OK, so I’ve posted this landmark set before, but someone just uploaded most of it again yesterday so why not give it another listen.
This never gets old for me.
This was Bob Dylan’s first public electric performance (OK, of course he played rock ‘n’ roll as a teenager, but after he started making records as a folk singer, this was the first electric show).
This took place on Sunday, July 25, 1965.
Here’s audio for the set opener, “Maggie’s Farm”:
This clip is the audio with the exception of “Maggie’s Farm.”
0:00 – Pre-show/Intro
2:20 – Maggie’s Farm (BLOCKED – Can be seen in “The Other Side of the Mirror”)
8:07 – Like a Rolling Stone
14:39 – Phantom Engineer (It Takes a lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry)
18:00 – Intermission/Intro
22:04 – It’s all Over Now, Baby Blue
29:34 – Mr. Tambourine Man
Here’s some of the video but no audio:
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Bob Dylan will be performing 15 shows in Australia beginning August 13 in Perth, Australia. He’ll also be in Melbourne, and Sydney.
So today you can check out some past performances and interviews Dylan did in Australia.
Dylan said some interesting things during the following 1986 press conference.
Journalist: What does Bob Dylan think of Bob Dylan?
Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan doesn’t ever think about Bob Dylan
Journalist: Are you shy man?
Bob Dylan: Yeah, most of the time.
Journalist: Because of being shy, is it a burden being Bob Dylan?
Bob Dylan: Who’s Bob Dylan?
[laughter]
Bob Dylan: I’m only Bob Dylan when I have to be Bob Dylan. Most of the time I can just be myself.
And later in response to a question about the past, Dylan says this:
Dylan: We live here in the present time. You get up and have to deal with today. Yesterday’s gone, tomorrow’s not promised. So this is all we have, really.
Dylan press conference, 1986, Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney
This was shot at a Dylan press conference in 1986. There’s 18 minutes of the press conference.
“Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” Byron Bay Bluesfest April 26, 2011:
“Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum,” Byron Bay Bluesfest April 26, 2011:
“Cold Irons Bound,” Byron Bay Bluesfest April 26, 2011:
“Tangled Up In Blue,” Byron Bay Bluesfest April 26, 2011:
“Highway 61 Revisited” / “Ballad of a Thin Man,” Byron Bay Bluesfest April 26, 2011:
“Like A Rolling Stone,” Byron Bay Bluesfest April 26, 2011:
Bob Dylan radio interview, Adelaide, Australia 1966:
“Ballad Of A Thin Man,” Sydney, April 13, 1966:
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” Sydney, April 13, 1966:
“Positively Fourth Street,” Sydney, April 13, 1966:
“Visions Of Johanna,” Melbourne, April 20, 1966:
“She Belongs To Me,” Melbourne, April 20, 1966:
“Baby, Let Me Follow You Down,” Melbourne, April 20, 1966:
“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” Melbourne, April 20, 1966:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
Of just buy the damn thing:
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
This is the complete performance of “Like A Rolling Stone.” While it appears to be the Manchester Free Trade Hall show from May 17, 1966 because of the “Judas” quote, a fellow Dylan fan pointed out that the actual performance of the song is from the May 21, 1966 Newcastle concert.
Bob Dylan and most, but not all, of The Hawks, later The Band.
This was originally shot for “Eat the Document,” the never officially released documentary of Dylan’s 1966 tour of England. Later it showed up in “No Direction Home,” the documentary that Martin Scorsese put together for Dylan.
I’ve been listening to various unofficial and official audio of Dylan’s Europe tour shows beginning in the early ’70s and they never get old.
Incredible.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
OK, so we know this day, 49 years ago, was historic. Bob Dylan going public with his new electric rock ‘n’ roll sound.
We all know the story. We all know the different versions of the story.
What remains amazing is the music.
On Saturday July 24, 1965 Dylan played a workshop and did three acoustic numbers. I’ve got “All I Really Want To Do” and “Love Minus Zero/ No Limit” from that workshop, and then all the songs from his evening performance on July 25, 1965.
Here Dylan rock out through “Maggie’s Farm,” “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Phantom Engineer,” an early version of “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry.”
This music will be as alive as anyone until humans are no more.
“Phantom Engineer” (early version of “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry”):
“Mr. Tambourine Man”:
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, Queens, NY, August 28, 1965:
Manchester, May 17, 1966:
Royal Albert Hall, London, England, May 26, 1966:
Isle of Wight, Wootton, England, August 31, 1969:
Bob Dylan and The Band, Academy of Music, New York, December 31, 1971:
Bob Dylan and The Band, Oakland Coliseum, February 1974:
Los Angeles, January 6, 1978:
San Francisco, Nov., 15, 1980:
Bob Dyland with Mick Taylor, Arena di Verona, Verona, Italy on May 28 or 29, 1984 (There’s an interview and then it goes into the song):
Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, 1986:
Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Greek Theater, University of California, Berkeley, California, June 10, 1988:
And, finally, here’s Jimi Hendrix covering “Like A Rolling Stone” in his own unique and amazing way:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Bob Dylan backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Civic Center Auditorium in Hartford, CT, July 11, 1986.
These are all audio except for the last which is a great video clip of “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” from another show on the tour.
“Across The Boarderline”:
“Blowin’ In The Wind”:
“When the Night Comes Falling From The Sky”:
“I and I”:
“One Too Many Mornings”:
“Ballad Of A Thin Man”:
“Like A Rolling Stone”:
“Lay Lady Lay”:
“Knocking On Heaven’s Door”:
Plus a video of “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” from the tour with Petty:
And I don’t know what this is from:
“The Man In Me”:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
These videos are from a rejected TV special that was shot at the Starlight Ballroom of the Biltmore hotel in Clearwater, Florida on April 22, 1976 during Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review tour.
