Bob Dylan just announced his first shows at London’s Royal Festival Hall since 1964! Inspired by that, I’ve dusted off a draft I started a while back, looking at a similarly-named iconic London venue he’s played much more often…
The Royal Albert Hall looms larger in Bob Dylan lore than it perhaps should. As you may already know, his most famous “Royal Albert Hall” show did not, in fact, take place at the Royal Albert Hall. Fans misattributed the famous “Judas” show to the wrong location for years, when in fact it took place in Manchester. The fourth Bootleg Series was even titled Live 1966, The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert—that’s why “Royal Albert Hall” is in quotes. They should have subtitled it The Manchester Free Trade Hall concert, but that’s not how most fans knew Dylan’s most famous show.
When I went to research this, I also discovered he’s played the Royal Albert Hall fewer times than I expected. I’d considered it the UK’s equivalent to the Beacon Theatre for Dylan, but he’s played the Beacon 47 times and the Royal Albert Hall just 15. Not even close. It’s not even the venue he’s played the most in London; that would be the Hammersmith Odeon (now the Hammersmith Apollo), primarily due to several long residencies there in the early 1990s.
This is not a knock at the iconic venue—I went there in 2024, and it’s truly stunning. Just a note that I’d associated it more with Bob than I maybe should have. He’s played Vorst Nationaal in Brussels as many times as he’s played the Royal Albert Hall, and I’ve never heard anyone waxing rhapsodic about whatever that is.
In fact, Dylan has visited the Royal Albert Hall on just five occasions. Interestingly, every single visit was for a residency, at least a short one. He has never played a single stand-alone show at the venue. Two nights minimum every time. Even the Beacon had a one-off the last time he played it. The Beacon, though, he didn’t play until 1989 (surprising, right?). Dylan’s Royal Albert Hall run started all the way back in…
1965 — May 9, 10
In 1965, on the tour we all know from Dont Look Back, Dylan played two shows at the Royal Albert Hall. The day before the first show, outside the Savoy Hotel a couple miles away, he filmed a short video to include in the movie. Perhaps you’ve seen it before:
It’s an amazing juxtaposition comparing that clip to the songs he played the following night. You’d never know he already had “Subterranean Homesick Blues” in the can. This is Bob’s final solo-acoustic tour, and most of the songs he plays come from his solo-acoustic repertoire. He’s already “gone electric”—Bringing It All Back Home came out the month before these shows—but his shows won’t reflect that fact until the summer. To the fans attending these shows, the first half of that album might have felt like a studio lark. Okay, he tried something weird with his latest album, but clearly that’s not the real Bob Dylan. The real Bob Dylan is still up there, alone in the spotlight, strumming on his acoustic guitar, singing “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “With God on Our Side.”
Backstage though, he was pushing forward. This clip from Dont Look Back was filmed in the Royal Albert Hall green room:
In the crowd for the first show: All four members of The Beatles, who would famously name-check the venue a couple years later (“now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall”). As author Jim Windolf details in his excellent new book Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other―and the World, the Fab Four filmed a scene for their movie Help! during the day, then headed to the show.
Afterwards, all four Beatles went back with Dylan to his hotel, the Savoy. Windolf reports a conversation from the Dont Look Back outtakes. “Lovely gig, man,” Lennon tells Dylan. “They didn’t dig ‘It’s Alright, Ma,’ ” says Dylan. “Maybe they didn’t get it,” John responds. “It’s the price of being ahead of your time.”
Dylan retorts: “Maybe, but I’m only twenty minutes ahead, so I won’t get far.”
1966 — May 26, 27
The following year, Dylan returned to the Royal Albert Hall for another two shows, again in May. Anyone expecting more of what they’d seen the previous year would have been quite surprised. Though these weren’t, as people long believed, the “Judas” shows, they were plenty confrontational.
Dylan, for once, tried to turn down the temperature. In one of several long, rambling monologues the second night, he tells the audience, “I realize it’s loud music but if you don’t like it, well, that’s fine.” He added later, “You can take it or leave it. It doesn’t matter to me, it really doesn’t. I love you all.”
It didn’t work. Boos mixed with applause throughout. Documentarian D.A. Pennebaker recalled later, “Albert Hall was the wildest. People were really shouting at him and he was screaming back.” It’s more like drawling back, not screaming, but the point stands. “You’re talking to the wrong person, man,” he tells the crowd after someone shouts during his “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” song intro. “I’m the last person in the world to explain any of these songs, but I wanna do this because this is the last concert here. You don’t want me to do it, just say so, I won’t, I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. We’ll just play the music and leave. And you and you and you can just go out and read some books.”
