If not the best sounding recording, Liverpool is as good a performance of the electric set as you will find on the tour. Perhaps inspired by playing the hometown of the Fab Four, the band is tight and powerful. Dylan’s vocals, Robbie’s lead guitar playing and Garth’s erie B-3 all seem truly inspired.
~bobsboots.com
…… that they could go on stage in Liverpool in May 1966—the city that had so recently been the centre of the musical universe— and hurl at their audience rock music a thousand times more sublime, challenging, multi-layered and exciting than anything Liverpudlians had ever heard before? Impossible to say, but easy to prove. Play that night’s ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’. By this point Dylan’s cawing voice and searing harmonica were both perfectly integrated instruments in amongst those of the Hawks, whose hardwon knowledge of each other’s playing freed them all to ride each moment in a ceaseless interchange of fiery, creative levitation.
~Michael Gray (BD Encyclopedia)
One of the best concerts I’ve heard from the 66-tour..
The music is the message, the message is the music. So that’s my little ministry that the Big Man upstairs gave to me – a little ministry called love and happiness.
~Al Green
My favourite Bob Dylan bootleg 1966: Genuine Live 1966 (box set)
Scorpio put out the 8 CD set entitled Genuine Live 66 in 2000 (following in their tradition of sticking titles to Sony music.) It gives us a fantastic view into one of the best (if not THE best) rock tours ever done.
The Bootlegs included in the box set are: “A Phoenix in April” – Sydney, Australia “The Children’s Crusade” – Melbourne & Adelaide “While The Establishment Burns” – Dublin, Copenhagen, & Edinburgh “A Nightly Ritual”– Liverpool, Glasgow, Sheffield, & Birmingham “The Genuine RAH Concerts” Manchester & London (In addition, some sets included two bonus discs of the Bristol show entitled Away From The Past)
The Bob Dylan World Tour 1966 was a concert tour 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 8mmhome 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. This box set is the definitive audio documentation of this tour.
Highlights: Too many to single out, this is a true treasure chest!
When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez
And it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs
When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outta you
–
This reminds me of Kerouac’s “On The Road” – conjuring up a dusty character lost somewhere in America, or South America, down on his luck, wanting to go home and singing off with the bleak but also funny line: “I’m going back to New York City/I do believe I’ve had enough.” ~Howard Souness (His 40 Greatest songs – Uncut Magazine)
Among the masterpieces of Bob Dylan’s amazing outpouring of songs in the mid-’60s, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” is a minor pleasure. For anyone else, its extravagant imagery and literary references would make it a sophisticated, comic tour de force. But it has tended to be overshadowed by Dylan’s other songs of the period.
~William Ruhlmann (allmusic.com)
Mr. Ruhlmann has a point… this masterpiece is no. 19 on my Dylan top 200 list… and still there are 3 songs on “Highway 61 Revisited” that are better + 6 others from 65/66… It is brilliant song that carries most of the same characteristics as two of the other masterpieces on H61 (Like A Rolling Stone & Ballad of a Thin Man):
Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don’t have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won’t even say what it is I’ve got
The music is the message, the message is the music. So that’s my little ministry that the Big Man upstairs gave to me – a little ministry called love and happiness.
~Al Green
If Al decides to turn into Otis Redding after all, we may look back at this repackaging of his earliest recordings as the beginning of a great stylist. If he decides to turn into Diana Ross, as seems at least possible, we will forget it quickly enough.
~Robert Christgau (in 1972 – review of “Al Green” album)
Albert Greene (born April 13, 1946), better known as Al Green or Reverend Al Green, is an American singer, better known for scoring a series of soul hit singles in the early 1970s, including “Tired of Being Alone”, “I’m Still In Love With You”, “Love and Happiness” and his signature song, “Let’s Stay Together”. Inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, Green was referred to on the museum’s site as being “one of the most gifted purveyors of soul music”. Green was included in the Rolling Stone list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, ranking at No. 66.
Love and Happiness (live – HQ):
Al Green was the first great soul singer of the ’70s and arguably the last great Southern soul singer. With his seductive singles for Hi Records in the early ’70s, Green bridged the gap between deep soul and smooth Philadelphia soul. He incorporated elements of gospel, interjecting his performances with wild moans and wails, but his records were stylish, boasting immaculate productions that rolled along with a tight beat, sexy backing vocals, and lush strings.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)
Awards:
Inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995
In 2004, Green was inducted into the Gospel Music Association‘s Gospel Music Hall of Fame
In the same year he was inducted into The Songwriters Hall of Fame
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 65 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time
He was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 BET Awards on June 24, 2009
On August 26, 2004, Green was honored as a BMI Icon at the annual BMI Urban Awards. He joined an impressive list of previous Icon honorees including R&B legends James Brown, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddley
