Bob Dylan - Ballad Of A Thin Man (RARE COMMENTARY) [Royal Albert Hall 1966]
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- Опубліковано 7 вер 2024
- Here's a request! This is from Dylan's last full-length concert until 1974. I highly recommend listening to other tracks from this show (all on my playlist titled "Royal Albert Hall, UK 1966); Bob's interactions with the audience are priceless!
You can clearly hear how drained he was from touring so long. Even so, he manages to have some sparring with the audience. I hope these hecklers regret buying a ticket to one of Bob Dylan's most historically significant concerts ever, only to boo him.
Enjoy this gem while you can, and please subscribe!
"you arent going to see me anymore and im gonna see you anyway"
Heckling Bob Dylan. Like throwing matches on a bonfire.
Thanks to SP for another Dylan performance gem!!!
Great reply matches on a bon fire LOL
Matches on a bonfire would be pretty unimpressive. Gasoline. Now you’re talkin’.
@@melodymakermark exactly my thought
@@melodymakermark I think that's the point, hecklers not very impressive
I think you are correct. That one wizzed right over my head. I don’t exactly have the latest processor.
From what I’ve seen, audience displeasure gets to Bob, but fuels him also.
Genuinely one of the greatest live performances of all time and they had the nerve to treat him this way. Id kill to be there
He is unflappable as always. Strong center. Nobel Prize winner. Prophet and genius.
@Addie A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
Epic! Those initial pianos chords when he's still talkin are so ominous for dylans fans... aren't they? we know what's coming...
Yah that was trippy
Love it! I gave you’ll a minute...
Absolutely
So true. A bunch of the crowd started clapping after 2 notes just like I would have.
Unfortunately I was 4 years old at this time so I didn’t see this tour. I finally saw both Bob and the Band (separately I mean) in the mid 80s, not long before Richard Manuel’s suicide. We interviewed the Band a bit for college radio - I can’t recall if we did it after their show or if we came down earlier in the afternoon. We were talking to Levon the most. He was so nice, a very charming gentleman , and they were really pleased that young folks were so into their music and familiar with their catalog
Or it could've been Ray Charles I Believe To My Soul.
The interplay between Bob and Garth is nothing short of perfection. I stand in awe of the power that lineup thrust into the ether. 3 giant steps forward for live contemporary music.
"The good stuff and the bad stuff! It's all the same STUFF!" Swingin' Pig....This is some great STUFF!!! Thanks so so much. I LOVE IT!!
Cindy Bradley Thanks so much for listening 🤣
Reminds me of Shakespears "There is nothing either good or bad, thinking makes it so"
Probably my favourite recorded live show of all time.
no one bigger than Dylan, this will always stay like that
If I could go back in time to watch just one concert, this would be it.
Don’t you hate it when people don’t get it?? Dylan pours his soul into it, even if they don’t get it.
The true fans understand the changes of true artists.
At one point he was talking to a fire extinguisher because he was so exhausted. I’ve read rumors that he was doing heroin on this tour. Either way it’s my favorite era of Dylan. I wish I could have seen him back then.
Saw him 1st time he came back to mpls in the early 60s. His parents came he wouldnt them cause they told him he wouldnt make it. I love bob.....but he always did it his way an didnt care what anyone thought
Yep, Coke,Speed & Heroin were all fueling this tour apparently.
Saw him at the forum, third row do this in 1974--he was on piano right in front of me lookin at me
"Hey, you are all such sweet people..." love it
Magnifique. Even if I did not understand Engish, what vocabulary, what distortion of language in the vocal, what intimacy, what sinister intonation, worthy of Baudelaire. Just one song but "staggering" is the only word I can think of it. If I cannot write as well as that, I will reture.
no man, just keep going, like Bobby did..
*_"Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."_*
~~ Henry Van Dyke
Bring me back to the 60s!!
I love his voice 💕💕💕😀
Beautiful version! Amazing that more than 50 years later Dylan is singing this song at almost all his concerts with intact inspiration. It's a concentrate of Dylan's musical and poetic genius!
