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

Great! Thanks.

 

Our notion of 'quality' has changed a lot since 1984. Nowadays, we can find fascination in things that are flawed - often, badly flawed - because of the insight they give into the mind and intentions of the artist.

 

That's how I bought my first Blonde on Blonde, as two singel LPs. This was in 1984 and it had the Claudia pic.

 

And what is maybe the best answer to possibly the worst question in the interview:-

Have you met Michael Jackson yet?
No, I don't think so. I met Martha and the Vandellas.

 

Leicester - most aggressive crowd yet.

Bob comes face to face with some mardy East Midlands aggression!

 

You may be right - but I would say the Parisian youth was probably more 'politically active' than their counterparts in London in the sixties judging by subsequent events in that city.

 

How far along did the Manchester electric set ever really get to being considered as a legitimate contemporary release in the first place?

I can't see there being another double album from Dylan right after Blonde On Blonde. In '66 and '67 I'd reckon that it would be a single LP with a selection of acoustic songs on one side, and electric songs on the other. Would there be a twist? Electric songs on side A? An Lp of only electric songs? The perverse thing would be a live album of all acoustic songs. Yet the coolest would be two albums - one acoustic, one electric. That way you can’t try to return half the album.

But was CBS, in 1966 or '67, really going to release an album where the star gets called 'Judas!' during the show right before his biggest song? And where a segment of the crowd laughs and cheers at this? And where the artist gets the handclaps-of-derision at intervals? And where the singer is at odds with his audience and it sure seems like he wants to punish them? It would be the aural equivalent of the Beatles butcher album. There would seem to have been very little chance of this getting a release then, unless any signs of audience restlessness were edited out completely. Yet, despite the civil war going on in the Manchester hall, CBS heads probably had half a listen to the London 5/27 set and said, 'You know what? Those Manchester tapes don’t sound half-bad after all'.

Well, maybe in 1969 something like this could have gotten a full 2-LP unscrubbed inaugural launching (since by '68 there was already 'a battle outside raging'; conflict was 'in'), and by '69 no one would have cared if a folk protest balladeer started playing with an electric beat band (in fact, they probably would have encouraged it). Come to think of it, 1968, with the absence of Dylan product, may've been a better spot to have a Dylan double-live album emerge. And if the electric portion of Manchester had come out in any form, Dylan might perhaps now have a greater reputation as a 60s hard rocker. Instead, the public got does of silence, and then John Wesley Harding, (Basement Tapes), Nashville Skyline, and Self Portrait to wind the decade down, painting Dylan’s 'heavy electric' period into a hidden, placid corner, left in the dusts of a wrong turn, to be regarded as almost a tangent of a lost weekend.

Could it be that this '66 tour that we've been raving about doesn't even rate particularly high with Dylan? If he has in any way tied the existence of the '66 audio and film footage to the ostensibly 'failed' movie project of his (which, maybe in his creative mind, was the whole reason for the tour anyways), maybe he considers it all to just be a sprawling wreck in his rearview mirror, a grotesque chapter in his life best left appreciated by others. He did live it all as it unfolded, after all, so he probably sees no point in reliving it again (wasn't NDH enough for these people?)

Heck, maybe it's a good thing the album didn't come out way back when. As a single album, it would have been alright, but not the whole picture. And if it had come out as a double, the whole bootleg universe as we knew it may not have had its big bang.

 

Agreed. Had Dylan been touring and tried the flag stunt two years later, he and the Band would probably have been lynched.

 

If it had been released in 1966, it would certainly have been a single album, possibly one side acoustic, one side electric. Rock live albums simply weren't doubles in those days.

The engineers would have removed the crowd barracking (including 'Judas!') and replaced it with a happier crowd track from an unrelated concert by another act (as was done with the Kinks and Rolling Stones contemporaneous live albums).

It would have had to have been released in 1966, too. By 1967, the moment was past and rock (and Dylan) were moving in new directions.

 

I think the design of this set was handled by Geoff Gans at Rare Cool Stuff, who also worked on the other Bootleg Series sets. Try contacting them, maybe?

Rare Cool Stuff: Photos, Books, Audio, Videos, Multimedia »

 

Sorry if I got your hopes up.

So fun to learn. I had no idea! I really should explore Searching For A Gem more thoroughly. Thought I had.

Is it safe to assume that none of his other double LPs were also released in such a manner?

 

They were released as BoB Vol.1 / Vol.2. in Europe (Dutch pressing I believe)
Strange... wonder why? Easier to sell singel LP's?

 

And sometimes it turns out these things aren't as flawed as originally imagined.

 

I see. Thanks for that.

It's almost Christmas. I want to have the newsprint design made into a bikini for my girlfriend ....

 

I think it's likely that the '66 tour doesn't rate that highly with Bob. After all, he has a strange barometer regarding the highs and lows of his own career and work. Not bothering to officially release 'Blind Willie McTell' comes to mind as an example of this. Furthermore, judging by the amount of chemicals he appears to have been ingesting at the time, I think it's entirely possible that he's forgotten the '66 tour took place at all.

 

He also called Shot of Love his "most perfect song" as I recall.

 

While you're on the case, see if you can get her a leopard-skin pillbox hat to go with it....

 

Ha ha. I didn't know that. He does like to confound expectations.

 

Sorry we were late but we were just tuning...

 

While "Nothing To It" seems clearly directed at Dylan feeling ripped off by Grossman (which dates it a bit past Tour '66), this one seems like it could have been written the day after RAH, take 2.

 

Seems like all the mentions of the potential release of a live '66 set are related to threats from Columbia - first when he was signing with MGM, and second when he had his fling with Asylum. I think there were a couple of factors that would have caused Dylan himself to not want such an album out in late '66/early '67 - one being his unhappiness with his publishing deal, and the other being a bit embarrassed by having a document of his out of control behavior out for public consumption.

 

I think this is the key point. Dylan never goes backwards. Always in a state of becoming, using his own words. I doubt very much he ever creatively thought about that tour again.

He made a left-hand turn, hit Big Pink and started making new history. Which also was not appreciated until much later.

 

The last time I recall hearing him comment on one of his vault releases, it was BS4. He said "IF I THOUGHT THIS RECORD was any good, it would have been released a long time ago" (the quote, and capitalization, is from the September 1998 issue of ICE). Anyone have anything more recent?

 

Not specifically about '66 releases, but at some point he did take a moment to disparage "I'm Not There" as a non-song unworthy of anyone's attention.

The past don't control ya.