Watch rare footage of Bob Dylan’s 25th birthday party, 1966
On May 16th, 1966, Bob Dylan released Blonde on Blonde. Though today regarded as one of his finest accomplishments, at the time, it was met with contempt by many of the singer-songwriter’s original fans. Shortly after the infamous ‘Judas’ concert at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, he turned 25 years old just over a week later. Here, you can see footage of his birthday celebrations alongside other snippets from that historic tour.
By 1966 Dylan had gone from being the darling of America’s folk revivalists to one of the most divisive figures in music, not because of anything he said but because of what he did. Having turned fully electric, he was suddenly regarded as a turncoat, an antagonist to the supposedly authentic, pastoral world the folkies were trying so desperately to build.
Things came to a head in Manchester, where, during a silence between songs, someone in the crowd yelled ‘Judas!’, to which Dylan simply said: “I don’t believe you,” and instructed his band to “play it fuckin’ loud”.
Walkouts were common, but perhaps not as common as the papers made out. In Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home documentary, Dylan can be seen discussing the atmosphere of his shows: “They’re all so quiet. I’ll play four or five songs, and they just don’t make a sound – I’ll just hear ‘boooo.'” As a member of Dylan’s crew goes on to note, the papers’ description of these shows wasn’t always entirely accurate, with some papers claiming that everyone, every single ticket-holder walked out,” which simply wasn’t true.
What was true, however, was that Dylan was in the process of alienating his fanbase. It was an essential watershed moment that cut Dylan adrift from his early days as America’s prince of protest, allowing him a much-needed dose of creative freedom. It’s unsurprising that such a change came as he approached his 25th Birthday.
One wonders if Dylan had started to feel the infantilising impulse of his folkie fanbase, many of whom wanted to preserve the singer in a state of perpetual purity so that he would always be their darling, their golden child, their Dylan.
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