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

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Richard--W, Sep 27, 2016.

  1. Richard--W

    Richard--W Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Mark Claeson, thanks so much for posting the link to your 1965 concert photos. Spectacular images. If you have more I hope you'll post them as well. The 1965 tour needs a concert-by-concert exploration thread of it's own here on SHMF. Unfortunately, Sony / Dylan threw the tour away on a low-grade mp3 download with fade-outs and gaps between the tracks instead of releasing it on hard media. It was only available for a short time as a supplement to The Cutting Edge 18-disc box-set. The live concerts weren't afforded the same respect as the studio sessions, or the 1966 concerts. Without the hard media it's difficult for fans to following the arc and progression of the music and to appreciate the escalating brilliance in Dylan's performances. If anything, the 1965 concerts are more ambitious and experimental than the 1966, and a bit edgier because Dylan hasn't quite found the groove that he wants to settle into yet. To fully appreciate the 1966 shows one has to concentrate on the 1965 shows that gradually lead into them. I'm going to organize a free evening so that I can do a little research and get that thread started. Hopefully others will build on it the way they've done here.
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2017
  2. Walking Antique

    Walking Antique Nothing is incomprehensible

    Location:
    usa
    Just to be clear, I'm not Mark Claeson, that's just the title on the link. I stumbled on his post in Facebook.

    His story is that he was working at a photo store many years ago and a guy came in with these to be copied. Claeson asked for copies for himself. The foggy ruins of time gave him a mistaken memory that the guy said they were from the 1965 Minneapolis show, but further in the Facebook thread somebody shows pretty conclusively that it is Baltimore, by comparing to a Beatles photo at the same venue.
     
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  3. Richard--W

    Richard--W Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Right. Sure. Thanks.
     
  4. Somebody Naked

    Somebody Naked Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    7.45pm, Tuesday 10th May, 1966. Colston Hall, Bristol, England.

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    Dylan seemingly had a long weekend off (travelling back to England notwithstanding) after the Belfast concert, with no concerts scheduled on the 7th, 8th or 9th. According to Mickey Jones’ Home Movies, at this time they visited Chesterfield in Derbyshire (not the most logical time to go there, given their schedule. The same video places the visit to Raglan Castle in South Wales in between Manchester and Scotland. Major pinches of salt here). Photos taken in Bristol show Dylan arriving in England greeted by the rain, which won’t surprise anyone who lives here. The weather must bust in early May.

    It’s worth mentioning that Colston Hall is that rarity in the 1966 tour venues, in that it’s both still standing and still a concert venue (I saw Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham play there in July 2015. That was actually in the adjoining room - The Lantern - while Emmylou Harris was in the main hall).

    Since Belfast, for me these concerts have hit a new standard. Truth be told, every single show from here on is remarkable in at least some way; usually most ways. The hit rate from now on is dizzyingly high.

    Another audience tape - at first, anyway. The distortion clears after She Belongs To Me (some beautifully inventive harmonica), and 4th Time Around sounds significantly better. Back to the audience tape for Visions Of Johanna; and the three songs after it. “Jeez, I can’t find my knees” gets a laugh again. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue is back and it sounds as solid as it always did; again, particular emphasis on the harmonica playing.

    And to Desolation Row. This performance, according to Jon Savage (writer of last year’s 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded) is significantly faster and shorter than any other version played on this tour. Well…the tempo is slightly faster than, say, the Belfast show, but that may well be down to the audience tape running faster than Richard Alderson’s equipment. What is safe to say is that Dylan, for reasons best known to himself, omits the last harmonica solo and stops the song rather abruptly after the final lines “…not unless you mail them from Desolation Row”. The next time we have a complete recording of this song is four days later in Liverpool, and the solo has returned. It would be pure speculation to say that this is the case for the next two shows: Cardiff and Birmingham. Who knows?

    An inaudible heckle; and a semi-audible response (“What would you like me to say?”).

    Just Like A Woman is very strong. In keeping with typical English understatement, someone mutters “rather good” to his friend; as if we were in an art gallery, a restaurant or a garden show.

    And that, I’m happy to say, is chronologically it for the audience tapes in this collection. It’s back to the soundboard for Mr. Tambourine Man. Rapturous applause follows it. And then, one of those timeless little details that I’m so glad was recorded: a rather put-out request over the speakers for someone to please move their car. We’re definitely in England now.

    A review of this show exists, written by Helen Reid of the Bristol Post. “The bard of nihilism, hope, anti-convention and protest was at the Colston Hall last night" she wrote. "Bob Dylan in person, even if you could not hear him clearly. During the first half, the audience patiently listened as he belched his way solo through half a dozen marathons – in an unbroken chain. Where was the Dylan stage presence we have heard so much about?”

    In the second half, Tell Me, Momma is the usual strong opener (on this, and throughout the electric set, Richard Manuel's piano positively shines; making the music really swing). To quote Greil Marcus in Invisible Republic, “…there are never any boos for this one. It’s too strong, it comes on too fast.” I Don’t Believe You is likewise full of confidence and swagger. There are 18 days left of this tour, and only 5 days without shows booked. Factoring in travelling and press conferences, that’s hardly any time off at all. What we can hear in Bristol is the template for the next few shows: the arrangements are bedded in now. Mickey Jones’ thunderous drums are in place. There’s no hesitancy any more. What is unknowable every night is how the audience will react. In Bristol, as in Belfast, there are shouts from the crowd between songs. It’s often difficult to tell if they’re shouts of encouragement or criticism, and the recordings only pick up so much: it’s fair to say that there are things going on which we can’t hear.

    The first instrumental break of Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat is another shining example of why The Hawks were regarded by many as the best band around. Robertson’s sharp notes, Manuel’s pounding boogie-woogie piano, Danko’s quietly inventive basslines and Hudson’s swirling organ fills all somehow sit together whilst sounding like they each have this one chance to prove themselves. The difference, as Richard Alderson has noted, is that Mickey Jones was a much louder drummer than anyone else who ever filled this slot. It changes everything. “By the time we got to England, it was out of control” said Jones, in No Direction Home. “When we kicked off the second half - I mean we did kick ass and take names - we got everyone in there’s attention. They knew that we had arrived.” Compare this to Helen Reid’s review of the second half: "The second part of the evening was spent listening to beat music "à la Bob Dylan" – with the volume turned on full. Two guitarists, a drummer and an organist accompanied Mr. Dylan. The resulting rivalry was wearying and not very enjoyable. At rare intervals the pianist could be heard fighting his battle against the rest of the noise with great ability – but he was drowned out."

    It amazes me to this day that people dismissed this music as “beat music” or “incredibly corny”. I mean, say what you like about it - but those are hardly accurate or descriptive terms.

    After One Too Many Mornings, we get an impassioned "Turn the volume down!". I can't for the life of me work what the female voice immediately after this is saying. It sounds like "Sing when they get sent for".

    As Dylan settles himself onto the piano stool before Ballad Of A Thin Man, you can just about make out cries of either “turn it up” or “turn it off”. Truth is, it’s probably both. I listened to a lot of these concerts, as bootlegs, in May 2016: the month before the EU Referendum. The hopelessly divided, angry British audiences made a perfect backdrop to the same confused and vitriolic country half a century later.

    “Nobody has any respect” Dylan spits out, warming up for Birmingham. That line used to be all about the vowels. Now it’s strictly consonants.

    Like A Rolling Stone sounds like it shakes the very foundations of Colston Hall. Robbie Robertson unleashes something that we don’t hear every night. Stunned silence, polite thanks, rebellious cheers. “More!” shouts one. But no: the evening closes, as was traditional in those days, with the National Anthem.

    And I do hope that person moved their car: a town can only take so much chaos in one night.
     
