Dylan snapped in Princes St (heading to Lothian Rd venue?) by Barry Feinstein – featured in his book Dylan’s Real Moments (2008)
The coolest white man on earth, AD 1966, Bob Dylan's visit to tweed-furnished Scotland was thankfully captured in sound, film and image.
Drummer Mickey Jones, in his DVD "World Tour 1966" states that, heading to Caledonia,Dylan & the Hawks made a stop at Gretna Green and at Robert The Bruce's cave (the cave's in Arran so I'm not sure if that's true as there's no shots of them leaving the mainland but Mr Jones seems a details kind of guy so it could be right on). In this DVD, there's also a shot of George Square, Glasgow from the hotel room shared by Mickey Jones & organist Garth Hudson which proves the band stayed in a hotel near Queen Street station. Mickey says he and Garth could see something happening. They must have persuaded filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and the others to join them.
Pennebaker's film of the tour will later be edited by Dylan and Howard Alk as Eat The Document. Early on in the film, shots of Glasgow are kaleidoscoped with concert footage. Notes CP Lee in his book on Dylan's movies, Like A Bullet Of Light: “..An auditory transition takes place as Garth Hudson tries out the bagpipe sound on his organ. This is segued on the soundtrack to real bagpipes and it suddenly becomes clear that we’re in Scotland…The camera lingers on a sandwich board man. On the board on the front are the words: “IT IS APPOINTED UNTO MEN ONCE TO DIE”. When he turns around we can see a photograph of what looks like a disaster and the words: “AFTER THE JUDGEMENT”. Dylan, Neuwirth and the crew are watching a police-dog display. Valiant Alsatian dogs leap at “armed” criminals. The Glaswegian public politely ignore them, even though Dylan’s crow’s nest hair was unprecedented for either a man or a woman at that time. A Highland pipe band marches backwards and forwards , pibrochts blaring, drums rattling…”
Beautifully portrayed, CP. Looking at the George Square footage I know the Central College Of Commerce is looming modern behind out of shot. A trolleybus moves on Westward on route 105. trams are gone four years, the dwindling trolleybuses have a year to go. Service 105 will run the Queen’s Cross on the Clarkston route through George Square till 27th May, 1967. Paddle-steamers still ply the Clyde, as do venerable turbine steamers but car ferries are taking over. After the “silent death” trolleybus moves out of shot we see a sandwich-board proclaiming “After Death The Judgement.” We hear Bob ask, “Do they do that in the middle of winter?”
One of the statues in George Square is of Robert Burns. It was created in 1877 by George Edwin Ewing , reliefs by J A Ewing cast by Cox and Son.
As far as we know, the party didn’t set foot in the wooden Tourist Information office clearly in shot .
After a brief scene involving a coach ride and an English farmer, shot of coach in street –hotel – someone – Neuwirth? reads from newspaper “a five year old Glasgow schoolboy was strangled today”
according to biographer Clinton Heylin in Behind the Shades: Take Two, there was an unsavoury incident in his hotel room.
He quotes Dylan's bodyguard and chauffeur, Tom Keylock, as saying: "There was a knock on the door and it was the waiter, with some buttered toast for Dylan, and some tea and honey ... The waiter comes in, puts it down there, I sign for it, and he suddenly says, **** him! I want to talk to him!'"
The waiter is said to have told Dylan: "You're a ****ing traitor to folk music", prompting Albert Grossman, Dylan's manager, to order Keylock to get rid of the man.
Keylock adds: "I shoved open the door and shoved him out. He pulls a knife on me - I've still got the scar on me to prove it - so I give him a good kicking ... But Bob wasn't quite there, like, he was somewhere else - he was a bundle of nerves."
Dylan's entourage included filmmaker DA Pennebaker, who shot extensive footage for a planned documentary commissioned by the US network, ABC. Dylan and colleague Howard Alk edited the footage, but the result, Eat the Document, was a self-indulgent mess that ABC reportedly declined to screen.
Bootleg copies exist, however, and the footage appears to show Dylan, in shades, in George Square, watching a police dog display while a pipe band plays.
The actual show that night, according to Heylin, "had fans shouting Rubbish!' and Shut up!'," and when Dylan was slow-handclapped before Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, "something he had begun semi-orchestrating with an extended tune-up, he began burbling into the mike until curiosity got the better of the hecklers".
According to other writers, however, the concert was quite remarkable.
