The Only Sound That You Can Hear, After The Ambulances Go……

There is the teeniest tiniest chance that tomorrow night I shall make a fleeting appearance on television, though I may be hard pressed to spot myself. What it is, is that Martin Scorsese has made a documentary “No Direction Home” about Bob Dylan, specifically Dylan in the mid-1960s. This is being shown by the BBC (in the UK) and PBS (in the US) tonight and tomorrow night (“Arena” on BBC2, 21:00 both days). According to the reviews, the film includes previously-unseen footage of the famous incident in Manchester on Dylan’s 1966 UK tour, when a member of the audience yelled “Judas” at him during the electric half of the evening. Dylan responded with “I don’t believe you, you’re a liar”, and the exchange passed into music history. Well, Scorsese shows footage of the audience (some of whom stormed out when Dylan and The Band plugged in). And among that audience - though neither a stormer-out nor a Judas-shouter - was a wide-eyed ten-year-old with his nineteen-year-old Dylan-fanatic brother. In the stalls, just over halfway back, on (IIRC) the left looking from the stage. And that would be me.

I bought the CD of the concert when it came out a couple of years ago, and was pleased to find that I’d remembered most of the set list (actually surprisingly short - I’d been thinking I must have forgotten numbers but he didn’t do all that many). The ones that had stuck most in my memory were “Visions of Johanna” and “Just Like A Woman” (I was hearing both for the first time, like most if not all the audience) and “Like A Rolling Stone”. “She Belongs To Me”, the concert opener, was delivered with even more withering scorn than one might have expected, as though Dylan was turning his back on his older material before marching into the electric future. “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat” I remember as being very loud indeed. And of course I remember the “Judas!” shout.

Andy Kershaw last night on Radio 3 devoted a whole programme to that shout (“Ghosts of Electricity”). I forgot to listen to it, but am relieved to see that it was in Kershaw’s usual slot, and that his shows are routinely available for a week on the Radio 3 website’s “Listen Again” facility, so I can remedy the oversight. Meanwhile, here is an article from the “Independent” in which Kershaw talks about making the programme. The bit that struck me was where Cordwell said that he didn’t hear Dylan’s response to his shout, and that the sound quality was bad. While it hadn’t occurred to me that the sound in general at the concert was bad, I do remember asking my brother Martin what Dylan had just fired back, because I couldn’t make it out. Martin thought he’d said “Uriah!”, presumably in acerbic Dylan you-call-me-a-Biblical-name-and-I’ll-throw-you-an-Old-Testament-reference style. It made a kind of sense: Uriah was sacrificed to expediency and fickle affection (King David arranged for him to die in battle so David could marry Mrs Uriah) , and I was a little disappointed in later years to discover that Dylan’s response had not in fact been a witty reference to the fickleness of his audience, but much more prosaic. (Same way I was mildly disappointed to find that Hendrix wasn’t singing “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy”…..)

So. Enjoy the Andy Kershaw programme. Enjoy the Scorsese film. Enjoy the Manchester footage. I’ll let you know if I spot myself.

“…..is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row.”