to the Taj Mahal. Jones' drumming sounds tonight, more than ever, like a machine gun. "Do you wanna make a deal?" Is acquiring a melody, rather than just being spat out. On "Siamese cat" and the ensuing "no direction home" his voice sounds like it has just minutes left. The man needs to rest; not to be thrown a birthday party.



The crowd sounds unanimously enthusiastic. It would be 1968 before Dylan heard that sound again.


Footage:

Acoustic and electric set footage in 66US
Tell Me, Momma, ETD (parts of it)
Tell Me, Momma, NDH (mixed with Belfast)

 

I may not be able to post the final show on Saturday. So I've decided to do the last two a day early.

 

7.30pm, Thursday 26th May, 1966. Royal Albert Hall, London, England.




This is one of the best sounding concerts of the lot. Which is ironic, given the problems they experienced earlier in the day: it seems, from clips in 66US and ETD (“Tito…listen: we seem to have a problem” – the calmer Albert Grossman is, the more frightening he sounds) that their equipment was held up being cleared through customs after Paris. All they had was two speakers and the organ. There’s quite a bit of footage being unloaded into the Albert Hall. Who knows how it was resolved, but the concert happened. And it’s fabulous.

They really did save the best until last. This is a sublime concert; possibly the greatest gig that Dylan's released; and a rare example of his record company releasing the right recording to represent this gigantic set.

The first thing that hits you is the sound. It's professionally recorded and it sounds it. There's also that acoustic in the Albert Hall - the slight echo - which means that you can really hear the venue breathe. The guitar playing from the start has a real precision to it. As we can see from the clips of this show in No Direction Home, he's far from sober; but he appears to have hit the perfect balance in terms of what he's ingested and how it affects his performance (compare the following night).

Dylan's singing on 4th Time Around is as good as it gets: nuanced, expressive, precise.



Visions Of Johanna: I'm going to go on record here and say that this is the best version of the best song on Dylan's best album. Every note is perfect: a lesson in singing, in performance, in delivery. It's been available for over thirty years, on Biograph; and, if anything, it now sounds even better. It was more than a little exciting to see that there was film of the first verse, saved for the emotional climax of No Direction Home.

I've heard Dylan sing "All your seasick sailors/They're all rowing home" more times than I care to count. The way he sings it here cuts right through me - a powerful surprise amid the familiarity. This is Dylan at the absolute pinnacle of his writing and performing achievements. Which, given what he's been through in the last month, is nothing short of incredible.

That hall echo is particularly noticeable on Desolation Row. The audience sound spellbound. There are moments when I imagine playing this to those undecided about Dylan and then giving up on them. Because, frankly, if you don't like this, what kind of a person are you?! Even after poring over this entire box set, when I'm listening to this show I could just about convince myself that you don't need to hear any more than this. It's perfect. To listen to this acoustic set is to be placed in the calming eye of the storm. It's a powerful indication of the fact that, no matter how insane things got on this tour, there were moments of pure serenity; expressed no better than here, at the near end of the tour.

"My electric guitar never goes out of tune" runs the risk of being the only perfunctory moment of the evening. He saves it with a cheeky "...does it?"

What you can really imagine here is an audience hanging on his every breath: hipper-than-thou Swinging Londoners for whom The Rolling Stones' 19th Nervous Breakdown is already old hat. Dylan is at the absolute forefront of popular culture; his position solidified by his refusal to accept it. Remember: this is the first time most of these people have heard anything like Just Like A Woman or Visions Of Johanna. Like capturing lightning in a bottle, there's a sense that Dylan is moving so fast that, by the time these songs appear on an album, he will have moved on completely.

I should be bored of listening to these songs by now. It's a measure of the strength of this performance that they sound as fresh as they do. Lines like "Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship" erupt out of the speakers as if for the first time, will all the urgency of a one-off news bulletin. Even the harmonica solos sound noticeably different.

The electric guitars get applause before anyone knows what they're really in for. The second the electric set kicks off, there's no shelter from the storm. This is the hurricane itself. Tell Me, Momma is as good as it's ever been. If that sounds like I'm contradicting what I said about Manchester, I apologise. This might be better. It's certainly as good.

In the five days since he last played to English fans, Dylan's come up with a new, pre-emptive retort: "This is an old song...I like all my old songs..." And then he skewers the traditionalists by telling them that The Times They Are A-Changin' influenced the next song: the sentiment, not the song. Get with it, London. You're all so hip, right? Then try and accept the concept of change.

