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November 13, 1998/ 24 Cheshvan 5759, Vol. 51, No. 8
Re-release of Dylan's 'Zimmerman' recording sheds new light on groundbreaking concert
SALVATORE CAPUTO
Special to Jewish News
I stumbled on the best rock concert album I've ever heard when I was a college freshman. That was 27 years ago. Nobody in rock since - not the Sex Pistols or the Stooges, Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson - has outdone the teetering-on-the-abyss urgency and confrontation of Bob Dylan's "Royal Albert Hall Concert," circa 1966.
I had taken a chance on a bootleg album, a two-LP set called "Zimmerman" (Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman), tucked away in the back row of a run-down record store. Although the cover listed song titles, it gave no clue about the history of the performances.
"Zimmerman" turned out to be a recording of a 1966 show at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England. It became known as the Royal Albert Hall concert because of a bootlegger's mistake, compounded by the fact that Dylan actually did play the Royal Albert Hall on that same tour a week later.
Columbia Records finally has released this concert document as a two-CD set under the inelegant title: "The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966 - The 'Royal Albert Hall' Concert." So well-known from various bootlegs, the concert recording's official release received the kind of fanfare usually reserved for previously unreleased recordings by a seminal jazz man, and justifiably so.
Although Dylan sings a wonderful "Visions of Johanna," it's clear he had "Visions of Gehenna" in mind that night. The intellectual rock he played was an oxymoron to conventional thinkers. Many concert-goers were offended that this veteran folk singer had decided to "go electric" and play with a rock band (The Hawks, who later became much more popular as The Band). Folk-music purists heckled Dylan between songs.
The confrontation between the audience's desires and Dylan's pursuit of his own vision is archetypal. This was rock's version of the Stravinsky debut of "Le Sacre du Printemps" (Rites of Spring), which caused a riot in 1913. The tension fuels the most furious performance of Dylan's career
The album opens mellow and intimate with an acoustic set. However, when the Hawks come on, Dylan leads them in the most outrageous rock noise ever made. To hear himself over the din, Dylan shouts in a manner completely different from the acoustic set. He bends and twists the melodies, making mincemeat of the words. Yet his emotional intensity gives the songs meaning, illuminating, for instance, the weight of betrayal he wrote about in "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Met)." He was definitely feeling it on stage.
This was a mean noise, but the beat, the volume, Robbie Robertson's stinging guitar leads, and the undertone of Garth Hudson's organ, made it a liberating, joyful experience too.
On my old bootleg, the tension between Dylan and the audience is indecipherable. I thought Dylan was joking when he screamed, "I don't believe you! You're a liar!" before he launched into his closing song, "Like a Rolling Stone." On the CD, it's clear that this is no joke, and you can hear Dylan instruct the band to play it loud.
The second side of my bootlegged LP was so crammed with music that the bootleggers couldn't fit all of "Like a Rolling Stone" onto it. Rather than fade the song out, they just let the groove run into the label, sending my phonograph needle skating across it. Listening to the bootlegs was like trying to look through a dirty window, anyway. The CD wipes away the grime, and we can listen across time to hear Dylan's anthem when it was fresh and no one had any inkling of the warhorse it would become.
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