Bob Dylan against the world

Uncut's April issue looks back at tumultuous 1966 tour

What is there left to say about a series of contentious, hell-or-high-water, sixty-year-old concerts that raised the roof in concert halls all over Europe?

Uh, plenty, it turns out. Even now. All these years later.

Released as a sort of precursor to an upcoming major exhibition at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, the April edition of England’s Uncut magazine takes the kind of headfirst dive into Dylanology that even long-time fans (and authors) can find fascinating.

In what amounts to 16 well-researched, “hey, look over here” pages of tidbits, interviews, commentary, newspaper concert reviews, there’s plenty of reading material here about that wild tour and the double album (“Blonde On Blonde”) that followed, much of which you probably haven’t read before.

Granted, there aren’t many rock and roll events from sixty years ago that are worth re-examining. But the Bob Dylan/Hawks World Tour might be at the top of the list.

The April 2026 edition of “Uncut” - A Bob Dylan bonanza

When Bob Dylan took the Hawks along with him on that raucous 1966 jaunt around the world, his decision to do the latter half of his concerts with electric guitars at full volume was deafening, divisive and dangerous.

At least half of these audiences - or so it sounds on the 36-CD recordings of the tour - were truly dismayed that it wasn’t just ol’ Bob on stage with his harmonica and acoustic guitar. The other half were either excited by the wild, pounding music or trying to recover their hearing. It was then - and still sounds now - like an absolutely untamed hour or so of pure, untrammeled Dylan. Take it or leave it.

The lucky fans who attended the shows got to see a wired Dylan jumping around the stage like Jiminy Cricket with a Telecaster, arms and hands flailing in the air or around a shiny, silver microphone, which bravely stood placid and unemotional in the middle of this maelstrom.

Bob Dylan on his controversial 1966 World Tour with The Hawks - Read all about it!

There was absolutely no attempt to give the audience what they wanted. As Dylan once said to the Hawks’ guitarist Robbie Robertson, they were “drilling these songs into people.” It was bold, uncompromising and relentless, the boos and cat calls that rose up from the audiences only seemed to fuel Dylan and the Hawks behind him from the opening notes of the set.

Listening to the recordings of that tour — for the longest time, the only officially released track from that tour was a live version of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” recorded in Liverpool (home of the Beatles) on May 14, 1966 — you could perhaps understand why the conservative ears at Columbia Records might think it was a little too unleashed for the general public.

It was raw in the best sense of that word; there was no “Take Two, Take Three, Take Four, let’s try it again.” studio meticulousness. Dylan sang every song as if it might be his last chance at it and judging from the often violent way the audience responded, he might well have felt that way.

If you were lucky enough to hear that “Tom Thumb” cut — believe it or not, I bought mine in a tiny convenience store in Milford, New Hampshire that sold a handful of 45’s - you were eager to hear more. There was nothing tame about the stuff, Mickey Jones’ drums were thunderous, Robbie’s guitar was searing and you could imagine how hard it hit people’s eardrums in a live setting. Especially if they weren’t expecting it.

Once word of the “Royal Albert Hall” concert tapes with the famous “Judas” momen; leaked out - it turned out the incident actually occurred earlier at the Manchester Free Trade Hall and was mis-labeled — Dylan bootleg collectors saw that recording as “The Holy Grail.”

Listening to it once again, which I’m compelled to do every so often, there’s simply nothing quite like it in the Dylan canon, not the live 1974 tour with The Band, not “Real Live” or “Hard Rain” or “Budokan” or “Rolling Thunder” or even the dozens or hundreds of leaked current Dylan shows on YouTube.

On all those records, you have to remember Dylan already had the ear of the world. People knew who he was, what songs he’d written, how he behaved on stage. By 1966, Dylan fans had been used to concerts performed with an absolute, library-like silence all around, the ultra-attentive audience hanging on Dylan’s every utterance, even between-songs-patter. To crank up the emotion - along with the volume - as he did on this tour raised the stakes for everyone.

Fortunately, Columbia recorded a lot of it and released a 36-CD set of the entire tour a few years ago. Filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker also caught some of it on film. You can find some of the concert footage on YouTube or in the Martin Scorsese documentary “No Direction Home.”

Happily, re-reading the features in “Uncut” brings back that moment, the risk of that tour. There have been many since. One going on right now, in fact. Through all the years and shows, that unflinching voice still coming through a silver microphone, could only belong to Bob Dylan.

HERE’S WHAT I WROTE ABOUT SEEING BOB FOR THE TENTH TIME

Author John Nogowski has produced three editions of “Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography” for McFarland and Co.. A similar volume on Neil Young will soon follow. He’s currently at work on a book on Bruce Springsteen. He writes often about music on his Substack since May of 2024. He’s also written two books on baseball - his son is a former major-leaguer - “Diamond Duels” and “Last Time Out” and a book on teaching - “Teaching Huckleberry Finn,” all available on Amazon.