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  5. Somebody Naked

    Somebody Naked Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    7.30pm, Wednesday 11th May, 1966. Capitol Theatre (demolished), Cardiff, Wales.


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    In 1966, to travel from Bristol to Cardiff in the absence of a completed Severn Bridge meant using the Aust Ferry. Dylan was captured by photographer Barry Feinstein on May 11th: wearing his obligatory sunglasses, despite the rain. A shot – not the one above - was used as the cover of Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home and the accompanying CD.

    At some point after arriving in Cardiff, Dylan hooked up with Johnny Cash. There is film of them bashing out strange, Dylanesque readings of I Still Miss Someone and I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (featured in Eat the Document and No Direction Home respectively). Neither bears the remotest resemblance to the originals and Cash looks a bit lost. He also wears the kind of face that you only get from touring and/or drugs. In Greil Marcus’ words, “At 33 he looks like cancer”. What’s interesting about this meeting is how it must have made Dylan feel: he and members of The Hawks were huge Cash fans, and it’s hard to imagine that they weren’t lifted by this meeting for hours - even days - afterwards. The grin on Richard Manuel’s face says it all. Garth Hudson had backed Cash in the early ‘60s in a previous band. A couple of weeks later, in London, Dylan bragged to John Lennon, “I have Johnny Cash in my film. Are you gonna s**t yourself when you see it. You won't believe it.”

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    We have no audio record of the acoustic set that night. You can fill in some of the blanks using Angela Carter’s review: “…demonstrated to packed and baffled theatres up and down the British Isles…the first ever all-electronic, all existential rock’n’roll singer…His singing is exceedingly stylised. He never hits a note true…He attempted to pacify the old fans by doing the first half of his concerts in this country with acoustic guitar and mouth organ. As a matter of fact, Desolation Row sounds pretty silly without a beat backing and he seemed curiously apathetic and a bit lonely, all by himself on stage. At Cardiff, the audience greeted the opening lines of Mr. Tambourine Man with relieved recognition and a round of applause; he did not even give a thin smile in return but threw the song away as if he wished he could throw his harmonica after it. No introductions, no nothing. He scrambled through the troubadour of song bit.”

    “He began to jerk into life when the group came on in the second half and the noise bit began.”
    wrote Carter. Damn right. It’s a storming electric set. Tell Me, Momma is tight and muscular. Wiry playing from Robertson, thumping bass from Danko.

    “His aspect reminded me of something I had seen - something funny I had seen somewhere. As I manoeuvred to get alongside, I was asking myself, ‘What does this fellow look like?’ Suddenly I got it. He looked like a harlequin.”

    - Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

    As a child, the first footage I ever saw of Bob Dylan was of him performing I Don't Believe You, which I now know was filmed on this night in Cardiff (in a documentary called Heroes Of Rock 'n' Roll, made in 1979; the footage was originally from Eat The Document). I was fascinated by this pale, jester-like figure; his shock of curly hair discoloured by a spotlight, as he made strange shapes with his hands and even stranger shapes with his voice. I'd never seen or heard anything like it. I wasn't sure if I liked it or not at first, but it made a hell of an impression. I'm now a grown man and I've still never seen anything to match it. In every other version of the song that I've ever heard, this is the one that has been playing in my head.

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    The performance is extraordinary, and I can't separate the audio from the video. The way he spits out "BUT something has changed" or "It's easily DONE" as he throws strange, angular movements; the way he raises his arm to declare "I'm leaving today/I'll be on my way" (above), the way his purses his lips and tilts his head on the line "Yes, but if you want me to/I can be just like you"; the way he clasps both hands either side of his harmonica like he's crying for help: it's just electric. Theatrical, androgynous, even Bowie-esque. And the band, as they permanently are now, are with him in every breath: they exist as one. There are only so many ways left to describe what they bring to Dylan's music; Garth Hudson, not for the last time in his career, plays what sounds like merry-go-round music. Robbie Robertson plays as if he's being electrocuted: it’s music that physically transforms you, like bullets ripping into Sonny Corleone’s body in The Godfather.

    More from Angela Carter: “Bang, bang, drums, organ, amplified guitar. He does a black and white devil dance clutching a black and white amplified guitar and you can hardly hear a word he’s singing.”

    It continues at this rate: this is a fabulous set throughout. It's an interesting hybrid that Dylan has created: the music by now contains a ****-you attitude to it, even if the audience react favourably. In the early days, this music was triumphant and full of itself. Now it's still that, but like a street punk: you don't want to mess with it.

    And ‘punk’ is the right word. Such a thing as we know it was a decade away, but there is a case to be made for Dylan inventing it on this tour. The bile, the confrontation, the sense of theatre: it’s all there. Listen to the way Dylan snarls “they’ll really make a MESS outta yerrww” in Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues. The band are having such a good time they almost forget to end it.

    They’re not the only ones. The audience applaud him when he sits at the piano. They laugh at his jokes. It’s an odd sensation: to come dressed for a fight, only to find out that your opponent isn’t really in the mood. I wonder how much of their enjoyment is down to how it sounded that night: ever since Newport, many of the fans who booed claim that they were booing at the bad sound, not the music. The mix in Cardiff sounds crisp - Manuel isn’t being drowned out, like he supposedly was in Bristol. No one’s shouting to turn it down, like in Dublin.

    Hudson excels himself - again - on Ballad Of A Thin Man. It’s the darkest fairground in town. But these last two songs aren’t spat out, like they usually are. (Incidentally, this narrative only make sense if you swap the ‘Cardiff’ Like A Rolling Stone with the ‘Newcastle’ performance from the 21st. A brief look at No Direction Home will confirm that the Newcastle version of this song has somehow found its way into the Cardiff set, and vice versa.)

    “Thank you very much; you’re very nice, thank you…” Dylan’s voice trails off, as if slightly embarrassed. The only thing worse than being hated is being liked.

    Footage:

    With Johnny Cash:

    I Still Miss Someone, ETD

    I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, NDH

    Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash Cover "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" - No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

    I Don’t Believe You, ETD
    Ballad Of A Thin Man, ETD (second section - first is Newcastle, third is Glasgow)
     
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  6. Leon dL

    Leon dL Forum Resident

    Great clip and performance, a longer version can be seen in an episode 'the Golden years of rock'n'roll' hosted by John Sebastian, probably also taken from ETD.
    The heart bleeds for more footage . .
     
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  7. Somebody Naked

    Somebody Naked Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    8.15pm, Thursday 12th May, 1966. Odeon, Birmingham, England.


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    Dylan's third show in as many days saw him travel north to Birmingham. Those enormous distances in between the US and Australian venues are now a distant memory. Cardiff to Birmingham is about a two hour journey by car or train. The Odeon still stands (I walked past it in 2015), but is unsurprisingly now a cinema. It’s notable that this is the first city on this tour that Dylan had played the year before (although at the Town Hall, which held less than half the capacity of the Odeon): on May 5th 1965. That tour, as immortalised in D.A. Pennebaker’s Dont Look Back, lasted ten days and covered only seven English cities: Sheffield, Liverpool, Leicester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Manchester and London.

    The recording of the concert is, at first, particularly clear. Dylan is recorded in such a way that the audience are initially almost completely inaudible. He sounds closer than before. You can virtually hear him breathe. The singing is getting gently more stylised, even in the acoustic set. He bends notes in those first three songs, replacing fragility with something ever so slightly harder and more confident. The harmonica playing, too, is bolder and a bit more experimental. "Voices echo this is WHAAT salvation must be like after a while". These songs are ever-shifting still: like Woody Allen's description of a shark that has to keep moving, they're never complacent enough to stay in one place for too long. A couple of songs cut out abruptly.

    The audience are appreciative, though. When you can hear them, they're applauding It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and Desolation Row. They whistle, even at Just Like A Woman - a song they don't know (unless they've caught the tour earlier).

