Fact #39154

BOB DYLAN - UK TOUR MAY 1966
By Johnny Black
First published in Mojo - Oct 1998

“Well, there’s glass in the back of my head,” said Bob Dylan. “I’m a very sick person. I can’t see too well on Tuesdays. These dark glasses are prescribed. I’m not trying to be a beatnik. I have very mercuryesque eyes. And another thing - my toenails don’t fit.”

It was 3 May 1966, one day after the spokesman for his generation arrived in England for the first time since plugging in. A year earlier, Dylan had unveiled the first version of his electric group, effectively the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, at the Newport Folk Festival. The partisan folkie crowd had booed and jeered until, according to some reports, Dylan left the stage in tears. The response was even more violent at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium a month later, where cries of “Traitor!” and the mocking “Where’s Ringo?” greeted his rock set.

Before too long, he had replaced the Butterfield Blues Band with The Hawks (later to become The Band) with whom he faced hostile audiences all across America, Hawaii, Australia and Scandanavia. In December 1965, Hawks’ leader and drummer, Levon Helm, dropped out. “We got up in the morning and Levon was gone,” recalls road manager Bill Avis. “It shook us up for a minute, but it was also understood. No-one liked the booing. No-one liked having stuff thrown at them.”

The pressure was intolerable. After midnight, on a plane to Denver during March 1966, Dylan told writer Robert Shelton, “It takes a lot of medicine to keep up this pace. It’s very hard man. A concert tour like this has almost killed me.”

Replacing Levon Helm for the UK leg was Mickey Jones, former sticksman for Trini Lopez and Johnny Rivers. Jones went on the road with no awareness of the controversy surrounding the electric part of the set. Having already sold over 10m records worldwide, Dylan was not just a popular fellow but a priority act for CBS. As well as record sales, he was generating publishing revenue at an unheard of rate. In one fortnight at the end of 1965, 80 cover versions of Dylan songs were released as singles. Huge wads of company money were invested in him but, as he arrived in London, doubts about his health were beginning to surface.

Monday 2 May
The Dylan entourage settles in at the Mayfair Hotel, London, where Bob meets with Paul McCartney, Keith Richards and Brian Jones.
Paul McCartney (Beatle) : It was a little bit An Audience With Dylan in those days. You went round to the Mayfair Hotel and waited in an outer room while Bob was, you know, in the other room, in the bedroom, and we were getting ushered in one by one… occasionally people would come out and say, you know, Bob’s taking a nap or make terrible excuses, and I’d say ‘It’s OK man, I understand, he’s out of it’ you know?

Mickey Jones (drummer) : I have been told that he carried a drug store of prescription medicine with him, but I never saw it.

Tuesday 3 May
Press Conference, Mayfair Hotel, London; in the evening Dylan takes Dana Gillespie to see John Lee Hooker at Blaises.
Dermot Purgavie (Daily Sketch reporter) : Publicity men with urgent voices had summoned us for gin and tonic, cocktail onions and, principally, for group analysis of Mr. Bob Dylan ... He wore a blue suede tunic, blue and white butcher-stripe pants and dark glasses. His tangled, woolly hair looked as if it had been pitch-forked onto his head.

Keith Altham (NME journalist) : For some fifteen minutes, photographers exposed innumerable rolls of film at Dylan looking bored, slumped on a window sill. Finally, he removed his dark glasses as a bonus to the cameramen, but somehow managed to look exactly the same.

As the reporters filed out of the suite, I took one of Dylan’s undercover agents to one side and enquired why a man with Dylan’s obvious intelligence bothered to arrange this farce of a meeting. “Man,” he extolled, “Dylan just wanted to come along and record a press reception so we could hear how ridiculous and infantile all reporters are.”

Keith Richards (guitarist, Rolling Stones) : They had to carry him into Blaises, and then I went over to him, and I was pretty frightened of him.

