When she said
“Don’t waste your words, they’re just lies”
I cried she was deaf
And she worked on my face until breaking my eyes
Then said, “What else you got left?”
It was then that I got up to leave
But she said, “Don’t forget
Everybody must give something back
For something they get”
–
What exactly inspired “4th Time Around” is one of the great Dylan mysteries. The melody and story line are a direct takeoff of the 1965 Beatles song “Norwegian Wood” – among the band’s first songs with a clear Dylan influence. Was the line “I never asked for your crutch, now don’t ask for mine” a warning to stop ripping him off? Dylan’s never said, but three months after he recorded it, he went on a famously stoned limo ride with John Lennon around London and didn’t seem to be harboring any malice. The next year he released John Wesley Harding, which has what appears to be an upside-down image of the Beatles hidden in a tree on the cover – but that’s another mystery.
–Rollingstone.com
By the time we did the Australia and Europe tours we had discovered whatever this thing was. It was not light, it was not folky. It was very dynamic, very explosive and very violent.
~Robbie Robertson
By this point, Dylan, Robertson, and Co. knew instinctively that what they were doing was right, in every sense of the word. If the Hawks had been a little hesitant in their playing back in the fall of 1965, the music they were producing now was stately, immense, compelling. The sound itself had a thousand precursors, but no precedent. It was, indeed, ‘very explosive and very violent.’
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited)
Dylan’s 66 world tour is the best tour ever… by anyone. I know you all agree.
The Bob Dylan World Tour 1966 was a concert tour undertaken by American musician Bob Dylan, from February to May 1966. Dylan’s 1966 World Tour was notable as the first tour where Dylan employed an electric band backing him, following his “going electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The musicians Dylan employed as his backing band were known as The Hawks; they subsequently became famous as The Band. The 1966 tour was filmed by director D. A. Pennebaker. Pennebaker’s footage was edited by Dylan and Howard Alk to produce a little-seen film, Eat the Document, an anarchic account of the tour. Drummer Mickey Jones also filmed the tour with an 8mm home movie camera. Many of the 1966 tour concerts were recorded by Columbia Records. These recordings produced one official album, the so-called “Royal Albert Hall” concert, and also many unofficial bootleg recordings of the tour.Dylan’s 1966 Tour ended with his motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966. Subsequent to Dylan’s withdrawal to Woodstock, he refrained from undertaking a major tour until 1974. ~Wikipedia
CBS records this concert. A PA recording of the acoustic half of the show is subsequently widely bootlegged. The extant tape features “Visions of Johanna,” “Fourth Time Around,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “Desolation Row,” “Just Like a Woman,” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” (but not “She Belongs to Me,” presumably performed). Although the acoustic set seems to be well received, the audience is hostile throughout the electric set. One review of the show is headlined “Night of the Big Let Down.” According to Robbie Robertson, some of the audience were even holding up placards saying “Stop the War.” A recording of “I Don’t Believe You” from the electric set is eventually released on the Biograph set, incorrectly assigned to Belfast.
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)
Dylan’s voice is extremely rough, but the performance, if anything, even more intense than the English shows
~Clinton Heylin (A Life In Stolen Moments)
Great 66 Show where Dylan sounds very stoned, and still brilliant.
For this show he uses a borrowed guitar, as his had been broken. When compared to the Sydney show, this performance is more laid back.
~bobsboots.com
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