'We never did capture that sound on stage--the Blonde On Blonde sound; we never did capture the Highway 61 sound on stage. What we did on stage was something different that we never recorded.'--Bob Dylan, November 1978. In JUDAS!, world-renowned Bob Dylan expert and musicologist Clinton Heylin combines fast-paced narrative with forensic detective work to lift the lid on the incredible music Dylan and his backing group, The Hawks (soon to become known as The Band), made on stage--and on record--during 1965-66. The book opens the day after Dylan's epochal performance at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965--site of the electric guitar shot heard around the world--as he prepares for his show at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York, and ends the following May at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England, at the close of his whirlwind four-month World Tour 1966. In between times, Dylan finished one masterpiece--his first fully fledged 'rock' album, Highway 61 Revisited--and then moved straight on to the next, the landmark double-album Blonde On Blonde. Crucially, however, he and his Hawks also unveiled a parallel sound on stage, ushering forth a cavalcade of ferric ferocity that would bring about a seismic shift in the sound of both Dylan's music and that of rock music in general. At the time, only a single tantalizing burst was issued on record--a live recording of 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues', released as a B-side mere weeks after it was captured on stage in Liverpool.

Now, Heylin goes deep into the Dylan vaults to dissect every known recording from that period--and then some. 'Every night was like goin' for broke--like the end of the world,' Dylan said in 1987. Let JUDAS! be your guide.