Mickey Jones misses the opening crash of I Don't Believe You but gives the song a thudding, deep drum sound. It's triumphant, ballsy, fuck-you music; designed to shake the very foundations of this very old-fashioned hall. "Her skirt it swayed as the guitar played" is virtually screamed. And the crowd loves it: there are whistles and everything.

They continue as they mean to go on: Baby, Let Me Follow You Down is ferocious. Enormous. It's also a beautiful recording: you can hear the subtleties in Manuel's piano, Hudson's swirling keyboard, Danko's bass heartbeat; the noise on Robertson's strings. I've been to a few concerts in the Albert Hall; I've even seen Dylan there. None of them sounded remotely as apocalyptic as this.

And then the heckling starts. There are whistles, too; but the predominant sound is of disapproval. Thanks to Scorsese's subtitles, I know there's a "What happened to Woody Guthrie, Bob?" in there somewhere. But you can't hear it here. His response - jaded, slightly annoyed but more exhausted by it all, is perfect: "These are all protest songs, now, come on..."



"This is...it's not British music, it's American music...y'know, come on..."

Remember: this is Kensington in 1966 - about the trendiest place in the universe at that time. Only Dylan could tell these people, shrouded in the complacency of their global fashion nucleus, that they don't understand what he's doing. As he'll tell them again in 24 hours, they've never really heard American music before. I remember thinking the same thing thirty years later, in the world of Britpop: popular culture seemed to have reset its clock to begin with The Beatles and The Kinks. Never mind what they listened to. It was astonishingly myopic. I guess that's what happens when you place yourself at a cultural epicentre.

The thunderous version of Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues that follows stands with Belfast as top of the pile. And it's both performances that are edited together in No Direction Home. "I don't have the strength to get up and take another shaaaaaaaahhaaaat" is stretched well beyond the confines of the song's structure. Again, Manuel's piano grounds it. He and Mickey Jones are the ones driving this particular train.



The usual intro to Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat is cut short by a screaming fan. "Oh god..." responds a weary Dylan. Here we go again. He can't decide how aggressively to respond: at first a faux-shocked "Are you talking to me?", followed by a mild threat: "Come up here and say that." Back to the intro and into the song, as loud as they can muster.

Ditto One Too Many Mornings. Again and again, it's the drum sound that impresses: it's so powerful, and lays into the folk fans like a bulldozer. Not even Elvis, Scotty and Bill had a drummer: this is full-blown rock.

There are definitely boos and cheers after this one. Dylan mutters something between gibberish and articulate conversation (presumably with Richard Alderson) about the microphone. Is it on? "Are you sure?"

This version of Ballad Of A Thin Man takes up from where the Newcastle recording left off; Robertson christening it with the kind of blues notes that work best in the dead of night. It's the witching hour. Danko's loping, funereal bass is very audible here, rising up to meet the challenge of Jones' drums.

It's only just occurred to me: what does Richard Manuel do every night during this song? Start the party early, maybe.

Again, I love that Dylan is the one to tell Swinging London that "something is happening, and it's happening without you".

"We'd like to dedicate this song to the Taj Mahal", as is now the standard response. The most significant word in that, for me, is the first one. Dylan's not a solo act any more. They're a band of brothers: backs to the wall, guitars brandished like weapons; ready to take on the world and not bothered if they die with their boots on.

This is one of the greatest versions of this song committed to tape. The "didn't you/kiddin' you" couplet, like "next meal", is stretched as far as it'll go; over what feels like a slightly more deliberate tempo than usual, driven by Jones' machine gun drumming. There are subtleties in there, too: "do you wanna make a deal" is properly sung now, not shouted; as is "you never understood that it ain't no good". He saves the shouting for when it's effective, like in the last minute of the song. It can seem like a rant sometimes, but not here. More shading in the vomit, as it were.

The concert seems to end with an enthusiastic response. It's difficult to know how genuine, sarcastic or uncaring Dylan's closing words are.

"Thank you very much..thank you, very kind...very nice..." is what the audience gets for their efforts.

So, there you have it. Dylan and The Hawks have just played the crowning concert of the tour, and maybe of their careers. They're nearly at that point where they can rest before the tour resumes in the summer. Just one more and they're done.

"Where do we go from here?" as two thirds of these musicians were to wonder, only five years later.


