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Fact #61400

When:

Short story:

Bob Dylan plays his legendary show at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, England, UK, Europe, where a disillusioned fan, Keith Butler, shouts 'Judas!' from the hall.

Full article:

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.