Even hardcore fans admit that Bob Dylan’s career has been marked by more
turns and unexpected bumps than an old country road. First there was the
shift from folk to rock. Then from rock to country, and back again. Then
there was performing roadshow period, the born-again Christian period, the
stadium rockstar period, the Travelling Wilburys period, and finally in the
1990s, the period where he seemed to do little else but avoid the recording
studio while continuing to tour the world. Last year’s Grammy winning album
Time Out of Mind, his first collection of new songs in seven years, was an
out-of-the-blue masterpiece and marked yet another u-turn in a career most
neutral observers believed was creatively finished.
Now with the release of a new Bob Dylan album, the 57 year-old rock
icon is about to take one more detour, this time into his own past. LIVE
1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert captures Dylan at what many consider
to be his creative peak, just after the release of the epochal Highway 61
Revisited album and before the release of Blonde on Blonde. Recorded at
Manchester Free Trade Hall on the last leg of Dylan’s first tour with an
electric band, the show has entered musical lore as one of the watersheds
in the development of modern rock music.
And the reason? Partly the quality of the music, which is undeniably
powerful and for its time creatively unmatched. But the show’s status as
one of the great spine-tinglers of rock’n’roll also derives from what has
become known in musical circles as the Heckle That Shook The World.
Dylan’s entire 1966 tour, which featured his first concert performances
with an electric band, had been marked by anger from fans who felt betrayed
by the singer’s transformation from acoustic folkie minstrel to amplified
rock’n’roller . Booing and slow handclapping during the electric parts of
his sets had been the norm, but as Dylan and band were preparing to end
their performance at Manchester, a disgruntled fan screamed “Judas” at the
stage. It was a moment of extraordinary tension; the anger that had built
up amongst fans of folkie Dylan had reached boilingpoint and seemed to be
looking for more than verbal expression.
Violence was in the air; Dylan, however, remained unphased. “I don’t
believe you,” he sneered back. “You’re a liar.” He turned to his band and
told them to ‘play f***ing louder’ and launched into a version of Like A
Rolling Stone that acted simultaneously as a statement of intent, a
response to his critics, and a good kicking to anyone still willing to
complain.
Bootleg copies of the Manchester performance, originally thought to
have been from London’s Royal Albert Hall, have been passed between Dylan
devotees for years, up until recently in poor quality versions. The
official release of Live 1966 offers fans a sparkling, remastered mix on
two CDs. The first features the then 25 year-old Dylan running through a
selection of acoustic versions of some of his most famous songs, including
''Visions of Johanna,'' “I Want You,” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.'' But it is
the second half of the show to which most attention will be drawn. Backed
by the five-man combo that would eventually evolve into The Band, Dylan
rips through eight electrified tunes from the previously unreleased ''Tell
Me, Momma'' to reworkings of previously-acoustic songs, and the stunning
closer, ``Like a Rolling Stone.''
CP Lee, whose book, ‘Like the Night,” traces Dylan’s progress as a
newly-plugged in performer from 1965 to May 1966, was in the Free Trade
Hall audience that night. He says LIVE 1966 is an important release because
it captures one of the pivotal moments in rock history.
“No one has ever come close in replicating the excitement and tension
that was present that night,” he says. “The concert was originally planned
for release in the 1960's, but was put on the back burner. Funnily enough,
the various bootlegs of the concert have become the best selling bootlegs
of all time, because the performance is a unique moment in history
preserved forever. It’s history written with lightning.”
The official release of the performance, which includes a 52-page
booklet, is certain to focus further attention on Dylan’s considerable back
catalogue. But while LIVE 1966 will see the singer’s iconic status
underlined again, the identity of the man behind the most famous case of
audience harrassment in rock remains a puzzle.
“There were just under 2000 of us in the hall that night and the
protestors probably numbered under a hundred,” says Lee, a lecturer in
Cultural Studies at the University of Salford in Manchester. “When I was
writing the book I spent a lot of time trying to track down a whole cross
section of people who were at the show, hoping I guess, that I might come
across the Judas shouter. I got very close at one point, even found several
people who were willing to admit that they booed, but the identity of the
man who made Rock history is still a mystery.”
But will anyone outside the Dylan-obsessed bother with the new album?
Dubliner Derek Keogh, who maintains ‘Smoking A Cheap Cigar,” Ireland’s only
Dylan-devoted website, says that rock fans will ignore the album at their
peril.
“This was the beginning of rock as a form of expression an experimental
art form, the genesis of what we take today for granted as rock music,” he
says. “You simply cannot get from Chuck Berry to Nirvana without passing
through the Free Trade Hall in 1966."
And although Dylan himself has remained characteristically quiet on the
release of archival material, there are already rumours of further goodies
in the coming years as part of the ongoing Bootleg Series. Love him or
loathe him, at least the man whose credo was “Don’t Look Back” can never be
accused of being predictable.

LIVE 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert - The Bootleg Series Vol 4 is
released by Sony records on Oct 13. CP Lee reads from ‘Like the Night’ at
Tower Records in Dublin at 1pm on Oct 24th.