Thursday 5 May
Adelphi Theatre, Dublin
Norman Barry (reviewer, Sunday Independent.) : The barrage of amplification equipment completely drowned Dylan’s nasal voice, which requires the utmost concentration at the best of times. His beat arrangements were monotonous and painful, as folk, useless, and as beat, inferior.

Robbie Robertson : It was the strangest job you could imagine. We were travelling round the world, getting booed every night.

Friday 6 May
ABC Theatre, Belfast
Un-named reporter, Cityweek : The door of the drab dressing room was ajar. A fuzzy golliwog in a tight diamond-pattern suit stood staring at me with wide-open eyes. ‘What d’ya want?’ asked Bob Dylan. His lips hadn’t moved. The sound seemed to emit from somewhere in the inner regions of the thick, dark curls…. Eventually, he invited me inside. This wasn’t an interview, he emphasised. “We’re jest gonna have a l’il talkie’.

D.A. Pennebaker (film maker) : We had previously filmed him in England in 1965 for my Don’t Look Back film and it seemed to me that it had been a drag for him, out on his own like that. In 1966, in the second half of each show he had all these guys with him and from the minute he got out there he was enjoying himself. He was almost dancing with Robbie.

Tuesday 10 May
Colston Hall, Bristol
Nicholas Williams (NME reviewer) : Dylan ambled onto the stage and opened the first half by singing She Belongs To Me, one of his well-known LP tracks. He continued in the same style, accompanying himself on guitar and harmonica… For the second half of the show, Dylan changed to an electric guitar, and a five-strong backing group mysteriously appeared.

Jenny Leigh (fan) : They buried Bob Dylan, the folksinger, in a grave of electric guitars, enormous loudspeakers and deafening drums. It was a sad end to one of the most phenomenal influences in music.

Robbie Robertson (guitarist) : At the time, people were pissed off because they had this purist attitude about Dylan. We did not see what was wrong musically. We were treating the songs with great respect.

Anthea Joseph (music promoter/friend of Dylan) : I was the only one that drank. They were all dropping pills and eating acid and generally misbehaving … Anything that was going to tear my mind to pieces, I had no interest in whatsoever. So I was happy smoking dope in a corner while they ate things.

Wednesday 11 May
Capitol Theatre, Cardiff, where Johnny Cash arrives backstage.
J.C.Hopkins (fan) : Saw Bob Dylan in Cardiff - and though slightly disappointed in him as a person, he’s certainly one of the greatest artistes I’ve seen.

Thursday 12 May
Odeon Theatre, Birmingham, where The Spencer Davis Group turns out.
Graham Ashton (fan) : The show was late starting … Dylan came on dressed completely in black, and someone even screamed. By the time he reached the mike he was already into She Belongs To Me. … He didn’t speak between the songs until just before Desolation Row, when he suddenly stopped, looked down and, in slow motion, picked something up, stared at it, and drawled into the mike : “Dirt… Dirt on the STAGE.” Everybody hooted. Dylan grinned.

Muff Winwood (bassist, Spencer Davis Group) : While we were backstage after the show, he was telling me and my brother Steve how he was really into ghosts … and we knew of a very old, massive house in Worcestershire, near Kidderminster, that had been burnt and blackened. And we told him how the guy that had lived in the house had died with his dog and how, if you went there, you could see him walking around with his dog. He was absolutely fascinated and he said “You’ve got to take me to this place.”

Well, we got there - Dylan, the band, girlfriends and hangers-on in four bloody stretch Princess limos - and we started wandering around. The house looked absolutely magnificent - it was a clear night with a great moon and everything … and of course, somewhere a dog barked! Now, this is likely to happen in the countryside in Worcestershire at gone midnight, but Dylan is convinced he’s heard the ghost of the dog. He was like a kid… Really child-like enjoyment of the whole thing. It was great fun.

Saturday 14 May
Odeon Theatre, Liverpool
Barry Feinstein (photographer) : We found ourselves in an old abandoned industrial section of the city. These children were running through the streets. I thought it would be great to photograph Bob, a big star name, with them.

