The First Waltz
On this day in 1965, Dylan and the Band, as they would be called, took the Austin scene from folk to rock
Though the British Invasion of ’63 and ’64 had a big impact on frat party bands like Sweetarts, Baby Cakes, and the Chevelles, “the Sixties” didn’t really start in Austin until September 24, 1965, when Bob Dylan brought his new rock sound to Municipal Auditorium, backed by four Canadians and a drummer from Arkansas. Austin was the first city in which Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson—later known as The Band—shared a stage with a twenty-four-year-old Dylan, making his Texas debut.
The first set at Municipal was solo acoustic, including “Gates of Eden,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “Desolation Row,” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” After a short break, Bob returned with the band and launched into a loud, biting “Tombstone Blues,” followed by “Baby Let Me Follow You Down,” “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “Maggie’s Farm,” “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” and the big hit at the time, “Like a Rolling Stone.”
That’s how Austin music segued in the ’60s, when folk gave way to rock n’ roll. In the audience, separately, were Roky Erickson and Tommy Hall, soon to be the voice and vision of the 13th Floor Elevators. Also on hand were the four men who would open the Vulcan Gas Company on Congress Avenue in October 1967.
“It was so in-your-face,” show promoter Angus Wynne recalled of Dylan’s electric segment. “You couldn’t really understand the words—quality concert sound systems were nonexistent back then—but you could feel the energy. It was like being knocked over by this huge burst of sound.”
On the cusp between the beatniks and the hippies, Dylan and the Band were playing a precursor to what would later be called punk rock.
Gilbert Shelton, the future Vulcan art director (and Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers creator) who was then a student at the UT, met Dylan and the band, which he could tell “had recently joined Dylan because they still had their Canadian haircuts and clothes,” at the Villa Capri Motor Hotel on Red River Street the night before the concert.
In an account printed in the November ’65 edition of Texas Ranger magazine, Shelton describes a crazy scene of “go-go girls” from Dallas who just wanted to touch Dylan. Shelton recalled “the chief go-go girl” sitting on the couch with Dylan, the pair deep in conversation. That was Maggie Cowart. “Someone took me there, said I had to meet Bob Dylan,” said Cowart, now a grandmother living in East Texas. “When I was in high school we used to go to the beatnik club in Fort Worth, and listening to Bob was like going to that club. He had something to say about the war, the culture we were in and music. It was entertaining, to say the least.” Dylan offered a ticket to the show, but Maggie wasn’t really a folk music fan and had to dance at Le Lollipop. “I was really sorry I didn’t go when I heard he played with a rock band.”
Earlier on the day of the show, a press conference was held, with about eight reporters, most from college newspapers, firing off questions that Dylan answered in his surreal, shotgun style. “Do you believe in God?” a journalist from Baylor asked. “First of all, God’s a woman,” answered Dylan. “We all know that, and you can take it from there.” Jim Langdon from the Statesman brought some substance to the inanity when he asked Dylan about the change in style from Woody Guthrie-like ballads to a rock group sound. “It just came natural,” said Dylan. “I wish I could still write like ‘Girl From the North Country,’ but I can’t write like that anymore.”
Twenty-one-year-old Wynne had decided to try to book Dylan in Austin and Dallas after repeatedly hearing “Like a Rolling Stone” on the radio after its July 20, 1965 release. “I looked at the back of a Dylan album and it said he was managed by Albert Grossman, so I called information in New York and got the number,” Wynne recalled. “When I called and made my pitch, someone yelled to the other room, ‘Hey, do you want to go play in Texas?’ and someone yelled back ‘Yeah, sure.’” That’s how things went, back in the days before big-scale national tours.
Dylan’s organ player Al Kooper opted out of the band when he saw Dallas on the schedule. “Just a few short years ago they had killed the president of the United States,” Kooper said in an interview. “And I figured well, what chance does Bob Dylan have there? I don't think I want to be sitting just to the right of him.” Kooper was going to get sacked anyway.
Dylan had met the Band when they were called the Hawks (from backing Ronnie Hawkins), through John Hammond Jr., whose father had signed Dylan to Columbia. He hired guitarist Robertson and drummer Helm to play concerts in Forest Hills, N.Y., and the Hollywood Bowl that would showcase songs from the new album. Those shows were met with scattered boos from folk purists who felt their golden child was selling out, but they weren’t as bad as at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965, when Dylan had come out blazing, backed by the earsplitting Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Those betrayed folkies weren’t yelling “Bruce!”
Dylan returned to the stage by himself after the electric carnage and sang “Mr. Tambourine” by request. Then he did “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” his kiss-off song to an easy past.
The Austin show with the players who would later be called the Band was the first time Dylan did an electric set and nobody booed. His new sound got the same respect the next night in Dallas. At the end of that concert at SMU, Dylan was walking offstage when he suddenly whirled around, and said into the mic, “I think Texas audiences—in Austin and Dallas—are the best.”
Just 10 days after the Austin show, Dylan took the Band into the studio to begin recording Blonde On Blonde with producer Bob Johnston, though none of those initial sessions made the album.
In the audience at the Austin show was Dylan’s Greenwich Village contemporary Carolyn Hester, who had hired Dylan to play harmonica on her 1962 Columbia debut. She’s the one who introduced him to John Hammond! “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him do a better concert,” she told John Bustin of the Statesman.
Austin native Hester, who grew up near 38th and Duval Streets, played the second-ever concert at the $3 million Municipal Auditorium in January 1959, opening for Gene Vincent, on a big support bill of local acts. Carolyn wasn’t billed, though her brother Dean was. The previous night, Conway Twitty supported Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy in front of a sellout crowd at the Auditorium, which would be renamed Palmer Auditorium in 1981.
The sponsoring Civitan Club Teen Canteen, was created to provide safe, wholesome environments for young rock n’ rollers at three locations: an armory at Camp Mabry, Doris Miller Auditorium in East Austin, and a building on Toomey Road in South Austin. Teens were required to sign in and sign out of the record hops, whose chaperones would also patrol the parking lots for necking kids.
There’s no evidence Gene Vincent ever played Doris Miller, but the local acts might have. It’s worth noting that Vincent was a huge influence on Bob Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minn., who used to sing his song “Baby Blue” in a high school rock band.
A Donovan-crushing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” is one of the highlights of Don’t Look Back, D.A. Pennebacker’s documentary of Dylan’s May ‘65 tour of England. The next year he and Robbie and company (sans Levon) would conclude his first electric tour at the famous Royal Albert Hall concert that was bootlegged to death. Then came the motorcycle accident and the informal 1967 sessions that would produce The Basement Tapes.
When Dylan toured again, in 1974, his backing group was The Band, no longer anonymous sidemen with Canadian haircuts, but artistic peers. They performed “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down” alongside Dylan classics no longer burdened with acoustic/electric distinctions.
I remember this concert. Was in the balcony section. The Band was all dressed in black leather. And yeah, it was pretty loud.
Excellent, Michael! You really put it all together in this one.