In his 1989 book, Dylan: A Biography, author Bob Spitz quotes Pennebaker as recalling that the concert was one of the best he had ever seen. I can well believe it!
GLASGOW HOTEL TAPE 19.05.66 with Robbie Robertson
What Kind Of Friend Is This/ When Will I Be Loved /What Kind Of Friend Is This/I Can't Leave Her Behind / On A Rainy Afternoon (as we can see from the weather in George Square this was a indeed a rainy afternoon) Paul Williams on the tape (from Performing Artist Vol. 1): “..Dylan sings three songs that he apparently working on, tiny clues to what he might have written and performed next if history had been different (they sound almost like traditional folk songs, but of course we don’t know what Dylan’s other songs at the time might have sounded like when he was first fooling around with them) – at a guess, the titles are “On A Rainy Afternoon”/, “What Kind Of Friend Is This?” and “I Can’t Leave Her Behind” (“where she leads me I do not know,” sung in this lovely high vulnerable voice). Somewhere there is more footage, on stage and off, stored away, that could possibly emerge someday. The time machine has not yet made its last trip.”
ODEON, GLASGOW 19.05.1966
Acoustic Set: She Belongs To Me,/Fourth Time Around,/Visions Of Johanna / It's All Over Now Baby Blue/ Desolation Row,/Just Like A Woman,/Mr. Tambourine Man
Electric Set (Rick Danko’s bass deep as the antique subway clattering under the city streets) : Tell Me Momma/ I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)/ Baby Let Me Follow You Down )/ Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues,/Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,/One Too Many Mornings,/Ballad Of A Thin Man,/Like A Rolling Stone
Robert Shelton in No Direction Home: "Although there were hecklers and walkouts among the three thousand at the Glasgow Odeon on May 19, those who liked the new music shouted down those who didn’t. Someone yelled: “We want Dylan.” Bob replied: “Dylan got sick backstage. I’m here to take his place.” While the antis were yelling “Traitor!” and “Belt up!” , the pros were shouting: “get your ears washed!”
Events in and about Glasgow 1966:
27th June closure of St Enoch Station & on 9th November Buchanan Street Station, ending steam train services to Fife-i-o..
Yorkhill Quay ends sailings to India
British Transport Film Glasgow Belongs To Me released
....And a few months later Peter Fonda will turn Larry Hagman onto LSD at the 1967 New Year’s Day Old Firm game.
Events in Edinburgh 1966
Mick Jagger lookalike Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencratz & Gilderstern Are Dead debuts at the Edinburgh Festival, a few months after Dylan visits Hamlet’s castle in Elsinore, Denmark.
Pennebaker's film of the tour will later be edited by Dylan and Howard Alk as Eat The Document. Early on in the film, shots of Glasgow are kaleidoscoped with concert footage. Notes CP Lee in his book on Dylan's movies, Like A Bullet Of Light: “..An auditory transition takes place as Garth Hudson tries out the bagpipe sound on his organ. This is segued on the soundtrack to real bagpipes and it suddenly becomes clear that we’re in Scotland…The camera lingers on a sandwich board man. On the board on the front are the words: “IT IS APPOINTED UNTO MEN ONCE TO DIE”. When he turns around we can see a photograph of what looks like a disaster and the words: “AFTER THE JUDGEMENT”. Dylan, Neuwirth and the crew are watching a police-dog display. Valiant Alsatian dogs leap at “armed” criminals. The Glaswegian public politely ignore them, even though Dylan’s crow’s nest hair was unprecedented for either a man or a woman at that time. A Highland pipe band marches backwards and forwards , pibrochts blaring, drums rattling…”
Beautifully portrayed, CP. Looking at the George Square footage I know the Central College Of Commerce is looming modern behind out of shot. A trolleybus moves on Westward on route 105. trams are gone four years, the dwindling trolleybuses have a year to go. Service 105 will run the Queen’s Cross on the Clarkston route through George Square till 27th May, 1967. Paddle-steamers still ply the Clyde, as do venerable turbine steamers but car ferries are taking over. After the “silent death” trolleybus moves out of shot we see a sandwich-board proclaiming “After Death The Judgement.” We hear Bob ask, “Do they do that in the middle of winter?”
One of the statues in George Square is of Robert Burns. It was created in 1877 by George Edwin Ewing , reliefs by J A Ewing cast by Cox and Son.