    "Dirt. Piece of dirt on the stage" Dylan mutters, faux-bitterly. He will be called worse things in the next few days. And am I imagining this, but is he sounding a bit bored of Mr. Tambourine Man?

    All in all, the audience in the first half are possibly the most receptive so far. What could possibly go wrong?

    After the interval Tell Me, Momma kicks in with its usual onslaught. Garth Hudson's far too high in the mix. The familiar lines "everybody's wondering when you're friendship's gonna end" have, for now, the resigned, ****-happens replacement words of "everybody's wondering why...friendship ends". A casual warning to that enthusiastic audience of the first half: this will all change. You'll be confused and angry. Soon you will not like me; I guarantee it. At least, I'll do my best to ensure it. Even the pained "whatcha wanna go and do that for?" carries this same subtext.

    "It used to be like that", but wait for it...

    The derision in Dylan's voice is tangible and fascinating (he pronounces "that" with a very defined 'T', like he does on the final night in his 'not a drug song' speech). He's had crowds whistle at his music and now he really sounds like he's spoiling for a fight. You think you liked that? Believe me, you didn't. It reminds me of his insistent put-down to that Dublin autograph hunter: "You don't need my autograph. If you needed it, I'd give it to you." His fans may not know what they need, but he does.

    This is one step beyond Johnny Rotten's credo that you should always play where you're not wanted: this is going somewhere and then trying as hard as you can to make an audience not want you. Taunting them. Maybe this had been building since his previous British tour, when he told a besotted Liverpudlian fan not enjoying his new direction: “Oh, you're that kind of (person). I understand right now.“

    No discernible reaction from the audience yet, though. He'll have to push a little harder (the “This is a folk song that my Granddaddy sang to my mother when she was a little girl” remark mentioned in the review below most likely came before Baby, Let Me Follow You Down, but it’s not captured on this tape).

    Four songs in and the plan seems to be working. The crowd are discontented, divided. It's difficult to hear what they're saying - they're not happy - but there are certainly repeated, insistent variations on "Get the group off!" This is where Dylan wants them, perhaps. Announcing Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat, there's a kind of twisted enjoyment in there. You're gonna loathe this. After all the semi-audible voices, someone appoints themselves foreman of this particular jury: "Get the group off. Off." No. This is the way it is from now on. Deal with it.

    As is becoming a well-trodden path now, Dylan riles them with a trivial little song about a hat and having sex in a garage (Richard Manuel pleasantly identifiable in the mix). Then the second blow: One Too Many Mornings. Remember? You used to like this one. And now you're a thousand...miles...

    Ready, Rick?

    BEHIND.

    "Get off!" Slow handclaps. That most British form of passive-aggressive protest.

    It's interesting when Dylan chooses to alter the line "you hand in your ticket to go watch the geek" (although that final k is always deliciously spat out) to "you hand in your money". He's deliberately reducing this contract between performer and audience to a hollow act of commerce. You paid money for this. You idiots.

    A couple of years ago, the only recording I'd heard from this concert was Ballad Of A Thin Man. I became fixated on the unique way that he threw up the word "respect", spitting out that second syllable in what sounded like retaliation for a night of booing and heckling. But this doesn't seem to be the case. Firstly, it sounds to me like he started this fight. He wanted it and made sure it happened. He got them to disrespect this music and then accused them of not having any respect. But also, it sounds to me now very like that it's not their disrespect of him that he has the problem with. God knows, respect is not something that's lacking in the earnest gatherings of die-hard folk fans. They're so respectful as to make you want to chew your own leg off. No, this is disrespect of "American music" - a point he would raise in two weeks in London. In terms of music, there's nothing more American than The (Canadian) Hawks. They play gutbucket blues in bar joints, populated by crowds who had no issue with Jerry Lee Lewis marrying his underage cousin. If you don't like Robbie Robertson's playing on Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat, what kind of music fan are you? This is the real thing. Nobody has any respect because you don't know what it is. It's worth than disrespect. It's stupidity. As Bobby Bland - and, later, Richard Manuel - memorably sang, there's no one blinder than he who won't see.

    I come back to this particular point of this particular middle eight of this particular recording again and again. It seems to me that, if you wanted to sum up this entire tour in one syllable; or even find that point that all roads lead to or from, it's right here. And the next time someone is discussing the origins of punk, play them this.

    It's a shame that the recording doesn't capture more of the crowd noise, particularly after this song. It's at this point in the tour when the heckles become as interesting as the music. And it's at this point in the show that, in five days, someone in Manchester would give the most famous heckle in rock 'n' roll history.

    Like A Rolling Stone is delivered in the way it so often is: half triumph, half derision. And then the audience applaud. They liked it, despite everything. At least, the ones that are applauding did.

    "Thank you very much" Dylan begrudgingly mumbles.

    A review from Redbrick, the University of Birmingham student magazine, dated 18th May, places some of this in context. It’s interesting, for example, to note that the doors opened late. Does this mean that the show started at 9pm? The second half was from around 10-10:45pm? On a weeknight? That would explain one or two things.

    “TIMES ARE A-CHANGIN’ AND SO IS BOB DYLAN”

    The evening started badly with the doors opening three quarters of an hour behind schedule due to a "technical fault" and queues of his Brummie disciples being conned out of half a crown a time for souvenir Dylan magazines by long-haired louts.

    At last the safety curtain went up and Bob Dylan entered stage right with a guitar and what can only be described as a dynamic shuffle. Standing under the light of one spot, he went straight into "She Belongs To Me" backed only by a darkened stage full of electrical equipment. Then after a three minute tune up, he gave with an amusing collection of lyrics which released any tension the audience might have held [sic]. He sang four other folk songs in the first half including "Desolation Row" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" neither of which were given, or, indeed, needed any introduction. Perhaps these two songs were worth the price of the ticket.

    The man in the second half was not the Bob Dylan the audience had come for.

    He was the shell of a man who has gained the whole world but had lost his soul. From behind an electric guitar and backed by a five-piece band he endured heckling from the audience.

    "Now I'll sing you a folk song", said the shell "that ma Granddaddy sang to ma mother when she was a little girl". If his mother had heard what followed the chances are that Bob would never have been born even. He introduced the next piece as "Yes I see you, you've got your brand new leopard-skin pill box hat". The connection between Dylan and "folk" was finally broken. The crowning atrocity was yet to come in the form of "One Too Many Mornings" which most of his followers remember as the real "Dylan". I was contemplating the Exit as the electric guitar and organ took it and strangled the soul from it. Not satisfied with demonstrating his ability with his shiny electric guitar he then took the piano and thumped out "Ballad Of A Thin Man". Applause still drowned the spasmodic groans of Dylan fans. The evening ended abruptly to the dying chords of "Like A Rolling Stone", without an encore.
     
  8. budwhite

    budwhite Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

    Location:
    Götaland, Sverige
    Gamla stan (old town) Stockholm 1966 or so I believe

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  9. Somebody Naked

    Somebody Naked Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    7.45pm, Saturday 14th May, 1966. Odeon (demolished), Liverpool, England.

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    After a day off, Dylan's in the Beatles' home town for a Saturday night show: the first of a particularly eventful four-day stint.

    The first three songs are absent, but no matter: the listener is landed straight into a sublime - and sublime-sounding - performance of It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.

    This Desolation Row is one of the best - if not the best - of the tour. It's impeccably delivered; his voice pitched perfectly: just the right amount/lack of passion in his delivery, with a hint of vulnerability and intimacy. If, after all this time, there are still people in the world who think Dylan can't sing - and who cares - then I don't know what you'd call this kind of attention to pitch, detail and articulation. Sounds like the best kind of singing to me. And this is as stylised as his harmonica playing ever got: broad, bold brush strokes of mercury that are impossible to pin down.

