“I felt transported to this place that reminded me of floating and thoughts and poetry and the absurd,” said Cat Power (Chan Marshall) upon first hearing pieces of Bob Dylan’s iconic 1966 Royal Albert Hall performance in his 1991 documentary Don’t Look Back.
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Still captivated by Dylan’s pivotal set, Marshall pulled together her own rendition of the entire concert on Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert, out November 10.
Originally recorded by Dylan at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester on May 17, 1966, the recording was mistakenly mislabeled “Royal Albert Hall” on a bootleg at the time and stuck. Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert is an ode to Dylan and a revival of some of his most revered songs.
Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall on November 5, 2022, Marshall recreates Dylan’s 15-song set—which saw him switching from acoustic to electric guitar mid-way through—song-for-song.
“More than the work of any other songwriter, Dylan’s songs have spoken to me, and inspired me since I first began hearing them at 5 years old,” said Marshall in a statement, who opens just as Dylan did with her hypnotic version of “She Belongs to Me.” The song was originally released on Dylan’s 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home, which was his first transition into electric instrumentation, a shift that also ended up getting him booed a year earlier at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
“When singing ‘She Belongs To Me’ in the past, sometimes I turned it into a first-person narrative,” said Marshall. “‘I am an artist, I don’t look back.’ I really identified with it like that, but for the show at Royal Albert Hall, I, of course, sang it the way it was originally written, with the respect for the composition and the great composer.”
Marshall also offers a more soulful rendition of “Ballad of a Thin Man,” from Dylan’s second ’65 album Highway 61 Revisited. Mimicking the original recording when an audience member calls Dylan “Judas”—Marshall responds with “Jesus” instead of Dylan’s then-reaction “You’re a liar.”
“It was something impulsive,” said Marshall. “I wasn’t expecting the audience to recreate their part of the original show as well, but then I wanted to set the record straight, in a way, Dylan is a deity to all of us who write songs.”
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She added, “I had and still have such respect for the man who crafted so many songs that helped develop conscious thinking in millions of people, helped shape the way they see the world. So even though my hands were shaking so much I had to keep them in my pockets, I felt real dignity for myself. It felt like a real honor for me to stand there.”
For Marshall, her love of Dylan started long before her introduction to one of his most career-shifting concerts. “I felt pretty alone when I was young — when he was running around being a rockstar and stuff,” said Marshall. “I wasn’t a rockstar, but just knowing that someone was kind of scuzzy, and writing his own shit and saying what he wanted to say and doing his own thing, that was that peer thing he gave people. He narrated and was able to articulate people’s points of view during a time of mass confusion and that confusion is the thread of our social constructs.”
Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert Track List:
“She Belongs To Me”
“Fourth Time Around”
“Visions Of Johanna”
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
“Desolation Row”
“Just Like A Woman”
“Mr. Tambourine Man”
“Tell Me, Momma”
“I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)”
“Baby, Let Me Follow You Down”
“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”
“Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”
“One Too Many Mornings”
“Ballad Of A Thin Man”
“Like A Rolling Stone”
Photo: Photo: Inez & Vinoodh / Courtesy of Big Hassle
