Bob Dylan - Free Trade Hall, Manchester, Britain, 5-7-1965

In my opinion, this is one of the greatest Bob Dylan concert recordings out there. Definitely in the top five. What makes it particularly interesting to me is that it came at the very end of his acoustic period. Up until this point, he'd done all of his albums and concerts in solo acoustic mode. But only three days after this was his last fully acoustic concert. Then he got a band together, and two months later, shocked the folk music world with his first electric concert at the Newport Folk Festival.

In 1965, Dylan was on fire. He released two albums, "Bringing It All Back Home" and "Highway 61 Revisited," that are usually on the best albums of all time lists. This concert has a mixture of his new surrealistic songwriting style, thanks to the inclusion of six songs from "Bringing It All Back Home" plus a recent single ("If You Gotta Go, Go Now"), while the rest are from his previous protest singer mode.

It's pretty shocking to me that this concert still remains essentially unreleased. (It was included in "Anniversary Collection 1965," a very limited release of only about 100 copies, meant to retain the copyrights in Europe.) Seemingly every studio take and every concert he did in 1966 has been released by now, but only the studio work from 1965 has been released. So there's a big gap of no live album from 1965. Luckily, this concert is a professionally recorded soundboard, easily the best sounding concert recording of his from 1965.

If you somehow managed to get that "Anniversary Collection 1965" release, you'd miss out, because that doesn't include any banter between songs, and the applause following each song fades out after just a couple of seconds. Luckily, a better version had already been bootlegged that is complete, so I've used that. Admittedly, Dylan doesn't talk much between songs, but he does say a few things here and there. 

I did use the official version for "Talking World War III Blues" though, because the other version had some issues, including missing the first ten seconds or so. But I edited that one to include the full applause from the other version.

The last two songs are essentially bonus tracks taken from other concerts that same year. Dylan did a great version of "Desolation Row" for a show at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1965, shortly after he wrote it. He would go on to play this song acoustically for many 1966 shows, but I particularly like this version.

He also played "Tombstone Blues" for a small audience in July 1965, shortly after writing that one. That clearly is meant to be performed with a full band, but we luckily have this one version that's done acoustically. The last couple of lines sung in the song sound worse than the rest - perhaps his microphone failed him? I used Spleeter to boost their volume a bit, and I think that helps some, but I couldn't do anything to improve the sound quality. The rest of the band still sounds fine for that brief time, it's just his vocals that are wonky.

This concert is an hour and 14 minutes long without the two bonus tracks. If you add them, it's an hour and a half exactly.

01 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Bob Dylan)
02 To Ramona (Bob Dylan)
03 talk (Bob Dylan)
04 Gates of Eden (Bob Dylan)
05 If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Bob Dylan)
06 talk (Bob Dylan)
07 It's Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Bob Dylan)
08 talk (Bob Dylan)
09 Love Minus Zero-No Limit (Bob Dylan)
10 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)
11 Talking World War III Blues [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
12 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Bob Dylan)
13 With God on Our Side (Bob Dylan)
14 She Belongs to Me (Bob Dylan)
15 It Ain't Me, Babe (Bob Dylan)
16 talk (Bob Dylan)
17 The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Bob Dylan)
18 All I Really Want to Do (Bob Dylan)
19 talk (Bob Dylan)
20 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan)
21 talk (Bob Dylan)
22 Desolation Row (Bob Dylan)
23 Tombstone Blues (Bob Dylan)

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alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/esFjjjea

Less than one month later, in early June, Dylan would perform a short show for the BBC. It was broadcast on TV, but unfortunately the footage was lost. However, this color photo from it does survive, so I used it for the cover art. It's one of the very few color photos I've found of him in concert from 1965.