    Just Like A Woman is similarly perfect. He's delivering the song as purely as he's ever delivered it. There's no wilful self-sabotage here. What's staggering about this many jaw-dropping performances back to back isn't simply a matter of a confoundingly high hit rate. It's not simply the care that Dylan invests in a performance like this; it's the subtle but massive differences from night to night. This isn't just down to the audiences, or whatever mood Dylan happens to be in. He's flirting with different styles, different voices, different techniques. Similarly, the following year, he could record both The Basement Tapes and John Wesley Harding at almost the same time but in two distinctly different voices and conflicting formats (one with no choruses, the other hugely dependent on them). It's Dylan's self-control that impresses, after all these years. Almost nothing happens in these concerts that isn't motivated by his decision.

    The audience are so reverential throughout the acoustic set that it's easy to forget that they're there at all. Not even the customary applause for Mr. Tambourine Man breaks their silence. Writers frequently say that you could hear a pin drop on stage: it's not often true. It wasn’t true a year earlier: as evidenced on the Dont Look Back DVD extras, the crowd in the Odeon Liverpool heckled him even in ’65. I wonder if the young lady who asked him a year ago if he was going to sing The Times They Are A-Changin’, and said she didn’t like Subterranean Homesick Blues because it just sounded like he was having a laugh, came back to the same venue a year later. I can't imagine her staying until the end, that's for sure.

    Over the years, the Liverpool show - certainly the electric set - seems to have acquired some kind of status, based in part on its validation via official channels. Robbie Robertson (presumably) chose Tell Me, Momma from this show to feature on The Band’s comprehensive box set A Musical History; an alleged complete performance of One Too Many Mornings showed up as an extra on the No Direction Home DVD (I say alleged because, like pretty much every released song from Pennebaker’s footage, it is a composite of more than one show); but, most significantly, Dylan himself selected Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (it was necessary to borrow the intro from Belfast) as the B side of I Want You, released in June 1966. This recording, when released to an unsuspecting public, was less than a month old. It was the first available recording of Dylan and The Hawks live; but it was also the only released recording from this tour for nearly another twenty years. For a long, long time there was this B side: the rest was, to quote the man, like a myth.

    And, as with so many moments on this box set, we no longer need the myth because we have the recordings. We can listen with fresh ears.

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    Another throwaway but revealing lyric change in Tell Me, Momma: "Everybody sees you're nearly on the edge". It's worth mentioning, as The Cutting Edge would seem to attest, that Dylan never attempted to record this song; nor did he sing it again after May 1966. It's not just that it's ever-shifting and impossible to pin down (remind you of anyone?), but that seems to me to be very much the point.

    This crowd seems to win in the potential heckling stakes: two shouts after only the first song of the electric set. One seems to be "We want (where's?) Bob Dylan!" I think that's what you call hitting the ground running. It's so interesting that such a quiet, respectful audience could become so vocal so quickly. This immediately raises the stakes above mere dissatisfaction. We're talking betrayal. What we've got here is failure to communicate.

    It affects Dylan immediately. He's giving certain words in I Don't Believe You real weight: pausing, different breathing patterns, emphasis. Shouting, almost.

    It's difficult to ignore that this is Liverpool: since 1963, the newly-crowned geographical nucleus of pop music (“Is this called Merseyside?” Dylan had asked a year earlier). 'Beat' music. Not Memphis, Chicago or New Orleans: the jester stole their thorny crown. Dylan and The Hawks' music sounds like nothing to ever come out of Merseyside (or anywhere on this planet), but the significance wouldn't have been lost on either Dylan or his group. Despite being a world away, in two or three days this set up would be dismissed by British fans merely as "a pop group". The previous year, someone had shouted "Where's Ringo?" Even in Dont Look Back, when interviewed in London, Dylan stops resisting comparisons with his Liverpudlian rivals when he fires back at Time magazine reporter Horace Judson, “I mean, you gotta lot of nerve asking me a question like that. Do you ask The Beatles that?"

    It's interesting that Dylan championed and fought for this version of Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. It's good; but it's not Belfast, for example. Although, to anyone who attended any one of these concerts, their memories of this turbulent music would doubtless be projected onto this single, treasured recording. Like so many things, the memory is much more important than the truth.

    The audience has been quiet after the last two songs. But here it is: "BOOOOO". It's played down in the mix, but there's a hell of a vocal reaction going on. From a hell of a lot of people. These people are rowdy. It is a Saturday night in Liverpool, after all. The crowd seems to abate, and then starts up again. They're not just angry, or betrayed: they're divided. There are clearly dissenters and other people telling the dissenters to shut up. Dylan waits. Tunes up. Surely they'll stop soon.

    No. They've got more to say. How can he get them to listen? "I just wanna talk to you..." he begins. "I just wanna tell you the name of this next..."

    And then he has half an idea. He starts inarticulately mumbling into the microphone. These people hang on his every word, right? At least, they used to. He talks gibberish until they stop to listen. Then he says what he wants to say. It only lasts a few seconds, but it seems to work. He'll have to use this trick again.

    "This is dedicated to all the people who read Time magazine". Surely a reminder of that hapless reporter in Dont Look Back - his mind perhaps connecting this to his remark about The Beatles.

    Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat is about the only one of these songs where you can see the join to any kind of pre-Dylan music. The Hawks were schooled in the blues (well, rock 'n' roll: but the blues had a baby, like they say), as was Dylan. And there is a precedent to all this: Muddy Waters recorded acoustic blues in the studio whilst simultaneously taking to the clubs by night and plugging in. He was the pioneer of electric blues - and therefore electric music - and gave the people a package of scorching guitar, honky tonk piano, crisp drumming, muscular bass and wailing harmonica. Because he knew that it was right. And you can hear Chicago blues in Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat. In fact, Richard Manuel even sounds like Otis Spann in this recording. This is American music, as Dylan was to remind his fans just days later. But this is Liverpool. What would they know? Nothing. So let's give them Muddy Waters on amphetamines, turned up so loud that the equipment breaks.

    [​IMG]

    Great performance of One Too Many Mornings; much of it available to watch on video. "We want Dylan!" shouts someone again. You don't need Bob Dylan, he's probably thinking. If you needed Bob Dylan, I'd give him to you.

    More shouts. And, if you can't make them all out, the reply speaks volumes: "Oh. There's a fellow up there looking for the saviour, huh?...The saviour's backstage, we have a picture of him..."

    Ballad Of A Thin Man is now a permanent address to the audience. But, given the hushed awe afforded the acoustic set, tonight the following lines ring particularly true: "You walk in so politely/You say "Is this where it is?"" They walked in politely, they handed in their money, something is happening and they don't know what it is. This song will come in very handy.

    Different lines have different resonances every night. Tonight the word "vacuum" (as in "as you stare into the vacuum of his eyes") in Like Rolling Stone stands out a mile. The footage of tonight's concert shows Dylan's eyes to be either dead or dead focused. In them there's a kind of strength, or a kind of apathy. And he'd need both, particularly over the next few nights.

    "You'd better PAWN IT, BABE" is virtually screamed out. It's interesting the weight Dylan increasingly gives to lines about commerce, trade and selling. He didn't sell anything to get here, particularly not his soul. But his view of the market and the marketplace would never be the same, post 1966.

    More cheers and the National Anthem. Patriotism on the outside, anger and division on the inside. Rule Britannia.

    [​IMG]

    Footage:

    Tell Me, Momma, ETD (mixed with Paris and other show footage)

    Baby, Let Me Follow You Down, ETD
    Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, NDH (from “Sweet Melinda”)
    One Too Many Mornings, NDH extra (contains video from other shows e.g. Newcastle)
    Like A Rolling Stone (intro), ETD
     
  10. Somebody Naked

    Somebody Naked Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    7.30pm, Sunday 15th May, 1966. De Montfort Hall, Leicester, England.


