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Bob Dylan: Like the Night

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I am a Dylan freak if ever there was one. For numerous reasons, 1966 was my favorite year. Not to have lived through (I was only four) but historically speaking. This was Bob Dylan at the height of his writing and performing powers, most Dylanologists/fans would agree, made even more amazing and controversial for the fact that at this stage of his creative genius, he was barely twenty-five! In addition, BLONDE ON BLONDE was, and still is, my favorite album, and the European tour of said '66 is undoubtedly rock's crucial moment. The songs that threw audiences and journalists into a frenzy that has not yet, to this very day, let up, were mainly from the most famous one-two punch in popular music's short history; HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED and BLONDE ON BLONDE. CP Lee's LIKE THE NIGHT is a book I've been waiting on for twenty years. This is not just an historical account of a moment in history which had enormous impact on music and culture in general, but a recollection from the author and a group of individuals who possess a real passion and heart-felt affinity for a man who became a hero not only for his artistic genius, but as much for his courage. Like so few artists before him, and even fewer after, Dylan spent the better part of two years doing things his way, regardless of how any other soul in the whole world felt about it. This book will entertain you, educate, surprise, and inspire you. It will take you back to a split second in popular music history when it actually mattered what kind of music and what kind of words an artist presented to his public. In 1966, rock and roll was twelve years old, still breast feeding on the teet of its public's expectations. Bob Dylan was perhaps its one-and-only rebel with a monumental cause: artists' rights/poetic license. LIKE THE NIGHT is a crystal clear snapshot from Bob Dylan's march on Manchester and the world of rock and roll. Read this book, and join the march.

Thirty-two years ago some bloke in Manchester called Bob Dylan "Judas!". Dylan called him a liar, and finished a breathtaking show by uncorking a truly incendiary "Like A Rolling Stone."

While the exchange has long passed into rock mythology, for years it was thought to have taken place at London's Royal Albert Hall. Now, CBS are releasing the show as part of Dylan's Bootleg Series, coinciding nicely with C.P. Lee's book detailing the lead-up to, and the events of, that night in May 1966.

Lee - unlike most people who claim to have been there - was actually there, as was a young Paul Kelly, who took some excellent shots of Dylan alone on stage, and Dylan fronting his five-piece band of junkyard angels (then they were just 'the band', though they would later become The Band).

Lee sets the scene perfectly by contrasting the immediacy of today's pop scene with the mid-60s; no MTV, little radio or tv coverage, sketchy details in the press... it was hard to keep abreast of what was going on. Though he had already released a brace of electric (or electric dominated) albums the previous year (Bringing It All Back Home, and Highway 61 Revisited) with another in the pipeline (Blonde On Blonde), Dylan was still largely known as a folk artist, rather than as a rocker.

Many felt that by plugging-in, Dylan was selling-out, and even though he was playing with a band many attending the shows hoped that he'd "see sense" and send the noisy five-piece home.

Rounding up many people who were there that night, Lee gauged their reactions to the events that unfolded. Some are still unrepentant that they booed and catcalled the Minnesotan singer, still feeling that he had somehow "betrayed" the folk movement.

And it's here that Lee excels; he paints a wonderfully vibrant picture of the folk revival both in Britain and the USA, detailing the almost Stalinistic regime of rules that applied to performance of folk material. As the millenium approaches it may seems quirky, quaint even, that folk music could stir up such feelings, yet the fears were obviously genuinely felt that something would be lost to an all too attractive youth culture.

Building the tension of the day of the show with all the skill of a thriller writer, Lee reveals that a put-upon stage manager almost cancelled the show (when unannounced to him the road crew turned up with recording equipment and rather more amplifiers than he was expecting), and his song-by-song account of the show really makes the whole thing come alive.

Lee's descriptions of the performances tingle with excitement, bringing the reader right into the Machester Free Trade Hall. Paul Williams' books on Dylan's performances are renowned among Dylan fans, and Lee now joins Williams in making the music dance and sing on the page.

It's hard to read Lee's book and not want to stick on the cds - you'll be "pausing" and "playing" as you read! And it's hard not to listen to this wonderful, timeless, and breathtaking music, without thinking of the swirling tempest Dylan was stirring up, so wonderfully captured by C.P. Lee in this excellent book.

Well, what have we here? Only the best book yet written about the 1966 Bob Dylan world tour, and by focusing on the crucial Manchester 5/17/66 concert (now officially released), and by providing fascinating background detail surrounding the events leading up to this particular concert, Lee has demonstrated in a very entertaining way the reasons why we should care about Bob Dylan and the direction his music took in the mid 1960s. It's hard to believe now, after listening to the recently released Live 1966 double-CD set, that this music was dismissed as trash and the tour itself considered to be a disaster. In fact, the music created by Dylan and the Hawks at Manchester (and other venues in Europe in 1966) has proven to be more influential and longer lasting than most other contemporary music of the time. 1966 was truly the year that the music changed, and Dylan was there leading the way. C.P. Lee's eyewitness account shows us why music fans still talk about this amazing concert 33 years later.