Footage:
Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window, 66US (soundcheck)

Visions Of Johanna, NDH (first half - second half is Newcastle)

“these are all protest songs…”, NDH
“come up here and say that…”, 66US

 

"Quite a bit of footage being unloaded". Sorry: this is not a deliberate attempt to match Dylan's unravelling in late May '66. Just carelessness.

 

SN: any chance you might put together some kind of highlights list--identifying a few versions of each song that are of particular note?

It would be a useful reference point for someone like me who doesn't have the time/inclination to listen to every CD (or at least, not for a long while and over a long period)

 

7.30pm, Friday 27th May, 1966. Royal Albert Hall, London, England.





If the London show on the 26th is the best concert Dylan's ever given, the show on the 27th could perhaps be described as the best bad gig he's ever given.

I'm not sure that accurately reflects how fascinating I find this recording. Viewed dispassionately, Dylan is quite clearly exhausted, wrung out and completely wasted. However, there's more character, more of a window in - hell, more talking - than on any other night on this tour. Same songs, same venue, only a day later: the concert is over 20 minutes longer than the previous night. It's the end of the road; the wheels are falling off; and it's never felt more like it.

In terms of Dylan's demeanour and professionalism, he's not just kicking back because it's the second night in a now familiar venue. As far as he's concerned, it's the end of the European leg of the tour: arguably the most punishing month of his life. Of course, what we know from the vantage point of 2017 is that it turned out to be the end of the line: the final night of this unique experience, before Dylan crashed and went underground. Bearded, countrified and singing Woody Guthrie songs, he would not give another concert until 1968; not play in England again until 1969 (both times with The Hawks, or The Crackers, or The Band); not embark on another world tour until the late 1970s; not play the Royal Albert Hall again for 45 years. By then, his career would have become a series of presumed endings and astonishing rebirths. But never again, despite the nihilism of his 21st century recordings, would he sound quite this world-weary. This is a man who's had enough, and it shows. As Hemingway noted, all stories end in death. A version of Bob Dylan died in 1966; and, based on Robbie Robertson's evidence, the man nearly did too.

More so than on any other night, Dylan takes a very long time to start She Belongs To Me. He sings it with the kind of deliberate, rule-breaking ethos of someone who sounds like he doesn’t care at all; and yet it has a kind of precision that would seem to contradict that. The long deliberation of words like ‘antique’ and the otherworldly harmonica solos aren’t seemingly performed by a man who no longer cares. And yet there’s a kind of acceptance to this music. There’s nothing left to prove any more. Something that this tour has proved time and time again - and tonight is the absolute peak of this - is that exhaustion breeds a very specific kind of fragility in the music. It's given full rein tonight.

This is a man with the world at his feet. What a unique position from which to let the world down. Or, at the very least, confuse them.

4th Time Around has grown in the weeks since it was first performed. It seems to be trying to break loose from its metronomic metre: almost like that there's too much for the song to say within its confines or structure. And how ironic that the composer of the song to which it refers most explicitly is out there somewhere. John Lennon has surely heard this song before tonight; when Dylan played The Beatles Blonde On Blonde and they responded with Revolver. According to Paul McCartney, Dylan’s reaction was “Oh, I get it. You don’t want to be cute any more.” Lennon is most likely still recovering from that most surreal of conversations; as he and Dylan, in full-blown stoned nausea, drove around London with Pennebaker’s camera, gently treading passive-aggressive steps around each other. This is the only time in public that Dylan got to pin that “crutch” line on Lennon; if that is, in fact, what he was doing. The next time Dylan played in England, Lennon would be there too.

This music is truly otherworldly. The pleading, weeping harmonica breaks speak for themselves.

And, on the night when Dylan talks to the audience more than ever before, the first rambling monologue begins.

“Uh, I’m not gonna be playing any more concerts here…in England…(and) I just wanted to saaaay…that, uh…that, uh…it’s, uh…it’s all wrong…to, uh…to uh, uh…this is a typical example of probably one song that your English music newspapers here would call a ‘drug song’…I don’t-I don’t write ‘drug songs’…you know, like, I never have; I wouldn’t know how to go about it…but, you know, uh…this is not a ‘drug song’….I’m not saying this for any kind of defensive reason or anything like thaT; it’s just not a drug song’…I don’t, (you know) it’s just vulgar to think so…(y’know)…huh…yes: all right…”

I’m not trying to say that this is the greatest version of Visions Of Johanna ever recorded. But climb inside it, turn it up and open your ears. It is, on some kind of unique level, extraordinary. In the right frame of mind, I could listen to this forever. This is Dylan’s greatest song; and neither it nor he would sound anything like this ever again. The final verse sounds like he barely has the strength to speak; and yet he must - this may be the most important thing that he will ever have to say.