    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    Like Bristol’s Colston Hall, De Montfort Hall is that rarity: still, at the time of writing, a live entertainment venue. Throughout 2015, I was travelling; and realised that I was visiting every one of these UK and Ireland cities, bar London. Time and memory permitting, I set about tracking down some of these venues, if they still existed. De Montfort Hall seemed very accessible - I didn't ask permission to go inside the hall itself, but didn't seem to need to. I was alarmed by how small and respectful it seemed, considering that it housed such blistering rock 'n' roll; and yet it seemed very large for an intimate evening of acoustic ballads. This disparity, coupled with each venue's sound capacity, is probably the point. Much of the booing was probably not necessarily to do with the content of the music. I'm sure a lot of it was, but it's instructive to look at these venues and realise how ill-equipped they were for the loudest music that you've ever heard. A friend who attended one of these May 1966 shows told me that “the main thing was just how astonishingly loud it was, and how distorted. It always amazes me to hear the recordings because they’re so clear and you can hear every detail of the instruments (including Dylan’s voice and harp) - but at the time, you could decipher very little.” Before this set was released, my bootleg of the Leicester show seemed to confirm this - the shock from the crowd was tangible. The noise must’ve been deafening.

    There's some beautiful footage of the exterior of De Montfort Hall, bathed in the evening light of a Sunday in late spring/early summer, in Eat The Document and the final scene of I'm Not There (the version of Mr. Tambourine Man that accompanies it, however, is from Newcastle). The only interior footage so far to have seen the light of day is in No Direction Home, when Dylan jousts with the audience pre-Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat (“This is a folk song…”).

    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    The poster for this gig presents Dylan as “America’s Greatest Folk Singer”. Leaving aside the fact that Woody Guthrie was still alive, it makes me sigh to read these words. He’d railed against this terminology, to no avail, a year earlier. To date, Dylan has spent about the same amount of his career making Christian gospel music as he has “folk” music; and considerably more studio time being a Frank Sinatra tribute act. No matter: it’s the folk label that will stick. Even when Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in October 2016, the BBC referred to him as “Folk legend Bob Dylan”. It was swiftly changed to read “Rock legend”. Folk, rock, folk-rock. These labels will never go away.

    Anyway, this is a stunning recording. After years of only hearing this on a muddy bootleg, how wonderful to hear this in such perfect sound. Just listen to the final consonants in She Belongs To Me ("You are a walking antiQue").

    I can't think of music better suited to a sunny, Sunday evening. Like some of the UK venues, Dylan had been here a year earlier (2nd May 1965). One can imagine the Dont Look Back-era fans returning for this - probably satisfied customers. The songs and performances have clearly grown (three of these acoustic songs were performed a year earlier - it’s significant that Dylan bookends the 1966 acoustic sets with two of them). The new songs are often bolder, denser, more sexualised; a little more out there - enough to leave some of the fans behind, but not all of them. It’s a long way from “For the loser now will be later to win” to “The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face”.

    Visions Of Johanna is the earliest, clearest sign of Dylan's development as a writer and performer. After umpteen note-perfect readings of his masterwork, he plays the "muttering small talk at the wall" section a little faster tonight than usual. The "fiddler now steps to the road" section sounds a bit half-hearted. Mickey Jones claimed that, on this tour, Dylan was bored of the acoustic half: there’s very little sign of such apathy until occasional moments in this song and others in the previous two shows.

    It's All Over Now, Baby Blue always has a double edge. Yes, it's an acoustic song from his last album but one; yes, he played it a year ago; but, importantly, it's also a warning (“Look out”). As at Newport, it was a message to his fans to remember that something had ended. In its place: change. Innovation.

    There's no applause at the beginning of any of the songs tonight until Desolation Row. This audience, like in Liverpool, seem very attentive and respectful.

    There's also no talking from Dylan in between songs. As he said a year earlier, "I got nothing to say about these things I write: I just write 'em."

    Applause, again, for Mr. Tambourine Man. "Play a song for me" already seems like a folk notion that Dylan has outgrown. As does "I'll come following you". In 20 minutes or so, neither performer nor audience will recognise that ethos in the slightest.

    Greil Marcus wrote about this performance, no doubt plodding through every bootleg he could find, in the 1990s. What he says about Mr. Tambourine Man in Invisible Republic could now, in the context of this collection, apply to almost any one reading of this song; and perhaps others:

    “In Leicester, Dylan began Mr. Tambourine Man, and it would take him nine perfect minutes to find an ending in the song he could accept. As he sings, his words are clipped, his diction almost effete, as if each word can and must be presented as if it means exactly what it says. But very quickly, his odd speech becomes its own kind of rhythm, and paradoxically it releases the burden Dylan has seemingly placed on each word, and each word along with every other, and the song becomes a dream of peace of mind. You cease to hear the words. For nine minutes, what you hear are two long harmonica solos, each pressing well past two minutes – solos that sway, back and forth, back and forth, a cradle rocking in their rhythm, until without warning, the sound rises up like a water spout, hundreds of feet in the air, the cradle now rocking at its top, then down again, safe in the arms of the melody.”


    It's becoming impossible to single out any of the electric sets when they're all this good. They've certainly become more interactive and theatrical on this leg of the tour (post-Liverpool). And this four-day stint, of course, will climax with Manchester.

    What we do know is that Dylan's confidence is growing. He and The Hawks had listened to the Liverpool show and knew it was something special. Word must have been getting around because, in addition to the impending official release of Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, Columbia would record the next two nights, with the possibility of releasing a live album.

    Not that tonight is any kind of dress rehearsal. Tell Me, Momma is all rhythm: a thunderous, unstoppable force. At their best, The Hawks’ rhythm section comprised not just bass and drums, but piano. All too often Manuel is buried in the mix; here you can hear him like a train whistle over Danko and Jones’ furnace and wheels.

    Dylan sounds as tired of how I Don’t Believe You “used to be” as he does of the heckle that follows his intro: “Go away”, or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. “Boooo…” he offers back, like a man who’s seen - or been in - one too many pantomimes. By now he and the band have the feeling that some of these punters are booing because they’ve heard that’s what they’re meant to do. The boos now come much earlier than they ever used to, as if from a crowd that have been coached or told how to behave. And Dylan hasn’t got the energy to get angry about this. No, no. Pity works better: “Can’t you yell any louder than that?” is his comeback - as condescending as “you got a lot of nerve”, “you know something is happening, but you don’t know what it is” or “you break just like a little girl”. The heckler bites. “YES!” I can yell louder. And then a couple more voices weigh in, sounding like they’re recruiting a drunken, aggressive posse to deal with him. Dylan drowns them out with his count-in. He knows he can win in the size and volume stakes, like a truck driver taunting a motorcyclist.

    It’s a shame that Alderson is usually changing reels before Baby, Let Me Follow You Down. One can only imagine how Dylan presents this to the folk fans. Their reaction after the song makes the floor sound unstable.

    The tape manages to capture cheers and boos after Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues. Then it gets rowdier. The aggressive slow clapping starts. Dylan is trying to introduce Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat. He has been here before. Last night, in fact. “This is called…”

    Here we go again.

    [​IMG]

    There have been sound problems a couple of songs back. Dylan says to someone “Fix the monitor, (would you)? Is the monitor on? Will you fix the monitor? (…) treble. Just fix the monitor. You hear?”

    “This is called…This is a folk song! This is a folk song; I wanna sing a folk song now.”

    Huge cheers. Fooled ya.

    “I knew that would be a…that would happen. This is called ‘Yes, I See You Have Got Your Brand New Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat’.”