Here’s nearly an hour of the Rolling Thunder Review:
And some individual songs:
Bob Dylan, “Lay Lady Lay”:
Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn, “Knocking On Heaven’s Door”:
Bob Dylan, “Just Like A Woman”:
Bob Dylan, “Isis”:
Bob Dylan, “Like A Rolling Stone”:
Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin'”:
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, “Blowin’ In The Wind”:
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine”:
Joan Baez, “Diamonds and Rust”:
Bob Dylan and Bobby Neuwirth, “When I Paint My Masterpiece”:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival performing “Like A Rolling Stone.”
In response to my post yesterday, “Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ Manuscript Sells for $2 Million But Dylan’s Secrets Remain Secret,” Mike Jones commented:
The LARS lyrics went for more than I thought they would…how are a few pieces of paper worth more than the Newport guitar? I don’t get the whole ephemera thing. I guess people like to have historical stuff, just to look at or whatever. But I would much rather have the Newport guitar, which sold for like half as much. That seems very strange to me.
I understand why some folks, especially musicians, would want the guitar Bob Dylan played at the Newport Folk Festival gig that drew the line between the old Dylan, and the new.
For me though — and I’m not saying paying $2 mil makes any kind of sense — between the guitar and the manuscript, I’d go for the manuscript.
Guitar:
Bob Dylan’s Newport guitar sold for $965,000.
Here’s why.
Certainly the guitar is an iconic object, symbolic of Dylan’s rejection of so-called ‘folk music’ for rock ‘n’ roll, but he could have played any Strat that day and made the same music, made the same impact. Dylan’s art and his creativity didn’t hinge on that particular guitar. In fact, he played many guitars over the years. It’s always been Dylan, not his instruments, that makes the difference.
But that manuscript.
That’s the artist at work. That’s the artist in the throes of the creative process.
On those pages we see the song take shape. Words crossed out and other words written in. The chorus forming before our eyes from page to page.
And those cryptic notes to the side of the lyrics. “Al Capone,” “On the Road,” “Pony Blues,” “Butcher Boy.”
From these pages and the ones for “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” we get the curtain pulled back a little on Dylan’s creative process.
And when one combines what’s on these pages, with what he reveals in “Chronicles: Volume One” and elsewhere, we do get a vague sense of the Dylan mind at work.
We’ll never get to the bottom of it, and it’s probably better that way, but still.
So Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ lyrics are very different from the Newport guitar. They’re a time machine that takes us back to that day (s) when Bob Dylan put the ideas that were in his head down on hotel stationary, and created a timeless song, a song that, nearly 50 years after he wrote it, stands tall.
But what do you think?
Would you opt for the Newport guitar, or the “Like A Rolling Stone” manuscript pages?
Manuscript:
Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ lyrics: The four pages went for half a million a page.
Or is there something else that you’d go for instead. If you had the money, and if you could afford to spend it in this way.
Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 singing “Like A Rolling Stone”:
The manuscript for Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ (his first rock ‘n’ roll hit) sold today at auction for slightly over two million dollars — $2.045 mil to be exact — to a mystery buyer, according to Sotheby’s, the auction house that handled the transaction, but that buyer didn’t get a key to unlock the mysteries of the manuscript.
For instance, why did Dylan write “Al Capone” in the margin with a line from the gangster’s name to the word “direction” in the chorus?
“Al Capone” might have worked in terms of a rhyme, but it would make no sense in terms of what the song is about.
Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” sold for $485,000.
But back to Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ manuscript:
There are various alternate phrases written on the manuscript that Dylan wisely rejected, but they don’t reveal much.
On the second page of the manuscript is a version of the chorus with “path unknown” as one of the lines.
At the top of page three is written: “How does it feel/ Behind the wheel.”
At the bottom of page three the chorus is again a work in progress:
How does it feel to be on your own
It feels real (dog-bone)
Does it feel real.”
Then he wrote “New direction home” but put a line through “new” and wrote “no” under it.
Then: “When the winds have (unreadable word that could be “flown”)
“Shut up and deal like a rolling stone
Raw deal
Get down and kneel.”
More interesting perhaps, Dylan has written names of songs and books on the pages, which may or may not relate to the song itself: “Pony Blues,” a song by Charley Patton; “Midnight Special” (and above it “Mavis”); “On the Road”; and “Butcher Boy,” which likely refers to “The Butcher Boy,” an old folk song that the Clancy Brothers recorded.
Other revisions.
There’s a mostly discarded verse that reads:
“You never listened to the man who could (illegible) jive and wail
Never believed ‘m when he told you he had love for sale
You said you’d never compromise/ now he looks into your eyes
and says do you want make a deal.”
And what ended up being the third verse reads like this in part:
“You never turned around
To see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns
When they all came down
And did tricks for you to shake the money tree.”
There’s a line drawn through that entire last line.
Bob Dylan’s complete set from his Nov. 20, 2011 appearance at the Hammersmith Apollo in London.
Setlist
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
All Over Now, Baby Blue
Things Have Changed
Trying To Get To Heaven
Honest With Me
Tangled Up In Blue
Summer Days
Blind Willie McTell
Highway 61 Revisited
Desolation Row
Thunder On The Mountain
Ballad Of A Thin Man
All Along The Watchtower
Like A Rolling Stone