He had no way of knowing that he wouldn’t sing these songs again for years. These songs, that had become daily occurrences for so long, were approaching the end of their life, in a way. Tonight feels like the end of something in ways that no other music that I’ve ever heard can begin to compare to. This is a man at the end of his rope.

The applause is nothing special. Appreciative, semi-enthusiastic.

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. He’s sung this many times before and meant it every time. Tonight it really is all over. There’s a germ of beauty left in there, but this is delivered as if the last breath of a dying man. The next time that he will make music after tonight will be a year and a world away. And it won’t sound anything like this. Nothing will, actually.

Despite the sense of an ending, I find myself listening to Desolation Row: a song that, at the time of writing, I saw Bob Dylan perform only this month. It’s impossible to conceive, listening to this, that he would be alive a year later; much less performing this song in the same city 51 years after the fact. But the world never saw this Bob Dylan again.

“Don’t do that…that’s terrible…”

Dylan’s stoned ramblings have kicked in early. He’s still got another hour or so to go.

There’s a tenderness in tonight’s version of Just Like A Woman that is unique. When you strip away everything after the punishing weeks of this tour, all that’s left is this kind of fragility. Bruised, weary emotion. He also seems to be experimenting with at least three different tempos before he even starts singing. You can do this when you're on your own. After the interval, this approach will cause problems.

When, at the end of the set, Mr. Tambourine Man nears its finish, it teeters on the edge of the cliff: suspended, uncertain. This story has no end. It’s unwritten. Nobody knows what comes next.

Virtually every song on this show is significantly different from every other version on this tour. It's a night of reinvention from start to finish. Structures and pacing of songs that have lasted for months just go out of the window.



Tell Me, Momma is a fascinating disaster. The band want to do the song at least twice as fast as Dylan does. It tries to exist in different tempos and different keys simultaneously. It's a mess, by any definition. In the previous two shows, this song sounded like a train: now it sounds like a train wreck. But no less interesting. It's almost as if The Hawks took one look at him backstage and agreed how to get him through this the only way they know how.

As if to deliberately take back control, Dylan then embarks on a four minute monologue, as surreal as it is perversely riveting: he lets out pretty much everything he’s felt about these audiences for the last month. This is elegantly wasted without the elegance.

“Uh…this is one…this is a song I wrote about the…three years ago…come o-…three years ago…I like all my old songs: I have never said that they are “roobish”…um….I don’t use that word: it’s not in my vocabulary - I wouldn’t use it if, uh, like if it was there on the street to pick up and use for free. I would not use the word “roobish”…and, uh, I like all my old songs: it’s just that things, uh, change all the time - everybody knows that. And, uh…and this music here right now, what you’re gonna hear, no matter w-what it is, uh…I mean, if anybody is out there that can offer any suggestions how it could be either, uh, played better, or ,uh, words could be improved on, we appreciate all suggestions…But, uh, but, uh, other than that, other than that, like, we like all these songs, I like all-all my old songs very much; ah, I’m saying this only because the last night we’re here; and I lo-and I love, uh, England, ha, you know, like a lot…we, like, we did all this in the States, uh, in…from September on; and we’ve all been playing this music since we’ve been ten…ten years old, on, and, uh, folk music just, uh, happens to be a thing which, uh, which interrupted, uh, ah, which was very useful, you know…uh, because of, uh, Frankie…you know, the rock ’n’ roll thing in the United States was…hahaha…forgive me…haha…hah…forgive me…hah…huh…uh, anything I say now please don’t hold against me…This is, uh…but, uh…I realise it’s loud music and all that kind of thing; but, uh, if you don’t like it, I mean, like, uh, well, it’s, uh, you know, that’s fine…if you got some improvements you could make on it, that’s-that’s great…But, uh…uh…the thing is that it is not English music you’re listening to…it’s a shame that we’re here now, and it might sound like English music to you, if you have never really heard American music before…but, uh…the music is-is, uh, is, uh…is, uh…is uh…is uuuhhh, you know...I would never venture to say what it is…and, uh, I can’t…I can’t really say, but…what you’re just hearing here now is the sound of the songs…you’re not hearing anything else except the songs, the sound…of the words…and sounds…so, you know, you can take it or leave it. It’s like, it’s up to you, you know…it doesn’t matter to me…no…uh…I mean it like it really doesn’t, I love all of you…ha…you know, and if you don’t, you know, if there’s something you disagree with, that’s great; but I’m just, I’m not gonna disagree with you..and fight you on it or anything…and discuss it with you…shhhh…Anyway, this happens to be an old song I wrote a long time ago, and it’s called I Don’t Believe You. Now, it used to go like that, but now it goes like this…and rightfully so.”