    And then, as is the form by now, they play loud enough to drown out any dissent.

    After an intro that briefly sounds like a child testing an adult’s patience by repeatedly playing one piano key, we’re into Ballad Of A Thin Man. Is that applause?

    Dylan stumbles over some of the lyrics, turning “great lawyers and scholars” into something that sounds like “great liars and squoils”. Which has a certain half-logic.

    The triumph of Like A Rolling Stone seems to build with every show: it used to be sung - now it’s shouted from the rooftops. Dylan and The Hawks listened to the tapes of the previous night. They know this stuff is good. So much so that Columbia have scrambled to record a show: there may be a live album in this. And Sheffield on the following night may just be the one.


    Footage:

    Exterior footage only during Mr. Tambourine Man sequence, ETD and INT

    Intro to Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat: "this is a folk song..."
     
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  11. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    Thanks, Paul. :cool: Er. Louis, rather.
     
  12. Richard--W

    Richard--W Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Yes, thanks Mark. Thanks again.
     
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  13. Somebody Naked

    Somebody Naked Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    8.15pm, Monday 16th May, 1966. Gaumont Theatre (demolished), Sheffield, England.

    [​IMG]

    “I’ve always had more dedicated fans in England…they understood my music…earlier than they did in the States.” (Bob Dylan talking to Jeff Rosen, 2000)

    The trip from Leicester to Sheffield took Dylan via Nottingham, which is about halfway between the two cities. There he was photographed by Barry Feinstein outside 18 Castle Boulevard, a betting shop bearing the letters ‘LSD’ (pounds, shillings and pence; but it was a good gag, and one ahead of its time in popular culture). More at PopSpots - DYLAN - LSD - 1966 - Barry Feinsein

    A year earlier, on 30th April, Dylan had opened his 1965 UK tour at Sheffield City Hall. This year, he chose the Gaumont Theatre, which seated almost exactly the same number of people and was located literally just on the other side of the road.

    The acoustic set of this show has long been prized amongst Dylan fans. One of the reasons is that it was professionally recorded - it sounded far better than almost any other live 1966 bootleg - and was sonically warmer than the deliberately harsh mix of the Manchester show that was eventually dropped into the world in 1998.

    It's easy to forget that the song Dylan chooses to open these concerts immediately presents the audience with duality and contradiction. The song is almost 18 months old, he sang it last time he was here; and yet it comes with a statement of intent and progression: artists don't look back.

    It's one of the best 4th Time Arounds of the tour, and delivered to an attentive audience. They laugh at the gum line, and applaud almost disproportionately at a song most of them have never heard before.

    Despite the consistency of these acoustic sets, Dylan does whatever he wants with them. In terms of rhythm and metre, he can afford to vary things if he feels like it. Lines like "Louise, she's all reeeight, she's just near" take on a real emphasis in delivery. The articulation in these songs is so crisp; to hear these songs so freshly and perfectly delivered must have satisfied any audience member: at least, the ones who accept that artists don't look back.

    He starts to sound a little under the influence. Maybe that wasn't a betting shop in Nottingham, after all. It's indicative of how little he cared that a potential live album was being recorded. Or indicative of the knowledge that it might improve the music and/or heighten the sense of confrontation.

    Exemplary versions of It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and Desolation Row. "You belong to me, I believe" has real fragility. "Is brought down from the factories" replaces the usual "castles". You can hear the distortion on his vocal in It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and parts of Desolation Row. And that's in the acoustic set. Columbia will need another go at this.

    Just Like A Woman takes a while to get going, but it sounds like perfection. The man later criticising Dylan's loss of rhythm is probably thinking of this performance: it plays by its own rules. "I believe it's time for us to qui-hi-it" is stretched out to the point of agony. But pain sure brings out the best in people, doesn't it?

    Ok, whatever he's taken is really kicking in now. Protracted tuning, a withering "This never happens to my electric guitar" (been a while since we heard that one) and then we're into a performance of Mr. Tambourine Man that really divides opinion. It's either one of the peaks of the tour (possibly even the definitive recording of the song), or it seems painfully uncertain and is the obvious reference point for that damning remark: "too much improvising on his wretched harmonica", as the punter will tell D.A. Pennebaker that night. I'm in the former camp, obviously. This is a riveting and emotive performance. He really uses those harmonica solos to go somewhere unplanned and unchartered, until we're all standing in a field in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere and the only thing we can hear is a dying train whistle in the distance.

    Columbia could, despite mild distortion, have released that as half of a live album. Unfortunately, the second half was so distorted as to be unreleasable. So we switch to the soundboard recording for the electric set, and Columbia prepare to have another go tomorrow.

    We're very lucky to have these recordings; but it's important to remember how unrepresentative of the concert experience they are. The wiry, melodically inventive guitar solo on Tell Me, Momma, for example: could they hear any of this? Or was it just noise?

    To be honest, some of it - Dylan's "whooooaaahhh" in Tell Me, Momma, for example - distorts even through the soundboard. This must've been loud. There's the customary early heckle before I Don't Believe You (it could even be someone telling someone else to shut up, and not directed at Dylan at all); and this is likely around the time that people start walking out.

    [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]

    It seems reasonable to assume that the interviews with disgruntled fans in No Direction Home are from Sheffield. Certainly one of them mentions the city by name; but they all seem to have been filmed at the same time and, frankly, the accents don’t really fit with anywhere else that Dylan played (it's Manchester, however, that was the location for the "not a pop group, not a pop group" section in NDH; and the sequence in ETD that includes comments like "terrible", "absolutely fantastic", "rubbish", "no comment", "the group bring him down", "he wants shootin'"; and of course Keith Butler’s impassioned rant). When this footage was released in 2005, it seemed staggering how vehement their reactions were. This is still the case. These aren’t just cheated punters or even betrayed fans. Listen to the language they use: “He’s changed from what he was…you don’t even recognise him”; “He’s prostituting himself”; “It makes you sick, listening to this rubbish now”; “Bob Dylan was a bastard in the second half”; “…this incredibly corny group behind him”; “he tended to lose the rhythm on his guitar altogether at times”. The strength of their feeling towards him is still shocking. If the music in the background isn't overdubbed by Scorsese, we can assume that the concert is still going on. These people - at least some of them - have walked out in anger. In the background behind the guy who saw him in Sheffield years ago but now thinks he's "prostituting himself", you can hear Robbie Robertson playing what sounds like Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (although, confusingly, not much like the Sheffield recording). They didn't need much of the electric set to know that they'd had enough.

    For those still around, Dylan's prepared to alienate them further with his 'Tom Thumb' spiel. "The newspapers have neglected him. Everybody's neglected him..."

    Dylan's voice and demeanour is sounding tired. When he sings "I don't have the strength to get up and take another shaaaaaat", you certainly believe him. Although the final note of "I do believe I've had enough" is equal parts resignation and triumphant farewell.

    He sounds a bit restrained on Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat: the drumming too is not quite as thunderous as it sometimes gets. But Robertson didn't get the memo: he sounds like he's playing for his very life.

    Regardless, the heckles come at full pelt. The crowd are angry. “Dylan’s CRAP!" (Interesting reflection of hero-worship: is he referring to Dylan in the third person, or telling the rest of the audience?) ”Shut up!" "Fantastic!" Something about London. "Come on Bob, sing!" And then the slow handclaps start. Dylan decides to employ his new mumbling into the microphone trick, waits for the crowd to quieten down - which they don't, really - and concludes with "...when I was just a baby....Remember, I was a baby once!"

    This is the arrangement of One Too Many Mornings that Dylan and The Hawks will try and record a year and a world away in Woodstock, possibly as an exercise in teaching Levon Helm what he's missed. But throughout this tour it has rage and defiance. You really had to be there.