Bob had a real soft spot in his heart for kids from lower income families. He loved them and they loved him, even if they didn’t realise who he was.

Vicki Rees (fan) : Dylan was at his best. Those people who walked out saying they wanted the real Dylan really meant they wanted the old Dylan.

Mickey Jones : He always seemed to have a lot of energy. On a number of occasions, Bob and I would jump in a limo after the concert and find an all-night hot dog stand. We would then go back to the hotel and talk about everything under the sun until the sun came up. He would make up for it by sleeping a lot during the day, but no-one slept more than Garth Hudson. I said to him once, ‘Garth, you’re sleeping your life away.’ He just looked straight at me and said ‘Don’t you know about dreams?’

Sunday 15 May
De Montfort Hall, Leicester
Christine Kynaston (fan) : I was absolutely disgusted at the narrow-mindedness displayed by some of the audience at Bob Dylan’s Sunday visit to Leicester. Never before have I seen such an exhibition of childish mentality; the booed and slow-handclapped a man who was merely proving how amazingly versatile he is.

Monday 16 May
Gaumont Theatre, Sheffield.
Mickey Jones : I’ve been told there was a bomb threat at the Gaumont but, you know, if there was, we were totally unaware of it. It certainly didn’t affect us or our performance.

Harry Murray (manager, The Gaumont, Sheffield) : We decided to sweat it out. If I had thought for one moment that the audience were in danger I would have cleared the theatre immediately.

Jean-Marc Pascal (journalist, Salut Les Copains) : Later on, the entire group meets in a suite. Five musicians, four film-makers and sound technicians, one sound man, Tom - the driver of the Rolls who is also acting as Dylan’s bodyguard, Henri - who looks after the guitars, Al Grossman, Bob Neuwirth, Fred Perry (from CBS London, the tour manager), Bob Dylan and myself plus a few girls picked up at the end of the show. Twenty people altogether They have to listen and choose the recordings made of the concert. It’s a daily routine … Bob is having a film made of the tour for American television and these recordings have to be synchronised later with the pictures…. At 6.00 am there are only three or four people left: Bob, myself and a couple of musicians. We talk about John Lennon, Mick Jagger and trends in world cinema.

Tuesday 17 May
Free Trade Hall, Manchester
Jean-Marc Pascal : At noon the next day, we’re off to Manchester…. When we arrive, Dylan goes to his bedroom to sleep until the concert. The others go to the theatre to set up the sound system Bob has brought with him from America - it’s Ampex, the best there is.

Mickey Jones : As I remember, we all walked down to the Free Trade Hall from the hotel for the soundcheck.

Jean-Marc Pascal: Three quarters of an hour before the show is due to begin, Dylan arrives… while he rehearses briefly with his musicians, two cameramen and soundmen are around him.

Malcolm Metcalf (fan): By the time I got to the Free Trade Hall, it was sold out. I’d long since perfected the art of getting into cinemas via the back door, so I went looking round the side of the theatre and found a door and kicked it in. It led onto a corridor which led right through to the side of the stage. From there, by pushing another door open a crack, we could get a view of the show.

Rick Sanders (fan/usher) : Dylan coming to Manchester was the biggest thing of that time. There was more excitement about it than any other gig I’ve ever been to. I was a student but I used to get evening jobs ushering at the Free Trade Hall for fifteen shillings a time, but the Dylan show was the first proper rock gig I’d worked at.

Mickey Jones : The atmosphere backstage at Manchester just before we went on was no different than at any of the previous shows. We always laughed and had a great time.

Chris Lee (fan) : He walked onto the stage in Cuban boots, with a black shirt and this Edwardian-style, yellow-brown tweed jacket and started off with She Belongs To Me. The main thing though, visually, was that great big unruly mop of long curly hair. That came as a shock, because all the publicity shots we’d seen were about two years old.

