'The Royal Albert Hall' bootleg became the most talked about, sought after and significant bootleg in the history of music. So much so that is was effectively legalised and turned into an official release by Columbia and released in a rather wonderful package in 1998. This is one of the most written about and discussed albums to ever be laid down on tape. Personally never had I read and thought so much about an album that I hadn't actually bought. In the past the album and the event it captures has been the sole focus for discussion on such top end television programmes as Newsnight on the BBC. It seems every Bob Dylan fan loves the album, and they hail it as one of the greatest albums ever. With all this in mind when I finally decided the time had come to actually buy it I ordered it with very high expectations indeed!

Dylan is widely hailed as a genius for the songs he has written and the social change he has influenced, but there are quite a lot of people who say other people are better performing his material. This shows a lack of understanding on the same level as believing the earth is the center of the universe, flat and the moon is made of cheese! Whilst others may have a more trained and nicer sounding voice than Dylan, none can put even nearly as much expression and meaning into words with their voice alone than Dylan. Something adorable about Dylan is the fact that he never does the same thing twice, even performing his songs on tour you'll never find two nights he sings the same song in the exact same way. He's also criticised for his guitar playing style, yet albums such as 'Bob Dylan' and later 'World Gone Wrong' are testaments that this man can sit alone with just his guitar and harmonica and he can make beautiful music and play with more ability to add feeling to the music than a lot of full time out and out guitarists could. Albums are less meaningful than seeing Dylan in concert though. He notoriously performed badly at times in past decades, and he preached during his born again phase. But Bob Dylan on form - as he was in 1966 and as he was at Sheffield in 2000 that I witnessed - is quite possibly the most powerful performer to walk this earth. He fills every inch of the room and you feel his charisma everywhere. His voice is an unbelievable experience, always tuneful but beyond that it acts like a drill straight from his mouth right through your skull and into your brain. He plants his songs in your head with remarkable precision, and still he keeps hold of his noble view that everyone should trust themselves and not worship people like himself. This feature in Dylan's live ability becomes very important to understand when listening to the 1966 bootleg performance. Perhaps you can only truly appreciate what is happening in the audience if you have sat before Dylan and experienced him. But you can get a very good idea without knowing first hand such is the power of the 1966 recording.

...Background...

Bob Dylan received a hostile reception across the globe, but he was at the end of the tour and it looked like he'd overcome the old order and had begun to set up a new one. The old order folkies were generally diehards who felt an outrage that this folk artist should have fallen to what they saw as the opposite to folk, rock music. From his country boy clothing Dylan had also started to dress in a unique yet distinctly rock star manner. The new order fans managed to see past the principles and follow Dylan's vision, they were more willing to embrace the new Mod culture and Dylan's rock music. The tour fatefully came to the North of England! Manchester Free Trade Hall to be precise. For it was there that the notorious 'Royal Albert Hall' concert took place. It became known as the 'Royal Albert Hall' concert due to a simple mislabeling of the bootleg that didn't surface until about four or five years later. Although there are also suggestions it was done on purpose for romantic effect as the actual Royal Albert Hall concerts were the last in the tour and last before Dylan's retirement. I wasn't around at the time but I imagine that was a fascinating and confusing time for the Dylan fan. He had confronted them in a very aggressive manner after winning their respect, then he had one particularly hostile gig towards the end of his tour and he went home. Once home he had a mysterious motorcycle accident that many claim never happened, in which he broke his neck and retired for about 18 months. So far the world had seen two Bob Dylan's coming forth from Robert Allan Zimmerman, upon return from the retirement the world meets a third Bob Dylan. But it's the second Bob Dylan who plays on this double CD, and it's he who needs explaining.

'She Belongs to Me' gets the concert under way and what it instantly confirms to me is that Bob Dylan has arrived on stage. What I mean by that is that when an artist goes out onto a stage after a long, grueling tour in which he's been booed, jeered and received hostile receptions you could fully understand a nervous start. But there is no nervous start, far from it! Dylan is alone on stage with the potentially hostile audience before him and he feels fine. Dylan's guitar playing and in particular his voice are from the very start crystal clear and utterly strong. Bob Dylan went out there sure that his inner-vision was right and worth fighting for. To me his confident start to a concert he knew would certainly be hostile (as he'd done a world tour of hostile gigs before hand, so knew the score) shows that Bob Dylan was out there to do battle and to win.

The music is excellent; the only comment I can offer is on one slight fault on the disc towards the end of 'Visions of Johanna'. When listening in headphone you notice the levels suddenly change so that the guitar seems slightly less cleanly played and Dylan to be a little less close and also there is an increase in audience ambiance. This is explained in the liner notes as a tape running out mid song and the other tape that was recording being a different format, and rather than scrap the whole song they fused the two together. So at lest they explain it, and it isn't a major thing, you may not even notice it if you aren't as obsessive as I am! 'Visions of Johanna' is a beautiful and sad song. Again Dylan's voice is very much the driving force for this song, it sounds a little gritty at times which is reassuring because at times in this concert Dylan sings so softly that you struggle to believe it's him singing! A sad but sadly short Harmonica riff breaks up verses. It's a long song yet you tend to get captivated in the story and so there is no chance of it becoming in anyway boring.