    An abrupt edit, and more audience-baiting before Ballad Of A Thin Man: "...say anything after this song. No boos?" Dylan's intonation makes it unclear whether it's a command, a question or just a little jibe.

    What follows is a comparatively jolly version of Ballad A Thin Man. Dylan reaches for notes where he would normally spout vitriol; Hudson follows his lead. Maybe, to quote Dylan a year earlier, if he sounds like he's "having a laugh" with his friends, he'll annoy the crowd even more. This gleeful abandon carries through into the next song. He sings notes during Like A Rolling Stone that he's never attempted before. Nothing to lose, indeed. Robbie Robertson takes this notion and runs with it. A little "thank you very much" and the National Anthem.

    It's worth mentioning that, on these recordings, Dylan doesn't sound quite as bothered by all this as years of rock criticism would have us believe. It riles him sometimes, and he can give as good as he gets. But often, it's just water off a duck's back. The footage of Dylan backstage in Newcastle, featured in No Direction Home, shows a man willing to joke about booing, fans walking out and even death threats. Even the famous "Judas!" moment and profane response the following night come accompanied, as we can see in Scorsese's film, by a smile from the man himself. It's like Newport: history would have us believe that Dylan, to quote sound technician Paul Rothchild, "was shaken to his core". Whereas Mike Bloomfield recalls seeing him at a party the next day, hand gleefully up the skirt of a woman whose husband was sat next to her: clearly over it and having the time of his life.


    Fan footage, NDH
     
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  14. jkauff

    jkauff Senior Member

    Location:
    Akron, OH
    Dylan always loved rock & roll. The Woody Guthrie/folk music thing was a phase (albeit the phase that made him world-famous). Just compare the number of years he's played electric vs. the years he played solo acoustic. No wonder he found the folk music purists amusing and/or irritating (including Phil Ochs, of course, who finally gave up the fight and started playing Buddy Holly covers in a gold lamé suit alongside "I Ain't Marchin' Any More").
     
  15. Somebody Naked

    Somebody Naked Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Acoustic folky protesty albums: 2-4
    Christian albums: 2-3
    Frank Sinatra tribute albums: 3 (5 discs)

    And they call him a folk hero. It's like saying that Shakespeare is best known for writing comedies about mistaken identity.
     
  16. Richard--W

    Richard--W Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Who calls him a folk hero?
    Anti-hero, maybe.

    People's affection for Dylan's folk music phase had -- has -- more to do with life than with the number of records. In the early 1960s when Dylan was obsessed with Woody Guthrie he moved to New York City and ingratiated himself into the folk music community. He associated with them,traded ideas and drinks and smokes and music with them, took inspiration from them and gave it back to them, lived with them, became family with them. He invited them into his life and they accepted him into theirs. They shaped his thinking, helped him survive, shared their opportunities in the business with him, and opened doors for his career. That's cold-hard fact. He grew up and left them behind, necessarily so. Many of them took it hard when they realized that Dylan wasn't going to be friends or family with them anymore. That's cold hard fact, too. He did some rude things -- like playing loud rock at their annual folk festival -- and showed a contempt for them that really rattled them. That's another cold hard fact, and if it isn't pretty, at least it's true. The songs he wrote at this time changed culture and society and caused an evolution in songwriting and music. The folk albums continue to impress new listeners. The folk albums reach people in a way that his later music does not. That's cold hard fact, too. I'm not suggesting his later work isn't great, because it certainly is, but I am saying that his folk music was a way of life and not just a phase, and is recognized by everyone who hears it as something unique and special and unprecedented.

    Dylan will move on from being a Sinatra cover act. He's not going to stay in one place for long. As important as the songs are to Dylan personally, his cover albums will not have the impact that Sinatra's originals had in the 1940s and 1950s and continue to have for new listeners. Nor will Dylan' cover albums have the impact that his folk music albums had and continue to have.
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2017
    marmalade166 likes this.
  17. Somebody Naked

    Somebody Naked Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Folk legend. I meant folk legend; sorry. I'm tired. When he got the Nobel Prize the BBC called him a folk legend. In 2016.
     
  18. Richard--W

    Richard--W Forum Resident Thread Starter

    He really hates being called a folk anything, I gather from reading various bios and interviews.
     
  19. jkauff

    jkauff Senior Member

    Location:
    Akron, OH
    Well, those albums reached some people that way. Folk music was a way of life for a certain group of people--the Sing Out! magazine folks, etc. And Dylan was certainly their hero. The general public, however, was buying the folk music they heard on the Hullabaloo TV show--PP&M, Kingston Trio, New Christy Minstrels. They were not listening to the Harry Smith collection, country blues, or even Woody Guthrie. And they thought Dylan's singing was awful.

    As for the folk "purists", they loved Muddy Waters playing acoustic but hated his electric stuff, even though it was still totally authentic, lived-in blues. I think Dylan eventually felt fenced in by the NYC folk clique, and made a musical move. Fred Neil felt that way and made a geographical move--he headed for Florida and never looked back.

    Who knows? Maybe "Ballad of a Thin Man" is about those same people, who didn't "get" what was happening at Warhol's Factory where Bob was spending quite a bit of time. Including the choice of recreational drugs.

    This is a long way of saying I think "his folk music...is recognized by everyone who hears it as something unique and special and unprecedented" is not cold hard fact. I'd say that better describes the people who heard seven minutes of "Like A Rolling Stone" on Top 40 radio.
     
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  20. Somebody Naked

    Somebody Naked Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    7.30pm, Tuesday 17th May, 1966. Free Trade Hall (demolished), Manchester, England.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    All that's left of the fabled Manchester Free Trade Hall is its facade. On my visit in late 2014, it was the Radisson Blu Hotel. A plaque, an occasional mention of the words "Free Trade"; but nothing to commemorate one of the most notorious dates in rock 'n' roll history.

    So much has been said and written about this concert: notably C.P. Lee's Like The Night; and an entire radio programme focusing solely on who shouted "Judas".

    So: the music.

    It's the only example in the collection where we're treated to a snatch of a soundcheck. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? from the Albert Hall would've been nice. But no.

    It's an incredibly strong acoustic set, even viewed within the context of this collection.

    Not for the first time and possibly not the fourth, in 4th Time Around Dylan seems to reinvent his own rhythm, as the pronunciation of the words seems to want to exist outside the metre of the song.

    When you've seen a film many, many times the only new thing you can do is to see it in a different context; like with someone who's new to it. I've listened to this show many times in the last twenty years. Half of it even longer than that. But I've never listened to it having played 16 almost identical concerts beforehand. At times it sounds unnervingly familiar; at others things are heard for the first time. I'm not sure I've ever noticed the way Dylan sings "fish" as in "fish truck" in Visions Of Johanna before today.

    The acoustic set sounds much more focused and controlled than Sheffield. Dylan is behaving himself. It's difficult to imagine anyone who thinks that this wouldn't make a great live album.

    These versions are as good as any on the tour. Just Like A Woman is sublime. It sounds like it's performed alone, to an empty room, such is its tenderness and fragility. Did I always know that it was this good, when it was the only show we had?

    No applause to welcome Mr. Tambourine Man. The performance of which is astonishing, by the way. Listen to the care he gives a word like "twisted". This audience are as attentive and respectful as they were in Liverpool, their close neighbour. However, like in Liverpool, everything will change after the interval.

    There are reports of Dylan strutting around in the intervals of these shows, getting pumped up for what truly excited him: coming on stage with The Hawks (Jones: “He’d put that black telecaster around his neck. It was like a changed person: he was stalking…he was like a caged animal in the dressing room. He couldn’t wait to get out there and plug that black Telecaster in). We can see, in No Direction Home, footage of him backstage at Manchester Free Trade Hall: cocky, jovial, ready for something.

