By Steven Rosen
(this originally ran in the Denver Post in Oct. 17, 1998)

It's 1966 all over again in the world of pop music - and the Denver International Film Festival, which just concluded, was in the center of it.

That's because the record "Bob Dylan Live 1966: The 'Royal Albert Hall' Concert" was just released this week - some 32 years after the performance.

It was instantly hailed as one of rock's great live recordings. And the publicity surrounding the long-delayed release has interested old and young music lovers in the story of how folk singer Dylan switched to amplified rock 'n' roll in 1965 and 1966. He changed pop culture forever.

Actually taped at the Manchester, England, Free Trade Hall on May 17, 1966, the new album reveals Dylan and his band playing majestically loud in response to hecklers who wanted to hear him solo, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and harmonica. In July, after the European tour was over, Dylan was seriously injured in a New York motorcycle accident and for many years retreated from touring.

The story of "Dylan goes electric" has become contemporary myth on the order of Arthur finding Excalibur and becoming king. Now, after all these years during which bootleg tapes circulated among collectors, a wide audience can hear a concert recording from that time.

But few people know there are still two never-released films of Dylan's 1966 European tour, where he and his band members - including Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel of the Hawks - played blistering rock 'n' roll to a sometimes-resistant audience. (Dylan opened shows with an acoustic set.)

But two people who do know about the movies were at this year's Denver film festival - directors D.A. Pennebaker and Harry Rasky. Both were involved, to varying degrees, in trying to make a movie of the tour.

"It is rather strange," Pennebaker said. "You go for a long period of time and there's not much interest in it and you think, 'Well, it's not as great as I thought it was.' And then suddenly something starts it back up."

Pennebaker is one of the pioneers of cinema-verite documentaries. He was in Denver with his wife and filmmaking partner of some 20 years, Chris Hegedus, to show their latest work, "Moon Over Broadway." They also received the festival's John Cassavetes Award.

In 1965, Pennebaker filmed Dylan's solo tour of England, which occurred just before the musician's shift to rock. That movie became the now-classic "Don't Look Back." Dylan called him in early 1966 to help film his upcoming European concerts. Dylan had contracted with ABC to produce a television special about his tour.

"We had a meeting in Los Angeles and Bob said, 'You got your movie and now I want you to help me make mine.' And I said 'sure,'" Pennebaker said.

Dylan's plan, apparently, was to create a film that was both structurally and emotionally confrontational and radical - just like his music of the period. (A spokesman at Dylan's record company said he was unavailable for comment.) But ABC had other ideas, and hired Harry Rasky to be the director.

Rasky, who now produces documentaries for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., was in Denver to show his new "Christopher Plummer: King of Players." He recalled his Dylan '66 experience "one of the great traumas of my life." He had just completed a program on Fidel Castro's Cuba, including a rare Che Guevara interview, when ABC called him.

"It seemed to me they chose me as a free-minded guy," Rasky said. "But the minute Dylan found out I had been asked by ABC to do the film, he thought I was the voice of authority.

"He said, 'OK, you can make the film but I won't listen to direction.' I thought I could ingratiate myself to him. So we all went to London and stayed at the Mayfair Hotel. Dylan said, 'We're going to do things my way'."

After a week, Dylan's manager paid him a full salary to leave. But he did have one unusual experience - attending a private late-night screening of "Don't Look Back" with Dylan and the Beatles. When it was over, he said, he discovered the Beatles asleep.

Once the tour began and filming started, Pennebaker recalled, Dylan intentionally tried to keep people around him on edge.

"He was getting a big pot boiling, with everybody kind of at odds and uncertain and confused and even a little... (annoyed) and then film that condition in various ways," Pennebaker said.

"It's a way for people who aren't filmmakers but are consummate dramatists in one way or another to create a kind of scene for a film," he said. "They're not writing; writing scenes is an art in itself. So Bob just simply said, 'I'll get a lot of people together and we'll see what happens'."

Pennebaker, who, along with Howard Alk, was filming selected concert dates, doesn't recall crowd response because he was watching the musicians. "The music was wonderful," he said. "They were some of the best concerts I ever shot. It was wondrous. And I was taken up with how to film them."

In particular, he wanted to get close - right on stage, if necessary - to film the musicians. "Dylan and Robbie (guitarist Robertson) really were into it, and cut themselves off from everything else, as if they weren't even aware there was an audience there. It was an amazing thing to watch.

"Always up to that point, when Dylan would go out acoustic, he was completely aware of the audience - he dominated that audience," he said. "He almost dared them to make a noise or get out of line. And in this case, it was as if he didn't... (care) what they were doing or thinking. And in order to get that, I began to think we couldn't film that with long lenses.

"I had to get out on stage, put a wide angle lens on the camera and get into it, myself. That was a big decision. It meant the first time Dylan came out on stage and I was standing there with a camera, he almost flipped. He laughed because he hadn't expected it, but it made it possible to get the kind of performance we couldn't otherwise get."

In June, after the tour concluded, Pennebaker said, Dylan's management found itself with no movie and facing an ABC deadline. So at management's request, Pennebaker edited his footage into a 45-50 minute "rough sketch" called "You Know Something Is Happening." (The title comes from a phrase in a Dylan song.)

"It would be like a continuation of 'Don't Look Back',"Pennebaker said. "'Don't Look Back 2' - what happened when the electricity was turned on."

But Dylan didn't like it and, with Alk, used different tour footage to construct his own anti-documentary called "Eat the Document." ABC rejected it, and both movies have been more or less forgotten.

But with the release of the new record, there has also been a revival of interest in "Eat the Document." The Museum of Television & Radio branches in New York and Los Angeles are holding special screenings of the film. There are no plans, however, to make "Something Is Happening" available.

Rasky meanwhile said he still regrets not having the chance to help Dylan make the kind of film he wanted - one that explores a highly regarded, singer-songwriter's personality and relationship to his audience while also featuring music.

"But I made it up a few years later by making that film with Leonard Cohen -- 'The Song of Leonard Cohen,"' he said.

That, too, has remained virtually unseen seen since its Canadian TV broadcast.

Steven Rosen's e-mail address is srosenone@aol.com