Bob Dylan: Like the Night - The Road to the Manchester Free Trade Hall Book

It remains the most divisive moment in the history of rock 'n' roll--and yes, it really does merit a whole book: the night in 1966 that Bob Dylan was branded a "Judas". Dylan had always marched to his own tune, but that controversial tour when he appeared with a rock band was seen by purists as an unforgivable betrayal of his folk roots. In hindsight the music he made with The Band was among the most incendiary ever played on stage, but the concerts divided audiences like never before--and over the years, enshrined on bootlegs, the tour has taken its place in rock myth.For 30 years the bitter shout of "Judas" was believed to have taken place at the Royal Albert Hall, until C P Lee, in a piece of commendable research, traced the incident back to the Manchester Free Trade Hall. To prove his point, he also tracked down and interviewed ushers, fans and critics who had witnessed it all at first hand--providing one of the few genuinely illuminating and enthralling Dylan books to have emerged in recent years. "Dylan was perhaps the only barometer that you possessed", Lee writes. "We needed to know more. Malcolm, Paul, Kath, Barbara, Tricia, Tim, myself and a hundred thousand others looked to Dylan for a signal, a sign." Then, as now. --Patrick HumphriesRead More