Paul Kelly (fan) : I had decided to take along my camera - a Yashica - to the gig, because there was never any problem about taking pictures at concerts in those days. We’d managed to get seats just four rows from the front and, as soon as the house lights went down, and the spotlight came on, I started taking pictures. I can still remember the moment he came on stage for the acoustic set. I was thinking ‘God, that’s really him. In the flesh.’

Kevin Fletcher (fan) : During the acoustic set, he seemed very different from the way we’d seen him in 1965. Then, he’d been chatty, joking, very open and fresh, but now the set was more intense. He seemed slower and slurred and he seemed very stoned.

Chris Lee : It was like a church service. People were quiet and attentive but you could feel the tension about whether he would play electric. We’d heard about the booing in Dublin and Liverpool and a lot of people assumed he’d have learned his lesson.

Rick Sanders : During the intermission after the acoustic set, Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, an imposing figure in a cream suit, came round and told me he wanted me to be a bodyguard, up on the stage. I was plunked right in front of Richard Manuel. To be honest though, I didn’t feel very threatened up there. The band seemed a million times cooler than anyone else in the building.

Chris Lee : When they came on, just before 9 o’clock, the Hawks were a rainbow of coloured velvet suits, maroon, purple, green, beige and blue, very Catskills. They had white shirts, and their hair was just starting to grow long. Then Dylan came out with a black Fender and plugged it in.

Rick Sanders : There at my feet was a surging mass of flesh-crazed fans, howling, cheering and screaming, waiting for the spark. I don’t think Dylan said anything. Just a glance at the band and suddenly the music started.

Mickey Jones : At the Free Trade Hall show, he would set the rhythm and the tone before we would come in… He gets the rhythm going, and then Robbie turns it around. He goes ‘One, two, one, two, three’ and it was completely turned around from the rhythm that Bob set.

Rick Sanders : I never heard such an apocalyptic roar. It took your breath away, like a squadron of B-52s in a cathedral. There was wicked crackling guitar over a vortex of sheer noise, with snatches of Captain Nemo organ and mad piano occasionally surfacing.

Chris Lee : They kicked off with Tell Me Momma and right away people were shocked, stunned, taken aback by the sheer volume. That got polite applause but, by the time they were into I Don’t Believe You the audience was divided. It was a sheer affront to the traditionalists. I was just sixteen, and I was used to seeing these people around the folk scene in Manchester, but it was quite bewildering and frightening to see them going apeshit like that. It’s hard to convey to people now just how profound the shock was of Dylan going commercial. To those people it seemed he had betrayed all their values, their left-wing principles, the CND movement, their traditionalist sentiments.

Steve Currie (fan) : I wasn’t too impressed by the velvet suits, but I was even less impressed by the dickhead sat next to me who decided to start booing and shouting along with the others who were scattered around the hall. I told him to fuck off home if he didn’t like it. Well, that shut him up and he stayed, but the protest carried on elsewhere.

Stewart Tray ( fan, seated behind Dylan on stage) : I got the feeling there was something going on. The noise, the booing, the slow hand-clapping and all the rest of it. I mean, this was supposed to be like going to a pop concert. People threw jelly babies at pop concerts, they didn’t do this kind of stuff. There was fear where I was sat, that Dylan would just walk off.

Chris Lee : At the end of Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, a young, long-haired woman walked up to the front of the stage and passed a note to Dylan. He bowed and blew her a kiss which brought thunderous applause from the crowd. Then he looked briefly at the note and put it in his pocket. Everyone wondered what the note said, but no-one knew until I managed to track the woman down when I was writing my book, Like The Night, about the Free Trade Hall gig. Her name was Barbara and her note said ‘Tell the band to go home’ but it was done with the best intentions. They had been embarrassed by the way the crowd was behaving, and worried that he would think they didn’t like his music when, in fact, it was just the band they didn’t like.

Mickey Jones : Frankly, we didn’t care. We were playing our music for us and not for the audience. Bob’s attitude was “The first half of the show is for them, the second half is for us” and we truly enjoyed ourselves.