Since the release of “Ballad of a Thin Man” on the 1965 album, “Highway 61 Revisited,” Dylan has never revealed the true identity of the actual Mr. Jones. However, at a 1986 concert in Japan, he prefaced a performance of the song by saying, “This is a song I wrote in response to people who ask questions all the time. You just get tired of that every once in a while.” 1:23
By Ed Boitano
Source: Traveling Boy - Traveling Adventures
Around halfway through the press conference a reporter asked an ironic question, “Who is Mr. Jones?” Dylan smiled and responded, “I can’t say his first name.” 4:56
By Andy Behrman
Source: The Priory Record
Well maybe it's his endurance people came to respect he does sound really high at this performance and so maybe the audience were disappointed by that but he was/is a poet they have tortured souls don't expect them to sound like they don't. If he was using heroin I guess it's lucky we didn't lose him young to it like many other musicians. Much of his stuff is anti establishment too which some don't like and he would not conform to expectations like some demand either they were mad when he went from folk acoustic to electric guitar too he must have a certain toughness to him to have endured. My Dad always liked him I like him but I don't know that he would care if I liked him or not probably doesn't need my praise or approval either. I liked Leonard Cohen all my life too.
@@annalisavajda252 I agree with you! What is impressive is his longevity as a poet, a musician, his ability to reinvent constantly his art, his deep knowledge of american music and culture. Such major and complete artists are very rare!...and I love Leonard Cohen too😉!
As they age, on average, for better or for worse, a thin man usually gains weight. 1:11 "Including you too, Mr. John Anthony Samuelson!"
This is by far the weirdest version I've ever heard. His voice, including his audience contact search, come from another dimension. I believe this contemporary document gives an inkling of his magical appearance, the "acid queen"
Historical brilliant free...some of the audience narrow minded. Love the way he is...no one has respect. Pouring it out powerful. I love Bob Dylan 😍♥
A surreal vocal rendition of a surreal song/Poem. Thanks.
Awesome! Love Bob! They didn't know they were watching a legend being born.
Unbelievable GREAT !! thanks 4 that precious piece of him
who looks like this in 1966 - the beatles are a 100 miles behind
I learned a version of this on guitar. It is so challenging trying to get the rhythmic beat down and sing with an edge to the tune. Still working on the flow. Practice, practice and fun!
man, you need The Band with you...then anything goes... somebody always takes over.. and Garth fills in with grace and always humor
they're rude, he's annoyed.they ae too dense to get his wit lol..brilliant
Piggy-218 haha, exactly. He handles them perfectly.
80% of the audience was always with our bobby
He was always poetically jousting with the audience he handled them fairly and came out a winner
Rude plus Bob showed them where it was at take it or leave it
I take it for sure. Take your mouth back. So 😎
2020 on lockdown thanks Bob for this song.🇺🇸🚀
man, that organ is so hot...al kooper? or the band? damn, it's garth hudson from the band...geez, he nailed it...
Garth Hudson...from The Band
garth nails everything, always... the power behind all these thrones
today it`s hard to think people went to see him just to boo him.
im shure they tought they where right, they fought for the righ cause.
missing a historic event completely.😱
this is the song they should have put in that spaceship
Fuckin dickheaded and dumb even dumber than me
WOW! I missed this version somewhere along the way. Check the 1986 version with Tom Petty and the heartbreakers backing him up. Another favorite.
great Bob Dylan forever young
Heart-rending, in retrospect.
How many great musical artists have been heckled in their prime? I guess he was just that good.
The irony is that Bob is on top of his game here. Journalists swarm to get the lucrative interview which commands the most money. The artist gives the truthful answers but knows that the press will twist what they can.The price of fame can be found in deep pockets.
incredible performance.
I 💘 Bob just not taking any s---From anyone good for u you sound on point for that day.
Love your voice.
he's floatin' and I love him like a sister
yeah bob i love you so much my old dude look at you you are so sweet old chap i can t stop you loving each single day more
Epic. I guess they didn't want to trade places with him! philistines. I think he perversely enjoyed the booing & heckling in the early days of the tour, but as it wore on he seemed almost traumatized. nonetheless he reacted to the negativity on stage like a pro.
Olive Eisner spot on. He loved it in late ‘65 and even for some of the ‘66 world tour, maybe he thought it was thrilling. But it took a toll on him.
With the jester on the sidelines in a cast...
@@filthyphillyboy of course
Robbie’s guitar at 1:46...damn. Haunting
I have and always will love BOB DYLAN ljp
in PERFORMANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm chilled to the bone.......say IT!!!!
Damn. Hell of a tune.
Pure magic. Fuel for the fire
Top notch! Peerless.
Mr. Jones was heckling that night. He had to sing this one right then and there.
Just what you’ll say when you get home...
This is fantastic! Bob Dylan is my idol,and his 1966 was,in my opinion,his best and deepest year. Do you have any other song from 27th May Royal Albert Hall concert ?