As far as we know, the party didn’t set foot in the wooden Tourist Information office clearly in shot .
After a brief scene involving a coach ride and an English farmer, shot of coach in street –hotel – someone – Neuwirth? reads from newspaper “a five year old Glasgow schoolboy was strangled today”
according to biographer Clinton Heylin in Behind the Shades: Take Two, there was an unsavoury incident in his hotel room.
He quotes Dylan's bodyguard and chauffeur, Tom Keylock, as saying: "There was a knock on the door and it was the waiter, with some buttered toast for Dylan, and some tea and honey ... The waiter comes in, puts it down there, I sign for it, and he suddenly says, **** him! I want to talk to him!'"
The waiter is said to have told Dylan: "You're a ****ing traitor to folk music", prompting Albert Grossman, Dylan's manager, to order Keylock to get rid of the man.
Keylock adds: "I shoved open the door and shoved him out. He pulls a knife on me - I've still got the scar on me to prove it - so I give him a good kicking ... But Bob wasn't quite there, like, he was somewhere else - he was a bundle of nerves."
Dylan's entourage included filmmaker DA Pennebaker, who shot extensive footage for a planned documentary commissioned by the US network, ABC. Dylan and colleague Howard Alk edited the footage, but the result, Eat the Document, was a self-indulgent mess that ABC reportedly declined to screen.
Bootleg copies exist, however, and the footage appears to show Dylan, in shades, in George Square, watching a police dog display while a pipe band plays.
The actual show that night, according to Heylin, "had fans shouting Rubbish!' and Shut up!'," and when Dylan was slow-handclapped before Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, "something he had begun semi-orchestrating with an extended tune-up, he began burbling into the mike until curiosity got the better of the hecklers".
According to other writers, however, the concert was quite remarkable.
In his 1989 book, Dylan: A Biography, author Bob Spitz quotes Pennebaker as recalling that the concert was one of the best he had ever seen. I can well believe it!
GLASGOW HOTEL TAPE 19.05.66 with Robbie Robertson
What Kind Of Friend Is This/ When Will I Be Loved /What Kind Of Friend Is This/I Can't Leave Her Behind / On A Rainy Afternoon (as we can see from the weather in George Square this was a indeed a rainy afternoon) Paul Williams on the tape (from Performing Artist Vol. 1): “..Dylan sings three songs that he apparently working on, tiny clues to what he might have written and performed next if history had been different (they sound almost like traditional folk songs, but of course we don’t know what Dylan’s other songs at the time might have sounded like when he was first fooling around with them) – at a guess, the titles are “On A Rainy Afternoon”/, “What Kind Of Friend Is This?” and “I Can’t Leave Her Behind” (“where she leads me I do not know,” sung in this lovely high vulnerable voice). Somewhere there is more footage, on stage and off, stored away, that could possibly emerge someday. The time machine has not yet made its last trip.”
ODEON, GLASGOW 19.05.1966
Acoustic Set: She Belongs To Me,/Fourth Time Around,/Visions Of Johanna / It's All Over Now Baby Blue/ Desolation Row,/Just Like A Woman,/Mr. Tambourine Man
Electric Set (Rick Danko’s bass deep as the antique subway clattering under the city streets) : Tell Me Momma/ I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)/ Baby Let Me Follow You Down )/ Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues,/Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,/One Too Many Mornings,/Ballad Of A Thin Man,/Like A Rolling Stone
Robert Shelton in No Direction Home: "Although there were hecklers and walkouts among the three thousand at the Glasgow Odeon on May 19, those who liked the new music shouted down those who didn’t. Someone yelled: “We want Dylan.” Bob replied: “Dylan got sick backstage. I’m here to take his place.” While the antis were yelling “Traitor!” and “Belt up!” , the pros were shouting: “get your ears washed!”
Events in and about Glasgow 1966:
27th June closure of St Enoch Station & on 9th November Buchanan Street Station, ending steam train services to Fife-i-o..
Yorkhill Quay ends sailings to India
British Transport Film Glasgow Belongs To Me released
....And a few months later Peter Fonda will turn Larry Hagman onto LSD at the 1967 New Year’s Day Old Firm game.
Events in Edinburgh 1966
Mick Jagger lookalike Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencratz & Gilderstern Are Dead debuts at the Edinburgh Festival, a few months after Dylan visits Hamlet’s castle in Elsinore, Denmark.