Chris Lee : After Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat, there was a delay, during which the hecklers started up again. As the slow-handclaps and the booing got louder, Bob went into a routine. It was an old carny sideshow technique, where he mumbled incoherently into the microphone, which had the effect of making people strain to hear what he was saying.

Mickey Jones : He did that on a lot of occasions. He didn’t end with the same thing, he’d say something different. But … that really got their attention and they’d stop and all of a sudden, they’d pay attention.

Kevin Fletcher : The mumbling completely floored us. We thought it was brilliant and totally effective because as he did it, the crowd just got quieter and quieter.

Chris Lee : Once he knew he had everybody’s attention, Dylan delivered one single coherent phrase “…if you only wouldn’t clap so hard”, which had the desired effect of making everybody laugh and briefly winning them over to his side again.

Kevin Fletcher : The famous shout of “Judas!” came from in front of us and a bit more to the centre and, as soon as it happened, there was a kind of hush fell over the crowd. I’d say Dylan was definitely responding to the Judas shout when he said “I don’t believe you” That shout was probably the nastiest knock he ever got.

Chris Lee : The implication of “Judas!”, obviously, was that he had sold out the folk movement. Then there was a long gap as he mulled it over before he said “I don’t believe you” in a voice full of scorn and disdain. He turned to the band at that point and said “Get fucking loud”

Jean-Marc Pascal : Suddenly (during Like A Rolling Stone) a man behind me whispers “This is really good. It’s number one in the States.” I turn around to agree and - surprise - realise that he’s a policeman. The British police are wonderful.

Rick Sanders : Before anyone realised what was happening, it was suddenly over. I have a memory of Dylan brushing past me and vanishing down a corridor with Grossman.

Malcolm Metcalfe : We’d watched the whole thing through the door from the corridor, terrified all the time that somebody would find us and throw us out. After Like A Rolling Stone, we weren’t sure if it had ended because there was just this sudden silence, but then the door beside us blasted open and Dylan and some heavies rushed past us and I remember thinking “My God, he’s so small.” He was sweating profusely and looked exhausted, really wasted. He was practically being carried by his minders with one hand under each arm. They completely ignored us, so we followed them down the corridor and out into the street where they jumped into this big, black limousine and disappeared.

Paul Kelly : By the end, I’d banged off all 36 shots and, as it happened, about 26 turned out to be useable. During the show, we’d noticed the sound recordist from CBS who had his gear just set up right at the front of the stage. When it was all over we went up and asked him if he would give us the tape. He said “No way man, but it’s coming out on an album at the end of this year.”

Rick Sanders : People started approaching me, furiously demanding their money back, thinking that somehow I’d be able to give it to them, but the whole thing was finished. As the hall emptied, the band came back on without Dylan, and played some great old rock numbers, Bo Diddley and Little Richard stuff, while the clearers-up moved around them. Dylan by now would be back in the Midland Hotel, I suppose. When it was finally over, we humped the gear back outside for them, collected 30 shillings each for the night’s work, and went home. Not one of them had said a word to me, but it was an unforgettable, fabulous night, to have been Bob Dylan’s bodyguard.

Mickey Jones : After that show we did talk about the Judas thing, but it didn’t seem that it had affected Dylan one bit. We were just convinced that nobody had got it.

Wednesday 18 May
Travel to Scotland

Mickey Jones : We went everywhere by coach, but Bob had his own car. Now, there were parts of the tour that Bob Dylan was on the coach but, when we went up to Scotland, he went in the car, and we went on the bus.

I’ve long been a collector of Nazi memorabilia, so that morning I went shopping and bought a large German flag. As we left The Midland Hotel to get on the bus for Glasgow, I unfurled the flag in the middle of the street to show it to the guys on the bus. Man, I was almost run down on the spot by about a dozen drivers. I was still just a kid, and it really hadn’t dawned on me how powerful those feelings left over from the war were in England. I guess it was a stupid thing to do.

