May 17, 1966

Today saw one of the most notorious incidents in music – but not everything that was supposed to have happened occurred the way we’ve been led to believe. Bob Dylan had recently turned “electric” and added rock and roll instruments to his folk music. Heretic! - according to folk purists. Audiences had given Dylan and his band such a hard time drummer Levon Helm decided he couldn’t go on and dropped out before their Australian dates. Now Dylan was playing England, specifically Manchester.

This was the day an audience member famously yelled out “Judas.”

LIAR

It happened just before Dylan and the Hawks were going to play his “rock” piece de resistance  ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. Not every audience on that tour was hostile. This one was. But catcalls and slow hand-claps were easily drowned out by the barrage of sound from the PA system. However, in the moment before ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ a voice rang out with the accusation “Judas.” 

Years later he was identified as Keith Butler, a student. Bob Dylan was ready. He answered with ‘I don’t believe you, you’re a liar’. Then Dylan turned to the band. The way Martin Scorsese deliberately portrays it in his Dylan doco, No Direction Home – he never let fact get in the way of a good story - Dylan tells guitarist Robbie Robertson to “Play it f***ing loud”. And they do. Drummer Mickey Jones, who had replaced Levon Helm remembers it differently. Before Scorsese manipulates the sound and vision to come up with his version, for 30 years it was Mickey who people thought said it. The drummer says it wasn’t him either, but one of the road crew, seizing the moment and sticking up for band.