Then he does actually shout, as the band starts playing: “Read J.D. Salinger!”
Once again, on hand were the four Beatles. In fact, the morning after Dylan’s first show is when the famous scene of Dylan and Lennon in the back of the car was filmed:
The Beatles attended the second show, where they reportedly shouted back at the hecklers. Windolf quotes George Harrison as saying later, “The people who walked out must have been idiots, and they couldn’t have known the real Dylan. It was all still pure Dylan.”
2013 — Nov 26, 27, 28
That 1966 was Dylan’s last concert for a few years. But, amazingly, it was last Royal Albert Hall concert for 47 years! He did not return until 2013.
This time, he played three nights, not two. He was touring Tempest, so that album features heavily, and this was the first year of The Set so the three setlists look very similar. With one major exception.
Usually that tour, he ended the show with “Blowin’ in the Wind.” But, to close opening night, he busted out something else, a song that ties closely into his history at the venue: “Roll On John,” his song for John Lennon. It was the second and last time he ever played it.
2015 — Oct 21, 22, 23, 24, 25
Bob didn’t wait 47 more years to return. In 2015, he returned for his longest stand to date, five consecutive nights. He played mostly the same setlist every night, with the exception of swapping around the Sinatra song in slot #13: “The Night We Called It a Day,” “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” and “Where Are You” in its final performance.
In this pre-Yondr era, there are some great videos from this show. Here’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” one of only two 1960s songs he played at these 2015 shows (the other was “She Belongs to Me,” first performed on that same stage 50 years earlier):
2024 — Nov 12, 13, 14
Dylan’s final Royal Albert Hall shows to date took place in 2024—and I was at all three! Here’s how I began my first recap: “After three years, the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour comes to an end this week at the Royal Albert Hall.”
Whoops.
The three it-turns-out-not-final Rough and Rowdy Ways shows were great though. Quoting myself (sorry not sorry), here are some memorable moments from each show:
What I didn’t fully comprehend until walking in through the doors is that, history aside, the Royal Albert Hall is a really cool venue! It could have been built yesterday and it would still be an amazing place to see a show. For any fellow ignoramuses like myself who don’t already know about the setup, it’s built like a tuna can. As you can see in the crew photo up top, it’s essentially in-the-round, with the band at one side of the floor and high vertically-stacked balconies in a big circle all around. Including, unusually for Dylan, fans seated behind him, in what they call the choir section. So there’s none of the usual Rough and Rowdy drapery. Instead, you see both people and that majestic blue-grey organ. Hell of a backdrop. If only they let you take photos.
“Black Rider” seems to be especially haunted this week. Both nights, right at the start, some woman started shrieking. The first night, what initially sounded like peels of joy—the world’s biggest “Black Rider” fan?—kept going far too long and she was quietly escorted out. A mental health episode, many guessed, and felt sympathy. But then last night, again right at the start of “Black Rider,” another woman (the same woman?) started screaming. Actual words this time—though, if it was some sort of statement, the fact that no one could make out what she was saying undercut her message. She also evaded security, running around through the chorus section in the high balcony while staff chased after her. I laughed at Bob singing “I’ll suffer in silence, I’ll not make a sound” while this woman is yelling at the top of her lungs. She was eventually hustled out at the end of the song. It distracted everyone in the room, including, seemingly, Bob himself, who made some comment to Bob Britt after.
The moment that will stick with me most happened before a single note was sung. The band entered first and started playing the “Watchtower” intro, then Bob walked out a few seconds later. The roar the crowd gave upon his arrival was louder than anything I’d heard this whole week. Maybe louder than anything I’ve ever heard at a Dylan show. Even the word “roar” seems to undersell it. It was more like an explosion of appreciation. Whether he was going to acknowledge the occasion or not, everyone in that room knew what this night was.
Again: Wrong! But everyone thought they knew what this night was—the final show of this monumental three-year tour—and that’s what the crowd responded to. That roar remains a moving memory, even if it actually wasn’t the last night of anything.
Was that Bob Dylan’s last show ever at the Royal Albert Hall though? We’ll see! I mean, no one counted on him returning to the Royal Festival Hall after 62 years away, but this December, he is. And I’ll be there!