Thursday 19 May
Odeon Theatre, Glasgow

Andrew Young (Scottish Daily Mail reviewer) : Dressed in checked suit, he stood alone on stage and gasped out the protest songs which have made him a millionaire. It was when he came on in the second half, dressed in black and accompanied by a five-man beat group that the trouble started.

There were shouts of ‘Rubbish’ from the purists and ‘Shut up’ from the beat fans … To shouts of ‘We want Dylan’ he replied ‘Dylan got sick backstage and I’m here to take his place.’ Then he walked off stage unperturbed by the boos and cheers that followed him.

Mickey Jones : There’s no doubt in my mind as to why they were reacting the way they were. They felt that the one person in the world who would remain true was Bob Dylan. They felt betrayed. I understand that more today than I did then.

Friday 20 May
ABC Theatre, Edinburgh. Dylan encounters so many tuning problems that he throws away his mouth organ.
Andrew Young (fan) : You could tell there was something wrong with Bob’s, so I just walked onto the stage and handed him my own 12/6d mouth organ.

Saturday 21 May
Odeon Theatre, Newcastle
Mickey Jones : I’ll tell you this. The first half of those concerts … he was absolutely bored to tears. And he would come back to the dressing room and put that acoustic guitar down. Then he would put that black Telecaster on and you could see the adrenaline running through his veins.

He was ready to rock. He would jump around in the dressing room. He could not wait to get on that stage. It’s true, sometimes Bob would hardly face the audience in the electric set. He played to the band. That was where his focus was, on us. The audience was only there so we could get paid to do what we loved to do. We were all in a zone.

Sunday 22 May
Touring party flies to France, where Dylan spends the night boozing in Parisian niteries with Johnny Hallyday.

Monday 23 May
Press conference in Paris.
Are you a happy person, Bob?
A. Oh yes, I’m as happy as an ashtray.

Tuesday 24 May
Olympia, Paris, with the electric set performed in front of a huge Stars And Stripes on Dylan’s 25th birthday.
Mickey Jones : we were not very happy in France. We thought everyone there had an attitude towards Americans. And they did! I don’t remember whose idea it was but we loved the reaction of the audience when the curtain opened and we were dwarfed by the biggest American flag that I had ever seen. It made me and Bob very proud. As you know, Bob and I were the only Americans on the show. The rest of the band was Canadian.

Wednesday 25 May
Back in London, Dylan is filmed by D.A.Pennebaker during an early morning limo cruise around Hyde Park with John Lennon.
Bob Dylan : Oh man, you shoulda been around last night, John. Today’s a drag.
John Lennon : Oh, really, Bob?

Thursday 26 May
Royal Albert Hall, London, with Rolling Stones in the audience.
Brian Carroll (IBC sound engineer) : I was backstage after helping to set up the recording equipment . Another engineer and I stared in disbelief as we saw Dylan walk up the stairs that led to the stage. This man seemed so out of it that we saw him talking to a fire extinguisher and we both thought that there was going to be a riot when he either failed to appear or stumbled around the stage. Suddenly, a man in a suit led him to the bottom of the stairs and we watched in amazement as he walked up into the lights and gave one of his best performances on the tour.

Mick Farren (rock musician) : He was obviously exceedingly stoned and probably taking a lot of pills, that’s what we all figured…. Little did we know - amphetamine and heroin.

Steve Abrams (fan) : The most interesting part came in the first half of the concert when Dylan was about to sing Visions Of Johanna. He said “Now this next song is what your English newspapers would call a drug song., but I don’t write drug songs and anybody who says I do is talking rubbish.”

Sue Miles (fan) : In the first half he was just earnestly twanging away, groaning away with the old harmonica and the guitar. Out for the intermission, and The Band appeared and I remember thinking, ‘This is great. This is wonderful. This is proper stuff.’ Dylan had frizzy, slightly blue hair. He and Robbie Robertson rubbed up against each other all the time. It was great. Half the audience pissed off - all the ones that had rucksacks.

