The Bob Dylan World Tour 1966 was a concert tour undertaken by American musician Bob Dylan, from February to May 1966. Dylan's 1966 World Tour was notable as the first tour where Dylan employed an electric band backing him, following him "going electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The musicians Dylan employed as his backing band were known as the Hawks, who later became famous as the Band.
Photographer Barry Feinstein (who had shot the cover of Dylan's album The Times They Are a-Changin’ in 1964) accompanied Dylan on the UK leg of the tour at the musician's behest to document the tour, both onstage and off.
The 1966 tour was also filmed by director D. A. Pennebaker, and the film was edited by Dylan and Howard Alk to produce a little-seen film, Eat the Document, an anarchic account of the tour. Drummer Mickey Jones also filmed the tour with an 8mm home movie camera.
Many of the 1966 tour concerts were audio recorded by Columbia Records. These recordings produced two official albums: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert, which was actually recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall and in 2016, The Real Royal Albert Hall Concert, as well as The 1966 Live Recordings, a 36 CD box set of every recorded concert from the 1966 tour. There are also many unofficial bootleg recordings of the tour.
The last show of the tour was on May 27, 1966 at the Royal Albert Hall, and after withdrawing from the public eye and relocating to Woodstock because of a motorcycle accident he suffered on July 29 of the same year, it would be his last show on a major tour until 1974,
Tour
Finding The Band
As Dylan finished the sessions for his 1965 "Positively 4th Street" single, he wanted to reproduce on-stage the same sound that he had polished in the studio. He soon began to gather a backing band with several musicians, such as bassist Harvey Brooks and organist Al Kooper, whom he had played with during the sessions for Highway 61 Revisited. However, the bulk of the players came from Ronnie Hawkins' former backing group, Levon and the Hawks. They impressed Dylan when he saw them play in Toronto, at the direction of Albert Grossman's staffer, Mary Martin, who told him to visit the group at Le Coq d'Or Tavern, a Yonge Street club. (Robbie Robertson recalled that it was the Friar's Tavern, a nearby establishment.) An alternate version of the first meeting, put forward by Williamson, suggests that he saw them in a Jersey Shore club. Drummer Levon Helm and guitarist Robbie Robertson were quickly invited to join Dylan's backing group. After only two shows into the initial tour in North America, Kooper left the band due to stress and safety concerns, and he and Brooks were promptly replaced by the remaining Hawks (bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel and organist Garth Hudson). Drummer Levon Helm, too, disillusioned by the constantly hostile reception from audiences, jumped ship in November, getting replaced by session drummer Bobby Gregg. Gregg eventually left the band as the tour progressed, and Sandy Konikoff replaced him on drums, who left the tour when Dylan traveled to Australia. Former Johnny Rivers drummer Mickey Jones remained with the band throughout the rest of the tour.
Background
Dylan and his backing group gave concerts sporadically throughout the United States and Canada while the initial sessions for Blonde on Blonde were being recorded. Sometime in September 1965, Dylan and the Band embarked to Woodstock, New York to rehearse the songs they would be performing on the tour. Several songs, such as "Maggie's Farm", "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" and "It Ain't Me Babe" were dropped from the tour's set list as they embarked to different locations.
The first leg of the tour took place in North America, but by now both Kooper and Helm had left the band. The initial sessions with the Band for Blonde on Blonde, proved unproductive, with only two tracks good enough to be released ("Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"). Dylan soon began recording in Nashville, Tennessee with a new lineup of studio musicians. By April, Dylan had finished the sessions for Blonde on Blonde, and continued the tour outside of North America.