And the full Edinburgh,Glasgow,Liverpool 1966 concerts? Can't wait,anyway. I think you're the best and you have the real best of Bob! Keep posting,I'll be always here,hahah
Jacopo Pellegrino yes! I have all those concerts, and will definitely upload them. Only can do them one song at a time though to avoid copyright violations. I have more songs from the May 27 concert on the playlist, “Royal Albert Hall, UK 1966,” and I’ll be adding more to it hopefully daily :)
Tell um Bob! See there are people who love you
Dylan recorded "Ballad of a Thin Man" in Studio A of Columbia Records in New York City, located at 799 Seventh Avenue, just north of West 52nd Street[1] on August 2, 1965.[2] Record producer Bob Johnston was in charge of the session, and the backing musicians were Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar, Bobby Gregg on drums, Harvey Goldstein on bass, Al Kooper on organ,[3] and Dylan himself playing piano.[4] Driven by Dylan's sombre piano chords, which contrast with a horror movie organ part played by Al Kooper, this track was described by Kooper as "musically more sophisticated than anything else on the Highway 61 Revisited album."[5]
Kooper has recalled that at the end of the session, when the musicians listened to the playback of the song, drummer Bobby Gregg said, "That is a nasty song, Bob." Kooper adds, "Dylan was the King of the Nasty Song at that time."Dylan's song revolves around the mishaps of a Mr. Jones, who keeps blundering into strange situations, and the more questions he asks, the less the world makes sense to him. Critic Andy Gill called the song "one of Dylan's most unrelenting inquisitions, a furious, sneering, dressing-down of a hapless bourgeois intruder into the hipster world of freaks and weirdoes which Dylan now inhabited."[6]
In August 1965, soon after recording the song, when questioned by Nora Ephron and Susan Edmiston about the identity of Mr. Jones, Dylan was deadpan: "He's a real person. You know him, but not by that name... I saw him come into the room one night and he looked like a camel. He proceeded to put his eyes in his pocket. I asked this guy who he was and he said, 'That's Mr. Jones.' Then I asked this cat, 'Doesn't he do anything but put his eyes in his pocket?' And he told me, 'He puts his nose on the ground.' It's all there, it's a true story."[7] At a press conference in San Francisco in December 1965, Dylan supplied more information about Mr. Jones: "He's a pinboy. He also wears suspenders."[8]
In March 1986, Dylan told his audience in Japan: "This is a song I wrote a while back in response to people who ask me questions all the time. You just get tired of that every once in a while. You just don't want to answer no more questions. I figure a person’s life speaks for itself, right? So, every once in a while you got to do this kind of thing, you got to pomebody in their place... So this is my response to something that happened over in England. I think it was about '63, '64. [sic] Anyway the song still holds up. Seems to be people around still like that. So I still sing it. It's called 'Ballad Of A Thin Man'."[9]
There has been speculation whether Mr. Jones was based on a specific journalist.[6] In 1975, reporter Jeffrey Jones "outed" himself in a Rolling Stone article, describing how he had attempted to interview Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. When Dylan and his entourage later chanced on the hapless reporter in the hotel dining room, Dylan shouted mockingly, "Mr. Jones! Gettin' it all down, Mr. Jones?"[10] When Bill Flanagan asked Dylan, in 1990, whether one reporter could claim all the credit for Mr. Jones, Dylan replied: "There were a lot of Mister Joneses at that time. Obviously there must have been a tremendous amount of them for me to write that particular song. It was like, 'Oh man, here's the thousandth Mister Jones'."[11]
In the John Lennon-penned Beatles song "Yer Blues", Lennon describes the character as feeling "suicidal, just like Dylan's Mr. Jones". Dylan critic Mike Marqusee writes that "Ballad of a Thin Man" can be read as "one of the purest songs of protest ever sung", with its scathing take on "the media, its interest in and inability to comprehend [Dylan] and his music." For Marqusee, the song became the anthem of an in-group, "disgusted by the old, excited by the new... elated by their discovery of others who shared their feelings", with its central refrain "Something is happening here/ But you don't know what it is/ Do you, Mr. Jones?" epitomizing the hip exclusivity of the burgeoning counterculture.[12] Dylan biographer Robert Shelton describes the song's central character, Mr. Jones, as "one of Dylan's greatest archetypes", characterizing him as "a Philistine, a person who does not see... superficially educated and well bred but not very smart about the things that count."[13]
Critic Andy Gill refers to "a fascinating, albeit slightly tenuous, interpretation of the song as 'outing' a homosexual". Gill writes that this interpretation is based upon "the cumulative inference of references" to a series of images in the song: "pen in your hand", "hands you a bone", "contacts among the lumberjacks", "sword swallower", "he clicks his high heels", "he says, 'Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan'", "one-eyed midget" and "give me some milk". Gill is skeptical about this idea which he claims has appeared on internet sites devoted to Dylan's work, and writes that it "is probably more indicative of the pitfalls of interpretation than Dylan’s intention with the song"; he adds that the song "condemns the urge to interpret pruriently that which we don’t immediately understand."[6]
Huey P. Newton and others in the Black Panther Party admired the song, as well as Stokely Carmichael. Newton interpreted the lyrics as being about racism.
