(Formerly
known as The "Royal Albert Hall Concert" Bootleg)
This is
the best recording of Bob Dylan's transition from acoustic folk to rock.
It was the basis of one of the first live concert bootleg LPs in rock:
Royal Albert Hall 1966. Referred to as "The Most Famous
Bootleg Album Of All Time," this concert was actually recorded and performed
on May 17, 1966, at Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England. (Confusion
about it stems from the notoriety of the Royal Albert Hall stop on this
same tour, which was attended by the cream of British pop-rock including
the Beatles. Also, many mistaken references are made to Great
White Wonder, the first Dylan bootleg LP, which was not this
concert but rather an assortment of songs that would later surface as
Dylan and the Band's Basement Tapes.)
On The
Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966 you hear one of the
finest acoustic set he ever performed up to that time, and then he
comes out for the second set with the Band (then called Levon Helm
and the Hawks, but Levon was absent for this tour, replaced by Mickey
Jones). While most of the audience accepted Dylan's new music, there
were also lots of jeers and heckling. At one point, unruly members
of the audience tried to halt Dylan's performance by clapping in hostile
unison. You hear all the stomping, booing and the now-famous cry of
"Judas" from one audience member, and Dylan's ironic retort: "I don't
believe you. You're a liar!" Robbie Robertson, guitarist in the Hawks
(the Band), muttered to Dylan, "Quit talking, Bob." Dylan
turned his back to the audience and said to the band, right before
launching into a magnificent version of "Like a Rolling Stone"
with Garth Hudson on surreal organ: "Play it fuckin' loud!"
 Bob
Dylan's rise to stardom as a folk singer-songwriter is chronicled
in various books and documentaries, but none as good as D. A. Pennebaker's
"Don't Look Back."
Bob Dylan's
switch to electric rock at the Newport Folk Festival is often cited
as a turning point, but the fact is that the sound system was not set
up properly, and Dylan's voice could not be heard above the roar of
the backup band (the Paul Butterfield Blues Band with Mike Bloomfield
and Elvin Bishop). At first, the shouting from the audience was for
more amplification of Dylan's voice, then for turning down the electric
guitars. There was, however, a minority of audience members and performers
who were upset at Dylan's "switch" from folk to rock. News
of Dylan's hard time at Newport (preserved in the song "Rainy Day
Women #12 and 35" -- "Everybody must get stoned!") was
global, and insults and angry shouts greeted him at subsequent shows
for more than a year. Some say it was mostly folk purists who'd read
about the Newport incident and joined the hate bandwagon. By the time
Live 1966 was recorded the audience was clearly divided between
folkies and rockers. The polarity of their response to Dylan's music
actually increases the passion and intensity of the performances.
Bob Dylan's
recruitment of the Hawks, with Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko,
Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson, occurred during this period. Later
known as The Band, they were playing
roadhouses in Toronto, in the South, and when the call came in from
Dylan, on the New Jersey coast. Robbie went to New York with Levon to
check out Dylan, and the entire band joined Dylan for a set of shows
in the U.S. After much booing and heckling, Levon decided not to go
on the European leg of the tour, and Dylan recruited Mickey Jones. The
lineup for the Live 1966 concert: Robbie Robertson, guitar; Rick
Danko, bass; Garth Hudson, organ; Richard Manuel, piano; and Mickey
Jones, drums.
The first
song of the electric set, "Tell Me, Momma" (a Dylan original that has
no studio version), sets the pace dramatically. "Baby, Let Me Follow
You Down" is incandescent. "One Too Many Mornings" has the
earliest recorded Band sound that would later be so prominent in Dylan
and the Band's Basement Tapes. "Ballad Of A Thin Man"
offers some of the most inventive organ-playing by Garth Hudson, with
cutting edge singing and altered lyrics by Dylan. "Like A Rolling Stone"
is simply magnificent. The CD includes other great songs and an excellent
acoustic set.
The first
CD is Dylan's solo acoustic set and features "She Belongs To Me," "Fourth
Time Around," "Visions Of Johanna," "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue,"
"Desolation Row," "Just Like A Woman," and "Mr. Tambourine Man." The
second CD features Dylan and the Hawks on "Tell Me, Momma", "I Don't
Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)," "Baby, Let Me Follow
You Down," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,"
"One Too Many Mornings," "Ballad Of A Thin Man," and "Like A Rolling
Stone." Live 1966 comes in a deluxe slipcase containing a two-CD brilliant
box and a stand-alone 56-page booklet containing many rare and previously
unseen photos from the era and an essay by Tony Glover, whose friendship
with Dylan extends back to 1960 on the University of Minnesota's Dinkytown
folk scene. Live 1966 was mastered by Greg Calbi. The electric
portion of the concert was mixed by Michael M. Brauer.
From the
liner notes by Tony Glover:
...
He appears in a check houndstooth "rabbit" suit and pointed boots in
front of a 5 piece band with an electric guitar in hand, playing incandescent
rock and roll... Dylan's voice is a velvet sneer as he shouts out the
line "how does it feeeeeeel" and the performance rolls on with power,
defiance and a sheer majesty rarely captured on tape. By the time the
first so-called Royal Albert Hall
bootleg came out, some 4 or 5 years later, the mythology was in place:
a blues-tinged Woody Guthrie comes out of the midwest, moves to NY,
writes some poetic topical songs that become the soundtrack for the
civil rights and anti-war struggles, turns inward and begins doing existentially
surrealistic visionary work, hooks up with a kick-ass rock band, barnstorms
the US and the Euro-continent, ends 4 months of grueling touring with
a triumphant concert, returns to the US, breaks his neck in a motorcycle
accident, and retires into a 20 month seclusion. When he returns, it's
as a vastly changed man, a bearded biblical poet, with acoustic parables
from a whole other century. So what happened, and why were those people
so angry? Therein lies a tale...
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