Jones’ drumming manages to pick up Dylan’s rhythm: it’s slower but incredibly deliberate and pointed. Dylan loses the thread in the second verse. Frankly, I’m surprised he can still stand, much less sing. Where there was focused anger, there is now something else: like the vitriolic ramblings of the town drunk, you don’t deny his feelings but wonder if he’s really addressing anyone. Somehow Robertson seems to pick up Dylan’s rhythms, too. He, like the singer, sounds as if he could abandon the melody at any point.

Even with the normally reliable Hawks present, by the third song of the electric set it sounds as if these are men just about limping to the finish line. The “baby, can I come home with you” verse barely exists at all. It has all the pathos of a drunk man begging his partner for sex. “I’d do anything in this god almighty world if you just don’t make me huuuuuurrrrrttt”: yeah - I’m afraid it’s way too late for that.

The Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues intro now sounds like a man who just can’t be bothered. That said, it’s designed to provoke from the outset - “there’s a long story behind this song…” - and contains a few classics: “…Texas, which is one of the United States…uh…one of the bigger…ones…”; “I’m just telling you this so you don’t think that there’s anything you’re missing, you understand; I don’t want you to think that you’re out of it…and...I’m sick of having people thinking “What does that mean?’…it just means nothing.”

I can’t quite make out the confrontational heckle that interrupts it. It seems to conclude with the word ‘brain’ or ‘brave’. Dylan’s response is “It’s not always w-…you’re talking to the wrong person…” He then claims that he’s the last person in the world to explain these songs; “it’s the last concert here…I couldn’t care less…okay…well then, we’ll just do- we’ll just play the music and leave; and then it’ll be over, okay?”

He then picks on the individual audience members; suggesting “you, and you…can go out and read some books…”

The band strikes up. Dylan doesn’t care. He’s still got a point to make: “Read J.D.SALINGER!” he shouts to the crowd. Not quite 15 years later, a man in another city read J.D. Salinger and killed one of the most famous people in the world. His victim, John Lennon, was in the Albert Hall that night.

Again, he’s singing in a rhythm that his musicians don’t share. He’s spent months existing in a different world from everyone but these five. Now, he’s leaving even them behind. “I’m going back to New York City/I do believe I’ve had enough” has never sounded quite this final. Arguably, it never would again.

Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat is slow, but not catastrophically so. No talking after this song. On One Too Many Mornings, he twists the knife again and again. He sounds almost determined that, by the time the song’s three and a half minutes are up, no one will like this song ever again.

And it works. “(Sing?) properly”; “Let’s have the good stuff back again…it’s dreadful!”

Dylan’s faintly amused, as he sits at the piano. “The good s-…” he snorts to himself. “The good stuff and the bad stuff: it’s all the same stuff”. He starts to flirt with playing the intro. “You’re not gonna see me any more and I’m gonna see you anyway…” He can’t even be bothered to put the energy into insulting people any more.

But the crowd don’t let up. They want this fight. “Oh, you people are wonderful…yeah…you’re the greatest people” now sounds like an address to an entire nation. He’s done with this country and the people in it. He becomes the teacher again, tapping his watch and promising that he’ll keep this class in as long as it takes. “Oh…why don’t you just all say what you wanna say for a minute…oh, come on - say anything you wanna say for a whole minute…I give you one minute; you got a watch…? Anybody got a watch?…yes, yes..oh, you’re beau-…you’re just marvellous…”

“I’d trade places with you; would you pla-trade places with me?”

It reminds me of the lines “Well, I'd trade places with any of 'em, in a minute if I could” that he’d put into one of his songs thirty years later. The same song harks back to other things he said in London, or elsewhere on this tour: “I’m wondering what in the devil could it all possibly mean?” “Someone’s always yelling “Turn it down””. In fact, try reading the lyrics to Highlands but from the perspective of Bob Dylan at the tail end of May 1966. It makes a huge amount of sense.

The party’s over. And there’s less and less to say.

