Judas! From Forest Hills To The Free Trade Hall: A Historical View Of The Big Boo

Clinton Heylin ROUTE, £14.99

Even more Dylan circa ’65-66?

Stifle any yawns: veteran Bob-writer Heylin deservedly got the job of writing the linernotes for 2016’s vast 1966 box set, and this forensic look at the period forever embodied by all that booing turns out to be a complementary delight. Everything is explained: the initial pattern of anti-electric rancour when Dylan toured North America (bad in Toronto, not an issue in Texas); the evolution of the music he played with The Band; and the fact that in the UK, he kept getting the wrong drugs (heroin instead of Moroccan kif, apparently). Heylin’s florid prose style sometimes grates, but his source material usually cuts through – as evidenced by a report from Pasadena in December ’65. “People started getting up and leaving,” says an unnamed witness. “They didn’t dig the ELECTRICITY. What a bunch of chumps, because Dylan and his group were ROCKING.”