The set closer 'Mr Tambourine Man' starts at a slightly faster pace. But it isn't the pace that is remarkable, it's the way Bob Dylan sings this surrealistic song, clearly it wouldn't be a favourite with the audience due to its lack of harsh reality. From the last song the delicate voice crumbles a little but still sounds clear. It's the way he sings the line "there is no place I'm going to" that is utterly remarkable. That line and only that line Dylan appears to spit out at the audience. He appears to throw the line right in their faces in a very confrontational and one may say obnoxious manner. Had this been in the second set I feel sure the audience would have gone absolutely ballistic at Dylan, as it is he gets away with it, but he emphasises the line so much that the audience must have picked up and started wondering why he was throwing it at them. His Harmonica is played (with the very odd and occasional random note as if to remind us who he is!) aggressively to end the set and the audience appears to receive the first set well. Dylan delivered it with confidence and true ability, he didn't talk to the audience and he seemed a little impatient with them. The clapping is faded out on the disc which is a shame as I'd like to hear it's actual length compared to that of the end of the show, which is played in full length and is another remarkable feature I'll come to!

They rip into the opener 'Tell Me, Momma' which must have sent a bolt through the audience. Not long ago they were sat listening to a slow and very delicate sounding 'Just Like a Woman' but no longer! All of a sudden all out rock music kicks in and flies at high velocity from the stage into their faces. The volume level change is unbelievable even listening to it on a mixed and prepared CD, to have been there the sudden change in volume alone, never mind structure of songs, must have been enough to make the audience feel as if they were being hit by a tidal wave. The choice of such a rocker to open the second set shows that a lack of wanting in terms of easing the audience into the new style. It's almost like he wanted to shock them as much as he possibly could, unnerve them and knock them off balance. From the delicate voice Bob Dylan comes out and from the offset of the second set he rips into a rock music style of singing that must have left old older folkie hardcore nuts furious! The man they had proclaimed king was throwing in their faces the exact thing he knew full well they wouldn?t like! The event has well and truly kicked off! The song is delivered excellently and The Band (The Hawks as they were on the night) are in fine form sounding close and together yet with a certain loose wildcard edge at the same time. As the song ends in a fast and dramatic bout the audience claps yet you get the impression that it is less people making more noise than in the first set when everyone uniformly praised their hero with only a slight element of wariness. As the clapping subsides the truth reveals itself, for the first time during the concert you hear the audience in a state of unrest, people are commenting to each other. The progressive fans may well be saying "oh my gawd, we're witnessing the future here today" whereas the folkies may well be saying "oh my gawd, we're witnessing the death of our king here today" who knows!

Now the show is really on! In the liner notes it suggests Dylan's previous comment to the audience was in a "wryly conciliatory" manner. Perhaps they are right, and his voice wasn't as I read it sarcastic, it's believable. However what I do question about that suggestion is the conciliatory part, I see the comment as inflammatory! Bob Dylan knew from all his previous gigs there would be people who wouldn't like it, he's also an ultra-intelligent man, and he knew full well that poking the audience like that would annoy some of those old order folkies in it, he knew he was challenging them to a fight. And it worked, it incited the audience, oh how it wound them up!

There is little pause in-between songs as 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues' kicks in, so the new order few manage to maintain a clap that almost sounds as if Dylan is back in control of the Hall. Again this is an excellently performed song. What's important I think is there is a quite heavy (for the time and context) guitar solo in the middle of the song, and as it start Bob shouts in a manner that you would expect from a Rock singer in years to come but which I doubt the Folkies had experience before. And Bob sings this song in an enthusiastic and loud manner.

The slow handclap shows no sign of stopping; in fact it appears to be growing. And so like a lightening bolt out of nowhere with such a jolt it makes the recording listener jump never mind those thinking they'd won over the Hall, Dylan and The Band blast into 'Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat.' It's very fast and it's very loud, very very loud! Dylan almost screams and I can picture strings being snapped on guitars during the performance and Mickey Jones on drums I can picture putting his head through one of his drums and his fists and feet through others! It's a powerful performance, shorter than those to come in latter years but in the context it was played perhaps the most powerful it's ever been performed. It was a strike at the audience I have no doubt about it, Dylan was throwing his new order vision right into the old order faces, he was carpet bombing the hall with his new music.

So the way is clear and 'One Too Many Mornings' is played, not the most outrageous use of electric instruments and perhaps backing up Dylan's comment that the old order folkies should give the new style a chance before objecting. Rick Danko the Bass player contributes some 'background' vocals on this performance that sound good but perhaps could do with being just a little higher in the mix.