Bob Dylan is coming to Manchester later this year playing two shows at Manchester’s Apollo theatre.
The singer will play six shows in total in the UK beginning with three consecutive nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall from October 21 to 23. He will then head to Manchester’s O2 Apollo for shows on October 28 and 27 before bringing the short tour to a close with a date at Cardiff’s Motorpoint Arena on October 29
The seventy four year old in no stranger to the city. His most famous appearance was on May 17, 1966, the night that Keith Butler stood up in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall and lambasted Bob Dylan with a single word heard round the world: “Judas only for Dylan’s contemptuous response “You’re a liar!”
The shout was Butler’s response to the onetime folk singer’s controversial foray into electric rock music which the folk purists had shunned.
Beginning with Bringing It All Back Home the previous year, Dylan had released a trio of albums grounded heavily in electric instruments. When he first brought the sound to American audiences at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he was booed. When he took the tour worldwide, his audiences went from being unhappy to labeling him a traitor to the folk movement.
The show in Manchester began with an acoustic set, but when he brought out the electric Hawks (soon to change their name to the Band) for the second set, the crowd turned on him. At several points, many of the 2,000 concert-goers clapped slowly and defiantly to show their displeasure and shake Dylan from his game.
Finally, during a period of silence after “Ballad of a Thin Man,” Butler shouted his invective.“Judas!” he cried. “I don’t believe you,” the singer spat back. “You’re a liar!”
Some critics argue it was the making of Dylan while according to the Guardian’s Alexis Patrides,
“The most lasting effect of the whole controversy was not on Dylan, but on folk revivalism itself, which, ever after, was doomed to be labelled a bit fusty, boring and uncool by onlookers: the price you pay for trying to stop progress.”
Bob Dylan released his new album ‘Shadows In The Night’ in February. His 36th studio album, the record hit Number One in the UK charts and featured a range of jazz standards covered by the singer, including tracks originally made famous by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Frankie Laine.