Dana Gillespie (singer/friend of Dylan) : After the Royal Albert Hall show, Dylan and I did talk about how he felt though and, although I never heard him say anything derogatory about British fans, I knew he was very surprised by the response because he had felt that England was far ahead of any other country in pop music. When the audience booed and jeered in London, he just rocked more to annoy them.

Johnny Byrne (writer) : I happened to be staying in the flat where Dylan came back later. He was visibly vibrating. I should imagine it was the exhaustion and a good deal of substances. He was totally away. There was a yawning chasm between him and any kind of human activity.

Friday 27 May
Royal Albert Hall, London, with The Beatles in the audience.
Mickey Jones : I do think the best set we did was probably the Albert Hall, the last night. Everybody was lookin’ forward to goin’ home and we wanted to kinda leave with a bang.

Norman Jopling (Record Mirror reviewer) : After the interval, he returned with his group and launched into an ear-splitting cacophony …. The hecklers were in full force and just about everything possible was hurled at Bob (verbally - no missiles were seen).

Peter Willis (Peace News reviewer) : Dylan remained beatifically unaffected by this; during one of the few enfeebled bursts of slow-handclapping he simply made faces, giggled and remarked “This isn’t English music, this is American music.”

Norman Jopling : The highlight came when Bob sat down at the piano and did Ballad Of A Thin Man, which silenced even the folksier elements. He ended up with Like A Rolling Stone, jumping and yelling all over the stage and looking (as all the girls said) very sweet.

D.A. Pennebaker : I’m not sure how badly the British audiences affected Dylan. During that tour, we were with him, often filming all night long, and at no point did Bob indicate that felt these audiences hated him.

George Harrison (Beatle) : The thing I remember most about it was all these people who’d never heard of folk until Bob Dylan came around and two years later they’re staunch folk fans and they’re walking out on him when he was playing the electric songs. Which is so stupid. He actually played rock’n’roll before. Nobody knew that at the time but Bob had been in Bobby Vee’s band as the piano player and he’d played rock’n’roll. And then he became Bob Dylan The Folk Singer so, for him, it was just returning back.

I felt a bit sad for him because he was a bit wasted at that time. He’d been on a world tour and he looked like he’d been on a world tour. He looked like he needed a rest…

Mickey Jones : I’ve heard people say he did it for the money. The reality is he made less money on that tour than any tour he’d ever done. To take that many people and all that equipment and all that air freight cost so much more than if he had done the tour alone. By himself, he would have tripled the money he made so, obviously, he did not do it for the money. He did it because his musical tastes were changin’ too.

Robbie Robertson : Dylan had every opportunity to say, ‘Fellows, this is not working out. I’m going to go back to folk music, or get another band where they won’t boo every time.’ Everybody told him to get rid of these guys, that it wasn’t working. But he didn’t. That was very commendable.

28 May
Dylan and Sara fly to Spain for a holiday.
Mickey Jones : I don’t remember Bob being any more tired and wasted than the rest of us. We were all beat to hell. Garth and I decided to take a ship home instead of flying. It was a way of catching up on some well-earned rest. We sailed from Southampton on the S.S. New Amsterdam, the Dutch Line to New York City.

Rick Danko (The Band) : We came back from that English tour with Bob pretty fried, man. Then, late in July, Albert Grossman’s office called and said Bobby had a motorcycle accident in Woodstock and hurt his neck…

Thanks : Pennie Garner, Larry Eden, Jeff Rosen, John Baldwin, Jonathan Green, Barney Hoskyns, Clinton Heylin, Lisa Dewhurst, Sue Langford, Patrick Humphies, Joe Smith, Carl Fish, Aaron ‘Dr. A.’ Hurwitz, Ian Woodward, Steve Rothenburg, Darren Henderson, Peter Doggett, Bobby Neuwirth, Stewart Morris, everybody at Helter Skelter, and Isis magazine for their kind permission to reprint certain sections of their recent lengthy Mickey Jones interview. Most of all though, the spirit of John Bauldie hovers above (and just ahead of) anyone who, like me, threads a tortuous path through the Dylan maze.