This version of Ballad Of A Thin Man feels like his final statement. It takes in the reaction to his concerts that he’s faced now for days. Weeks. Months. The way he spits out the word “imagina-SHUN” is him closing the book on the pages and the text. Doing the song at this pace gives it a deliberation, a sadism; a sense of conclusion that it hasn’t really had before. The words no longer come out in multi-syllabic torrents; but as considered, conclusive facts. And, again, he can’t resist the urge to further taunt the London audience with “Something is still happening now, and it’s happening without you”. (Over half a century later, he will still use this song - in London, in May 2017 - to say “You guys just don’t get it. You think you do, but you don’t” as he closes yet another concert. It’s always kind of the last word, even when it’s not the last song. On his current tour, it’s both.)

Can this really be the end?

“I’ve never done this before, but I want you to meet Robbie Robertson here, and…Garth Hudson, Mickey Jones, Rick Danko…and, uh…Richard…”

Brief discussion about something. “You promised me you were gonna leave…”

“It doesn’t mean a thing…I mean, you don’t have to…but they’re-they’re all poets…ya understand? Daaaaah…if it comes out that way, it comes out that way, but…all the gr- all poets, you know…”

“This song here is dedicated to the Taj Mahal. (And) we’re gonna leave after this song. And I wanna say goodbye to all of you people: you been very war- great people, uh, you know…ah, I l-…you’ve been very nice people. I mean, here you are, sitting in this great huge place…And, believe me, we’ve enjoyed every minute of being here.”

After an intro and a count in, Mickey Jones kicks this off in a way that is unique to this evening. His initial snare shot sounds, to use Dylan’s words from earlier that year, like a dead man’s last pistol shot. This is really the end, and it really sounds like it. They’re going out, guns blazing like Butch and Sundance. Actually, it’s more like The Wild Bunch: blood and machine guns. His voice cracks like he’ll never need it again. Robbie Robertson, to quote the song, don’t stop playing ’til his guitar breaks.

“I don’t really care what happens next. I’m just going; I’m going; I’m gone.”

***



In a parallel universe, Bob Dylan died that night. He went back to his hotel, ran a bath and drowned: stoned, exhausted; too tired to try and fight back. The glory years of 1965-66 would be looked at like the output of his idol Buddy Holly: a man who made his mark in 18 months of chart success and was taken by the perils of touring. The road has taken many of the great ones, as Robbie Robertson mused a decade later.

The reality is that Dylan went into hiding. The rest of the scheduled dates for the 1966 tour were never to be. He couldn’t continue at that pace any longer, and the only way was to disappear. When he was ready, he hooked up with the same people, hung out together and, in his own time, played - hell, invented - a different kind of music. He dug out songs like Ain’t No More Cane and created the sound of The Band. Even Levon Helm came back. I like to imagine that, when they recorded One Too Many Mornings in Big Pink, it was to gently fill Levon in on what he’d missed. The arrangement is the same as the one they took around the world in 1966, but the song would never be like that again. A couple of years later, Dylan recorded with Johnny Cash and they put the same song on tape. Again, these men were now miles away from the two strung out, wrung out music stars that jammed together in Cardiff in 1966. They’d both, against all the odds, been given another chance. Cash had over three decades of music left in his veins. Dylan had even more.

Two months after taunting Britain that things were happening without them; things that they could never understand, Dylan allegedly had a motorcycle accident that temporarily disabled him. At almost exactly the same time, the United Kingdom was finally getting its hands on Blonde On Blonde. When you move as fast as Bob Dylan did in 1966, the whole world is fighting to catch up with you.

No one ever moved as fast as Bob Dylan did in 1966. At least, no one else did and lived.

One Too Many Mornings

 

Hmmm. That's a tricky one. The whole point of me writing all this was to provide a way into listening to the whole thing. But I guess I can give you a 'gateway drug' list. This isn't meant to replace or summarise the complete set, but it's a toe in the water.
Off the top of my head:

All of Belfast
Bristol Desolation Row
Cardiff I Don't Believe You
All of Liverpool
Sheffield acoustic set
All of Manchester
Glasgow Like A Rolling Stone
Newcastle Ballad Of A Thin Man
All of London RAH 1
All of London RAH 2

I guess I'm saying there aren't any short cuts. It's impossible to do justice to this set by reducing it to a 'best of'. Kind of like selecting the favourite chapters of a book. But try the above, and hopefully it'll make you go the whole distance.

 

Wow.
That was like watching a really great movie and at end credits thinking about talking with your friend about it at the bar.
Many thanks SN.