Video Review: Bob Dylan 66 Tour

How does the expression go? What a difference a year makes? Something like that.

Watching Eat the Document, the footage of the Bob Dylan 1966 tour and the documentary that followed Don’t Look Back (the 1965 tour footage) is a perfect illustration of just how relative time can be. For Dylan, the differences between his 1965 young, acoustic, and fresh-scrubbed self and his louder, electric 1966 self show a markedly different man – and one who was not always accepted by even the most true and loyal fans who had shown up expecting a nice, quiet, acoustic show and were met instead with a screaming electric band and a Bob Dylan they did not recognize.

The shows throughout England and Scotland show fans streaming out of concert halls, commenting for the documentary and any news cameras, “That were shit, that was,” and other insightful comments, clearly thrown off balance by the unexpected (and loud) change they suddenly found in their folk hero. But, of course, as some fans fell away, others embraced the new Dylan and more, new fans were found and both electric and acoustic Dylan would prevail in the end to become the hugely influential Bob Dylan we know today.

Here was Dylan, knowing full well that there would be many who wouldn’t like the new stuff; that it was harder and more, that it was not how he had made his name so far. In many ways, the new electric stuff was a risky move. Still, for Dylan, the acoustic songs had grown tired and repeating the same lines, same thing, night after night would wear on anyone. It's widely reported that between 65 and 66, Dylan was itching to do something new, and more, to do it well (despite what the fans first felt, the electric Dylan would be embraced in due course) and he did, creating some of the music that to this day, remains among the best of Dylan.

With a new sound ringing in his head, Dylan embraced this new side of himself. His new work was edgier, harder, and this too reflected the person that Dylan had become, morphing before our very eyes from the wavy haired boy with the bright skin and shiny eyes to the Dylan that would become so familiar to us, with his unkempt, charmingly unruly dark waves and his caustic, often angry songs with the occasional lilting love ballad.

Eat the Document shows Dylan with his hair overgrown – a brown halo about his head, the ever-present dark and over-sized Ray Bans that became a trademark and that he wore both indoors and outside almost all of the time. In the previous tour, we saw Dylan’s eyes more – here, for the most part, Dylan keeps himself hidden behind those cool, dark shades. He is our thin-legged man, with his jeans that are neither too tight nor too baggy, kicking to the beat of the song, throwing his whole body into his music, and still possessing the same cockiness and sense of humor that he had from the beginning only in this tour, Dylan seems more apart somehow. Less a part of the group than he appeared to be in Don’t Look Back in which the action is centered around Dylan and in which he is quite literally, usually in the center of a swirl of activity.

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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