"MEETING THE STARS WAS EASY AS ABC From: Evening News - Scotland Date: June 7, 2001 Author: John Gibson Copyright 2001 Evening News - Scotland. Provided by ProQuest LLC.Copyright information
The curtain has come down on one of Edinburgh's best-loved cinemas. But, John Gibson finds, the memories will be a long time fading Lynda Lovell must have been the envy of all her friends. When the Beatles played Edinburgh in 1964 she had the best seat in the house. Backstage she was introduced to John, Paul, George and Ringo. And again, when the Stones, the Dave Clark Five, Bob Dylan, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black and Gene Pitney starred at the Regal - latterly the ABC in Lothian Road - the teenage Lynda had the pick of the stalls. And she got to meet them all. Her dad, Les, ... !
The curtain has come down on one of Edinburgh's best-loved cinemas. But, John Gibson finds, the memories will be a long time fading Lynda Lovell must have been the envy of all her friends. When the Beatles played Edinburgh in 1964 she had the best seat in the house. Backstage she was introduced to John, Paul, George and Ringo. And again, when the Stones, the Dave Clark Five, Bob Dylan, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black and Gene Pitney starred at the Regal - latterly the ABC in Lothian Road - the teenage Lynda had the pick of the stalls. And she got to meet them all. Her dad, Les, ... !
EDINBURGH ABC Theatre 20.05.1966
Acoustic Set: She Belongs To Me/Fourth Time Around,/Visions Of Johanna / It's All Over Now Baby Blue/ Desolation Row/Just Like A Woman/Mr. Tambourine Man
Electric Set (ready to shake free some of the soot that clads the venerable stione buildings of Auld Reekie): Tell Me Momma/ I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)/ Baby Let Me Follow You Down )/ Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues,/Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,/One Too Many Mornings/Ballad Of A Thin Man/Like A Rolling Stone
Robert Shelton: ..”another divided audience. Dylan found a broken reed in his mouth harp, but Andrew Young of Haystack Cottage handed up his own .Dylan finished the song, got a new harmonica backstage, and returned the borrowed harp along with one of his own. The Scottish Daily Express :”..booed off the stage again last night..Some of the audience took out mouth-organs and tried to play down his singing…”
Reading accounts of shows like these and Glasgow Odeon, one wonders how come so many young men packed harmonica heat when attending gigs in the mid-sixties – were they all attending Hoots Mon hootenannies after the show?
This is Dylan really shouting the word NOW.
This is the show at which Ballad Of A Thin Man as featured in Eat The Document, No Direction Home & the NDH soundtrack was filmed, Pennebaker onstage with the musicians. CP Lee: “Visually.. it remains stunning cinema with one particular shot of Dylan with a halo of light hovering around his head worth the price of admission alone”.
On the soundtrack, so does the attendant musical performance…
Ballad Of A Thin Man – easy to hear how this merited inclusion in the No Direction Home soundtrack. Here’s Dylan, four days before his twenty-fifth birthday, sounding like the smartest, most switched-on cat in the universe. An intense performance with Dylan leaning into middle in extraordinary fashion (imaginaySHON)and changing several key lines throughout the surging song:
YES BECAUSE you know something’s happening here
There’s something happening HERE
You walk in so POLITELY (followed by a proto-prog organ riff from Garth)
You hand in your MONEY (not ticket)
BE such a freak
BO___ONE
STILL something ‘s happening
TELLS you how it feels
Here’s your MOUTH back – thanks for the loan
Begin to really know something is happening & you wish you knew what it was
You’re positive something’s happening & you know you gotta find out what it is
And the sly, sibilant way he pronounces “professors” is priceless. The ABC Regal cinema in Lothian Road was opened in 1938, and played host to various papackage tours in the sixties. Presently an Odeon Cinema. From The Scotsman July 10th, 2008: Robin Harper, leader of the Scottish Greens, said: "I remember going to see Bob Dylan in Edinburgh in 1966 when he went electric. We were appalled because we'd been hoping to hear just him and his guitar, but he appeared with a full-scale rock band. Someone shouted out 'Traitor!' and just left."
Blonde On Blonde had been released four days. Acoustic set version of Just Like A Woman – “Queen Mary she’s my friend” one imagines resonating with the audience sat within two miles of Holyrood Palace, home of Mary, Queen Of Scots and where she saw her lover David Rizzio murdered by her husband the Earl Of Darnley.
Bob Dylan In Glasgow, 1966
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