Thank you for this
I’m pretty sure it’s Paul Griffin on organ and Kooper on electric piano on the studio cut. There are three keyboards
@@aicdbckmkemcm With Dylan, you don't always have to understand the lyrics to understand the song.
yes but, something is STILL happening,
it's happening withOUT you,
ain't it, Mister Jones
this is aweome to hear, where does it come from, i mean, the recordings? where do they come from?
i saw dylan play this song the second time it was ever performed live, it was at a concert, Hollywood Bowl september 3, 1965, with robbie robertson, al kooper, harvey brooks and levon helm. It was a few days after the Highway 61 Revisited album was released. that audience at the Hollywood Bowl loved him. i didn't know until there was internet, lifetimes later, that he got booed the week before, at Forest Hills august 28, '65. i didn't even know he played at Forest Hills, or Newport either, before the internet. At Forest Hills, some of the people who were mad about the electric/rock music threw bottles and food and drinks at the performers, i have read, and actually violently rushed the stage and knocked kooper off his bench, but dylan kept on playing showing no reaction to it, while security got those people off the stage (according to kooper's autobiography).
i was a little over 16 when we saw him at Hollywood Bowl, it's the only concert i ever went to that i still have the ticket stub for. in those days, people who loved dylan didn't know all the details of what was going on with him the way it became later. He wasn't covered in teen magazines or anything like that. That was back in the days when there was some argument about whether the top 40 AM radio stations could play a song as long as Like a Rolling Stone without a commercial break.
This is amazing!! Thank you for commenting. You still have the Hollywood bowl ticket stub? Do you have a picture by any chance? I’d love to share it with everyone if you’re interested. If not, no problem. As for your question, this recording is from the “1966 Live Recordings” box set.
Swingin’ Pig I have a picture of the stub. How do I post it or where do I send it?
Swingin’ Pig I would LOVE to see that pic!!
Do u know everyone thought bob was singin bout brian jones...stones. i check everything, its was about a publisher same name
A great song lucky one of my favorites I have it on cd . I go around to pawn shops all the time looking for your albums that I don’t have. Get lucky a lot of times and find some of the older albums that I don’t have . I wore out Before the flood album but found an original for two bucks at a yard and it was in excellent condition
Thanks so much for all the music through the years
Your channel is a masterpiece! Stunning, rare videos of the greatest himself! Thank you so much, Swingin’ Pig
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Just subscribed and alerted for more!
you are the best to give me a smiling day thanks ♥♥♥
Aww thank you for listening! Happy holidays :)
Checking in, Bob. Happy Birthday again! Where are you now? Hope you are well and still making music.
This is a fantastic song to play on the piano in a rolling blues style, sliding off the black keys. You got the Am, you drop the A to Ab, then keeping the same C and E, play the F# - then play a Gdim, F7, Dm, F7, E7 and then start the sequence over. You can feel how this chord progression came from House of the Rising Sun.
Dagaan Galakticos actually the studio recording is in B minor and the progression was taken from Ray Charles’ I Believe to My Soul
@@nickrolser Just listened to Ray's song - some similarities but that's basically a 1-4-5 - Thin Man is a long chromatic decent - try my formula against the lyrics. It's got ju ju. I'm sure this progression has been used in something else - maybe classical music. About Rising Sun, I just mean the general feel.
@@DagaanGalakticos i saw bob come home to mpls after his family said you wouldnt make it. They came to see him, he refused. Spollight on left stadge to watch him come out, he came from the right, sat at piano an sang ballad of thin man. True story
He did it his way
@@lindarobison7830 He refused to see his family and then sang Ballad of a THin Man to them?!? Wow. That's commitment eh? Take no prisoners Bob.
Maravilhoso DYLAN.
Outstanding! A Wall of sound million miles ahead !
Beauty & Art/
The real Beauty & Art in flesh & Bones in front of your eyes & ears !
Mozart & Shakespeare linked in a single man/
Arthur Rimbaud Reborn!
Terrific/ Ultimate/
Terrific & Ultimate/
Terrific/Ultimate/ Timeless
Terrific Ultimate & ... Timeless!!!😎😎😎
you said it all
couldn`t say it any better
Let's get a grip here... Mozart & Shakespeare? Hehe. Not even remotely close. But I appreciate your enthusiasm, as I too am a great fan of Dylan. So the challenge - and the responsibility of fans is this - they need to keep things in perspective. Love as we might a particular modern musician, Mozart is still miles ahead. Love as we will a given modern lyric writer, Shakespeare remains as he has for 400+ years - in his own class. Dylan is a very important pop / rock musician; let's not take that from him by comparing him with people who reign in different spheres of art.
