Bob Dylan - Desolation Row - Live at Forest Hills 1965 [DEBUT PERFORMANCE]

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Since I do not profit from these videos, I rely on donations to keep this channel running. Please consider subscribing to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/swinginpig. The full, unedited recordings will be uploaded there, as well as lossless versions of these remixes.

My next project is remastering the 1965 Forest Hills Tennis Stadium recording. Forest Hills '65 is considered by many to be Dylan's best-ever concert. Ironically, the infamous audience tape that exists is considered to be one of the worst-sounding bootleg tapes in circulation. For years, all fans had was a hissy, muddy, barely comprehensible mess of a recording.

In 2015, this concert was re-transferred by Columbia and subsequently released on the hyper-exclusive The Bootleg Series Vol. 12 Collector's Edition. Although this new re-transfer was miles better than the original bootleg, there were still two problems with re-transfer: 1. There was a significant low, oscillating noise on the tape, which I assume to be some sort of tape bleed. 2. They omitted all of Dylan's stage banter and audience reactions from the tape. So, my goal is to remove the noise and splice in the missing sections of the concert.

This concert itself was absolutely wild. If I could go back in time to see any Dylan moment, it would be this. Even with this low-fi recording, you can hear electricity in the air. Most of the concert photos show Dylan's hair flapping about madly; he looks like he's about to blow away. You can hear the whistling of the wind in the microphone. The audience was cheering, laughing, responding, and booing during the electric set (this was Dylan's first show with a complete electric set). Dylan's voice is sharp and assured. The conditions were perfect for a career-defining concert.

Photographer Daniel Kramer, who accompanied Dylan to the Forest Hills concert, wrote: "Dylan held a conference with the musicians who were going to accompany him in the second half of the concert. He told them that they should expect anything to happen—he probably was remembering what occurred at Newport. He told them that the audience might yell and boo and that they should not be bothered by it. Their job was to make the best music they were capable of, and let whatever happened happen."

Dylan ended up loving the show. When keyboardist Al Kooper and bassist Harvey Brooks arrived at the after-party, Dylan bounded across the room and hugged them. "It was fantastic", Dylan said, "a real carnival."

This version of "Desolation Row" is the first time it was played in concert. Acclaimed music critic Robert Shelton, who was present at the concert, captured this historical moment quite well: "Among them was a major new work, 'Desolation Road,' a long work filled with the incongruities of black humor and macabre imagery. The song, another of Mr. Dylan’s musical Rohrshachs capable of widely varied interpretation, ranged freely from Cinderella to T.S. Eliot to 'Einstein disguised as Robin Hood.' It can best be characterized as a 'folk song of the absurd.'"

This video displays all of the acoustic set photographs that exist of the Forest Hills concert, taken by Ken Regan.

Love & Peace,
~SP