Dylan:


The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Live 1966,
The 'Royal Albert Hall' Concert

by Michael Pelusi


Regarding this much-ballyhooed archival release of last year --believe the hype and then some.

For those of you who've been living under a rock, this is what you get: a Dylan concert from Manchester, not the Royal Albert Hall, as the many bootlegs of this concert since its occurrence have erroneously claimed.

The first CD is Dylan alone with his guitar and harmonica, performing songs from his, then, past three albums -- Blonde on Blonde (1966), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Bringing it All Back Home (1964). The audience responds with polite applause. After all, this isn't quite the Dylan they want -- the songs he performs are dark, impenetrable and private -- not leftist rallies, but it's much closer than what comes on Disc Two. There, Dylan plays electric guitar, backed by an electric band called the Hawks, who would mutate into The Band. The musicians tear through Dylan's songs with a raucous passion, while the audience can be heard cat-calling and clapping in mockingly slow unison. But Dylan and the Hawks heroically play on, undaunted. Finally, before the final song of the evening, a blistering "Like a Rolling Stone," someone in the audience shouts out "Judas!" "I don't believe you," Dylan sneers, "You're a liar." Then he turns to the Hawks and says, "Play fucking loud"!

As with any important album, Live 1966 exists on two levels: musical and sociological. Musically, the album is naturally halved again between the acoustic and electric disks. Both are equally compelling. Disk One is a testament to the utter power Dylan holds as a solo performer. Let less perceptive types joke about the nasal tone of his voice; what occurs here is a master at his craft.

Here, Dylan's vocals -- even as they dart around some notes and almost strain to attain others -- convey the enveloping mystery of the songs. With stunning warmth, they invite the listener into the often-violently-blue moods of songs like "Fourth Time Around," "Visions of Johanna" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." Perhaps the only comparable sound on God's earth would be Miles Davis at his peak (right around the same time, too). Both have the same muted, understated emotion. And whereas Miles was backed by, say, his classic Quintet or Gil Evans' orchestra, here Dylan is accompanied merely by his own instrumental prowess.

His acoustic guitar, strummed with something almost approaching abandon, and, especially, his chilling, musing, often souring harmonica work, are the perfect compliment.

The music they play here, twangy guitars, wheezy Hammond organs and all, has since been robbed of all its nuance and bite by groups like Hootie & the Blowfish and Matchbox 20, who have turned folk-rock into campfire sing-alongs for yuppie suburbanites... 'Live 1966' arguably couldn't come at a better time, pulling this music out of cliché and back into the fire.


On Disk Two, Dylan arguably achieves that abandon, and some other things as well. Opening with "Tell Me Momma," an unreleased song at the time, Dylan and the Hawks lock, proving to be as viable and unerring a musical unit as any other in rock history. The fervered rockabilly is highlighted by: Robbie Robertson's stinging riffs -- back before he was a respected songwriter in his own right, when he was just a hotshot guitarist from Canada, Garth Hudson's gleeful carnival organ and Mickey Jones -- who replaced Levon Helm mid-tour when Helm tired of the increasingly hostile audiences -- infectious drum pounding. The next track "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" is a remake of a tune Dylan originally recorded in his solo acoustic folkie guise. Here, he introduces it with a sly, "It used to go like that, but now it goes like this." What results is a stinging kiss-off to an indifferent love interest, the kind with which some ten years later Elvis Costello and Graham Parker would set their careers alight.

Sociologically, this music is also important. Here is documented evidence of an artist going against his audience, doing what he wants to do with his muse...this album promotes Dylan as a new kind of rock star: cynical, ironic, wise-cracking and more than slightly out of it.


It's amazing to hear this music so vital. It's like hearing Dylan classics like "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" like they're brand new. More than that, though, the music they play here, twangy guitars, wheezy Hammond organs and all, has since been robbed of all its nuance and bite by groups like Hootie & the Blowfish and Matchbox 20, who have turned folk-rock into campfire sing-alongs for yuppie suburbanites. 'Live 1966' arguably couldn't come at a better time (though maybe it should've come out a couple years ago when Hootie were fucking inescapable, but I'm just ranting), pulling this music out of cliché and back into the fire.

Sociologically, this music is also important. Here is documented evidence of an artist going against his audience, doing what he wants to do with his muse. The resulting collision is what happens on Disk Two. And the germ of musical moves from Joni Mitchell finding jazz to Pearl Jam losing grunge also happens. Even if said experiments don't entirely succeed (or even at all), the bravery is worth noting. Also, this album promotes Dylan as a new kind of rock star: cynical, ironic, wise-cracking and more than slightly out of it.

The British music magazine Mojo commemorated the release of Live 1966 last November with a gorgeous, penetrating spread on the mid-'60s era Dylan and that UK tour, portraying an artist reinventing himself and seemingly losing his mind in the process. The classic Dylan wit is perhaps most memorably commemorated with the infamous 1966 interview for Stockholm radio, where a disaffected Dylan lashes out on radio at journalist Klas Burling for wanting to talk about Dylan's protest era work. Dylan introducing a song: "...this specific one, "Rainy Day Women," happens to deal with, er, a minority of, you know, cripples and Orientals and the world in which they live, you realize and you understand. It's sort of a Mexican kind of thing, very protesty, and one the most protestiest of all things I've every protested against in the protest years."

Here was a rock star, preceded perhaps only by the Stones, who wasn't afraid to be a jerk. Of course, there was something else more disturbing going on, for by now Dylan was pretty much a junkie and a speed freak. Nobody seemed to know it back then, but looking at some of the pictures in the lavish booklet that accompanies the CD -- pictures where Dylan's gaunt, lantern-jawed head seems ready to crumble under the looming afro and oversized sunglasses -- it hardly seems dubious. Perhaps that drug-induced exhaustion creeps into the performance here, as Dylan's performance shows more frustrated towards the audience. However, that frustration doesn't weaken his performance, it only makes it more pointed and more powerful, so by the time "Like a Rolling Stone" slams to a finish, there is little doubt in the listener's mind as to how it feels.

1999 ©TransACTION Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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