    [​IMG]

    “Last on the bill…not least, ladies and gentlemen…here he is: back from the grave…back (right?) straight from the grave!”

    And they’re off. There is nothing quite like this version of Tell Me, Momma on this tour, or in popular music. It is enormous. It has been said that the sheer force of it pushed the audience in Manchester back in their seats: you can almost feel it, just listening.

    [​IMG]

    The first noise the audience makes in this concert, not including applause, comes right after Dylan speaks to them for the first time; it could best be described as nervous laughter. "It used to be like that and now it goes like this"? Just what have they let themselves in for?

    This is one of only two shows from this tour that you can buy on CD without shelling out for the box set. There are probably thousands of music fans the world over who have no desire to invest in any more than these two. And even that betrays a kind of obsession: to want to own two separate gigs from the same tour, separated by only nine days. Dylan fans are notorious for banging on about those hidden recordings that not enough people have heard. "Yes, but they should have released this one instead," etc. The fact is, for once Columbia/Sony got it right here. There's a very strong case to be made for this and the first Albert Hall show being the two real standouts in this set. Anyone who thinks that they only need these two is surely still not reading by now. But my point is that this show is overwhelmingly powerful. The hype is completely justified. It hasn't been dulled one bit by the years of smuggled releases and the dust of rumour. Pretty much every song tonight is as powerful as any other recording on the tour. This is every bit as good as they say it is.

    When, in 1995 or thereabouts, I first got my hands on a tape of someone else's CD of Guitars Kissing & The Contemporary Fix (the initial, cleaner mix that was allegedly vetoed by Dylan), it was the intro to Baby, Let Me Follow You Down that blew me away. I'd never heard the unstoppable rhythm section of Danko and Jones quite like this before. Danko's bass, particularly, when it kicks in, gives you an idea of just how far this had got from humourless, earnest folk music. Suddenly you can't hear the crowd noise or the slow handclaps that are starting up. The audience don't stand a chance. The noise is, as Marlon Brando claimed after one of Dylan and The Hawks' spring shows in Los Angeles, like a jet plane. Protesting against it really is pissing in the wind: as pointless as standing on the runway and trying to ask them to turn it down a bit. It's not even a fair fight.

    Robbie Robertson has spoken of the solo in Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues being some kind of opportunity to play for his life every night. Tonight, I believe him. His legacy would be safe if this was all he'd ever played.

    It's after this song that the people turn from an audience into a mob. As detailed in Lee's book, it's at this point that a loyal fan, keen to tell Dylan that they like him really and it's just this group that they have a problem with, wanders up towards the stage with a piece of paper, containing the advice "Tell the band to go home". She hands it to Dylan. Onstage discussions are heard. The crowd goes into a frenetic slow and then rapid hand clap routine, punctuated by wolf whistles presumably aimed at the note bearer. Dylan counts in the song, which he's already announced; and Jones and The Hawks play Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat. The initial drum crash sounds like the largest wave you've ever seen breaking and crashing down onto a bunch of helpless surfers (Mickey Jones: “The more they booed, the heavier my right foot got; and the more Bob Dylan laughed”).

    The song ends, the wave subsides and the surfers are somehow still there. Dylan goes into fully-fledged microphone babble: more than half a minute of rambling, punctuated by the occasional bit of sense to throw them - "it's all over town" - until arriving at the conclusion "if you only wouldn't clap so hard". It's not the first time he uses passive-aggressiveness as a tool. He could tell the audience to shut up or berate them for their lack of open-mindedness. He doesn't. He thanks them for being so enthusiastic. This probably riles and divides them even further.

    Another superb performance. More slow hand clapping and tuning as he sits at the piano for Ballad Of A Thin Man. Dylan's voice sounds low in the mix, overwhelmed by the turbulence of The Hawks. I'm surprised it didn't damage the building.

    However, this concert will always be more famous for what happens in the audience between the last two songs than for any of the music it features. We can all identify the J word, but this is what else I can hear:

    "F**k you" (possibly)
    "Judas!"
    “Bob Dylan is the greatest genius since Dylan Thomas!"
    "I don't believe you."
    "You're a liar!"
    "Get f**kin' loud!"

    [​IMG]

    There are two candidates for the "Judas" shout: they're both dead and it's been covered, in detail, elsewhere. So, who tells them to get or play (it) "f**kin' loud?" Popular opinion claims that it's Dylan himself. This is immediately at odds with his comparatively relaxed attitude in the clip, shown at the end of No Direction Home (shot, I am told, not by D.A. Pennebaker - who was at the Cannes Film Festival - but by Howard Alk: seemingly lacking Pennebaker's fluidity, at short notice and from the circle, rushing to turn the camera on and focus). It's also instructive to examine the clip. Dylan says something after "you're a liar", but he says it off mike and facing upstage. In the film clip, his lip movements and the "f**king loud" quote are completely out of sync. It does make sense that, if Dylan was the one, it would be Mickey Jones he was instructing, as he kicks the song off. However, not only does Jones claim it wasn't Dylan; he thinks that it was a local member of the crew. Hence the 'Northern' accent, so he says. Surely, if this had any truth to it at all, it would be "fookin' loud". Which it isn't: to me it sounds American. Or Canadian. Could it be Robbie Robertson? Well, yes. It's precisely the kind of humourless comment that he'd make. It doesn't particularly sound like Robertson, though. It does sound like Dylan, but the film tells a different story: even turning the sound off and trying to lip read doesn't settle it. It looks as if Dylan is saying nothing like that. His mouth makes an ‘ow’ shape but it’s followed by what looks like an ‘r’ and an ‘ee’. I can’t actually believe I’ve examined it this much. I must be going insane. And he's smiling as he speaks, which makes it very unlikely that it's him. So, I've no idea.

    Like A Rolling Stone on this night is not the angry tirade many writers would have you believe (but it's a magnificent, majestic, thunderous performance). I think that the anger element has been overstated. Look at the film. Dylan really doesn't seem that bothered. He's seen smiling as he faces upstage. When he sings, he's not spitting the words out like he would a few days later. Hell, he doesn't care. Tomorrow's a day off.

    Again, a not particularly barbed "thank you", some very uneventful crowd noise and the National Anthem. Tomorrow - or the next day - they cross the border into Scotland.


    Footage:

    Interval: “back from the grave…”/“Judas”/Like A Rolling Stone, NDH

    Fan footage: ETD, NDH (“not a pop group”, etc)

    (Based on clothing, I’m not convinced that Mickey Jones’ footage that he labels either Leicester or Birmingham isn’t actually Manchester.)
     
    Archtop, Sordel, rednax and 6 others like this.
  21. revolution_vanderbilt

    revolution_vanderbilt Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    First impressions can define a reputation.
     
  22. onlyconnect

    onlyconnect The prose and the passion

    Location:
    Winchester, UK
    This forum would be dull without these mysteries :)

    Tim
     
    Somebody Naked likes this.
  23. Chemguy

    Chemguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Western Canada
    Just got the set yesterday and I am listening to Copenhagen right now. Boy am I ever loving this one.

    Rolling Stone is really terrific; starts a little sedate and ends up with Bob chewing the microphone. And the Copenhagen crowd loves him, and he write back. Nice.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2017
    Psychedelic Good Trip likes this.
  24. Psychedelic Good Trip

    Psychedelic Good Trip Beautiful Psychedelic Colors Everywhere

    Location:
    New York


    Enjoy plenty to dive into. Incredible time Dylan 1966, this box captures that time big time.
     
    prudence2001 and Chemguy like this.
  25. Chemguy

    Chemguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Western Canada
    Thanks, I shall. I'm feeling it already!

    Isn't it great that we can have this officially released, so we don't have to listen to our old bootleg tapes anymore?!
     

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