Patrick O'Brien
mozart and willy the sheik don‘t need to be defendet but maybe you have to dive deeper in mr. zimmermans world
you might find something and maybe you don‘t know what it is😂
and by the way
mozart and willy where the popstars of they‘r time not more and not less
and yes mozart is what i listen to most of the time and willy my fav poet
All of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books!!!! Amazing blues and rock.
THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS MINT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
'I Contain Multitudes' (Walt Whitman 'Song of Myself, 51') / Bob Dylan in 2020) - the wisened-up antidote to this song - I wonder what had happened if he had sung this in the 1960s to explain what he is about (he had probably not figured it out yet), or recited Whitman's 'Do I contradict myself? // Very well then I contradict myself, // (I am large, I contain multitudes.)' at the 1965 San Francisco Press Conference (on UA-cam), where one senses how uncomfortable he is.
😈O MY GOD AM I HERE ALL ALONE !🥀
LOVE!!
I'm from RI. They practiced this at our auditorium before the went. Freinds said it was great. Met with much criticism in Europe. Called "rubbish". Thet just kept playing the most progressive music of the times!
Es genial en verdad cómo se opone al público al inicio y luego les da esta interpretación, toda una lección
YEAH YOUNG BOB YOU ARE THE BEST
He really gave it his all. A great performance! Some of them didn't get it.
My vanity license plate is : DOUMRJZ
Awesome plate!
Bob is the genius always 🙂
Sooo,glad this drummer (heavey). did the Dylan shows.As good as Bonham.3 years ahead...
Booing for Garth Hudson.. a tear was shed by an angel that day my friends
Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel, his best Band ever, the Band, Levon Helm is missing.
Now we are all made to be wearing a telephone. Wish we didn’t.
What a great tour despite the boos.
Uncle Bobby at his best !
I like to imagine him, at the end of the song, thinking to himself...
"Well, that shut them up!"
YEAH YOUNG BOB YOU WERE THE BEST
The edge you're teetering on can be furtile ground for cultivating art.
Wonderful,as always! What are they shouting at the first?
Jacopo Pellegrino I can’t tell! Kinda distorted, partly because of their accents. If you find out, lemme know!
'Bring all the good stuff back again, it's dreadful'
I don't understand the outrage that he "went electric".
Did no one buy the album?
He had already gone electric.
Those songs would not sound right with just Bob on harmonica and guitar.
I know the folkies claimed him and didn't want to loose him to the rest of the world.
Once Highway 61 Revisited came out they should have realized he was gone, they had to share him with everyone else now.
Me neither. And why did they go to the concert anyway? If they really didn't want to hear anything electric.
They canceled Dylan cause he went from SJW folk songs to pop music, and the SJWs weren’t happy. Like, I’m a liberal, and I understand that dynamic with Dylan & his fans 65-66. It’s no mystery.
Hey.. Pete Seeger chopped the power cable with an axe at Newport.. folk emotions ran high...
deeeeeeep, into the bone
Es un sonido, un sonido que debería estar situado en... no sé... es un sonido... que es algo y es casi todo...
Dylan at his best!
Well, like he says, "there's something happening here and you don't know what it is, do you? "( Mr Audience)??
THIS is the Dylan I want! (say all the huddled masses)
Genius incarnate
Put the right words in the room. Echo wherever it is. Albert Hall. Betta than any others flung in there in a hundred years. Pure scallywag notgotaclue knowseverything same time brilliant, in a setting not worth its salt. It's all in the words. Gold is worth less.
... non of the hecklers could even conceive oft the notion, that his offer to take the speaker's podium fora moment to ' say what-ever you want ", which , imvho it was ...
The Band !!! is The Band...
"If I trade places with you, would you trade places with me?"
Of course we would!
YEAH YOUNG BOB
Grande Guignol
'MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM ME...CAROLE E... SAFE PLACE 4 U 2 LAND...I RESPECT YOUR PRIVACY!'/CE
You people are wonderful beautiful ha ha
Some just don't understand the Bob the Dylan Mr. Jones
The weirdest but most clever song ever
yeah bob
Oh my God I love you Bob what the hell are you high on? Can I have some I can't sleep. LOL
Classic Bob
I wish Zimmy would stop talking about me.
Is this from the entire cd collection of the European tour ?
suffering from a very heavy cold