Live 1966 released: Oct 13, 1998 BUY

The music that Dylan and his electric band made during their 1966 world tour was like nothing the world had ever heard. The show captured on Live 1966 follows the standard format for one of that year’s programs. Dylan first plays an acoustic set of songs from Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde On Blonde, with none of his earlier “protest” songs in evidence. Each performance sets a spell, creates an eerie, one-on-one intimacy with the listener. Dylan’s ability to sustain this kind of focused, understated intensity through the long reaches of songs like “Desolation Row” and, especially, “Visions of Johanna” is astonishing. After intermission he would come back with the Hawks and blow the roof off the venue, with a set consisting of his recent songs like “Ballad Of A Thin Man,” and older songs gone electric, like Another Side’s “I Don’t Believe You.” The performances would be met by a mixture of cheers, stunned confusion, and catcalls from audience members outraged at his “betrayal” of folk music. In this set’s most famous moment, someone in the audience yells out, “Judas!” The response from the stage is a tidal wave called “Like A Rolling Stone.” The concert was recorded and released illegally, becoming one of the first and best-selling rock bootlegs, known universally as the Royal Albert Hall concert – a mistake, since, although the band did play at the Albert Hall on this British leg of the tour, this performance is taken from a slightly earlier one at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. Fasten your safety belts. She Belongs to Me | listen | 4th Time Around | listen | Visions of Johanna | listen | It's All Over Now, Baby Blue | listen | Desolation Row | listen | Just Like a Woman | listen | Mr. Tambourine Man | listen | Tell Me, Momma | listen | I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) | listen | Baby, Let Me Follow You Down | listen | Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues | listen | Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat | listen | One Too Many Mornings | listen | Ballad of a Thin Man | listen | Like a Rolling Stone | listen |