I am a Dylan freak if ever there was one. For numerous reasons, 1966 was my favorite year. Not to have lived through (I was only four) but historically speaking. This was Bob Dylan at the height of his writing and performing powers, most Dylanologists/fans would agree, made even more amazing and controversial for the fact that at this stage of his creative genius, he was barely twenty-five! In addition, BLONDE ON BLONDE was, and still is, my favorite album, and the European tour of said '66 is undoubtedly rock's crucial moment. The songs that threw audiences and journalists into a frenzy that has not yet, to this very day, let up, were mainly from the most famous one-two punch in popular music's short history; HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED and BLONDE ON BLONDE. CP Lee's LIKE THE NIGHT is a book I've been waiting on for twenty years. This is not just an historical account of a moment in history which had enormous impact on music and culture in general, but a recollection from the author and a group of individuals who possess a real passion and heart-felt affinity for a man who became a hero not only for his artistic genius, but as much for his courage. Like so few artists before him, and even fewer after, Dylan spent the better part of two years doing things his way, regardless of how any other soul in the whole world felt about it. This book will entertain you, educate, surprise, and inspire you. It will take you back to a split second in popular music history when it actually mattered what kind of music and what kind of words an artist presented to his public. In 1966, rock and roll was twelve years old, still breast feeding on the teet of its public's expectations. Bob Dylan was perhaps its one-and-only rebel with a monumental cause: artists' rights/poetic license. LIKE THE NIGHT is a crystal clear snapshot from Bob Dylan's march on Manchester and the world of rock and roll. Read this book, and join the march.

CP Lee was there. At a time when Dylan was revolutionising rock music. At a time when audiences got what they wanted Dylan gave them the opposite and got booed and barracked for giving us some of the greatest shows of all time. In 1966 if you went to see a Chuck Berry concert, you got just that, he looked and sounded the same as he did on the records you bought. Up to this point in time it was the same with Dylan, he was the acoustic folk troubador, Woody Guthrie clone bringing folk music to the masses. A snobbery existed in folk circles towards rock music and when their flagship artist, their darling, played with a kick ass rock band ('The Hawks')all hell broke loose.

CP Lee takes the whole context of the times. The stringent and puritanical folk music ideals and shows us why they couldn't react in any other way than how they did.

He introduces us to characters both pro and anti Dylan and follows them to the gig, during the gig and after. He breathes life into a concert performance describing the atmosphere in haunting detail. I wanted to be there, I listened to the album of the show whilst reading and it brings a whole new meaning to it.

A definite must buy, not just for Dylan fans but for those with even a passing interest in the History of Rock 'n Roll. You cannot get from Chuck Berry to the angst ridden rock of Nirvana without stopping off in Manchester in 1966.

A joy, pure and simple.

Derek Keogh

We are often told of how musicians and singers touch their audience with their work. But this book puts that sort of insight into a historical context which is quite compelling. We learn much from oral history and the author's own experience, but the author obviously did more than scholarly homework for this project. There is an authoritative command of the subject matter. I would recommend this book to any Dylan fans or those studying popular culture in general. For better and for worse, Dylan is a historical figure and shaped a generation with his move from folk to pop. His contribution to popular music should not be underestimated. Dr. CP Lee of Salford University gives this subject the serious study it deserves.

We are often told of how musicians and singers touch their audience with their work. But this book puts that sort of insight into a historical context which is quite compelling. We learn much from oral history and the author's own experience, but the author obviously did more than scholarly homework for this project. There is an authoritative command of the subject matter. I would recommend this book to any Dylan fans or those studying popular culture in general. For better and for worse, Dylan is a historical figure and shaped a generation with his move from folk to pop. His contribution to popular music should not be underestimated. Dr. CP Lee of Salford University gives this subject the serious study it deserves.

A rarity in Dylan books in that it treats its subject matter with a sense of perspective and also a sense of humour.It is a paradoxically warm account of probably the most vicious night in rock history. Lee was at the gig, along with the book's photographer, and ably describes how a mid 60's English audience was confonted by an electric wall of sound. Many of them had come to see a folksinger and simply could not 'cope' with the flagbearer of radicalism as Rock n' Roll singer.They reacted in a pure English manner by booing and trying to appeal to Dylan's sense of fair play. The funniest bits in the book by the way are the heckles, and if you get chance to see Lee read from the book you'll probably hear his booing compilation tape.Most importantly it's written by a fan who's not a fanatic.

For some reason this was a disappointing read. Of course any information about Bob Dylan and especially this concert is great, but the way it's processed in this book is distracting. The best parts are the stories of the people who were there. The least effective were Lee's cultural analyses and song analyses. The more he writes the more he gets further and further away from Bob Dylan, it seems. The music from this show is so great, and deserves better. That those great songs are trod through local cultural suppositions is distasteful. Scrounge around for Eat the Document, listen to the Live 1966 album, leave this book in the dustbin.

You can buy Bob Dylan's LIVE 1966 in any self-respecting record store, and it comes with liner notes superior to this book.