Who said judas to bob dylan

These days, everyone roars with the recognition of the first line. It never happened then. You didn't dare miss a second of it. Lee remembers people in the intermission "breathing a sigh of relief and I heard somebody say 'oh, he's seen sense. He's not going to use the band, he's realised he's wrong'. Little did they know what was to come. Returning for the second half, Lee says drummer Mickey Jones "blasted into Tell Me, Momma [and] it was the loudest thing I'd ever heard".

He says that at the end of that first number, "people were bewildered, shell-shocked even", but shortly after, the protests began. Groups of people were standing up, facing the stage accusingly and then walking out.

And then there was a shout from the circle - "Judas". Lee says the heckle stung Dylan "to the quick". You can really see that he has rankled Dylan. It was an incredibly antagonistic moment. Lee says Dylan then stepped away from the microphone, swore as he told the band to "play it loud" and they "lurched into Like A Rolling Stone, which was this giant juggernaut".

Makin saw what happened in that second half differently. Makin points to a problem with the sound as the reason for the abuse Dylan received, an issue which it has also been claimed was behind the discord in Newport too. I think that was what hurt people.

It is not known whether it was the electric set or the sound quality that vexed the famous heckler - in fact, as Lee explains, it is not even known for certain who shouted. I guess I'd heard Dylan was playing electrically, but my preconceptions of that were of something a little more restrained, perhaps a couple of guitarists sitting in with him, not a large-scale electric invasion.

But Dylan had had five electric hits in the UK by May Why should anyone have been surprised or outraged that he would be playing electrically? But he'd had a huge hit with "Like A Rolling Stone" fully one year before But certainly that wasn't the Dylan I focused on. Maybe I was just living in the past. And I couldn't hear the lyrics in the second half of the concert [the electric set with the band]. I think that's what angered me. I thought, 'The man is throwing away the good part of what he does.

Had Cordwell come at this from a folk music background? Were others voicing their displeasure? I think I was probably being egged on. I certainly got a lot of positive encouragement as soon as I'd done it.

I sat down and there were a lot of people around me who turned round and were saying, 'That was great, wish we'd have said that' - those sort of things. And at that point I began to feel embarrassed really, but not that embarrassed. I was quite glad I'd done it. How did he feel about Dylan's reaction? I don't recall hearing Dylan say anything back. This is bizarre.

Dylan's wounded response must have been clearly audible over the PA, although there were a few other heckles, semi-coherent, following Cordwell's shout before Dylan hit back. One appears to call Dylan or, indeed, Cordwell "yer great pillock! I don't know. I certainly don't remember feeling I was having any kind of dialogue with Dylan. Why should anyone believe the Cordwell story? Apart from the fact that it's true. In the odd years that this recording was available as a bootleg - and the most famous bootleg of all time - had he heard it?

Was he aware of his own notoriety? I knew that there was [a bootleg with] a shout but, of course, I'd always assumed it was the Royal Albert Hall and someone else had done the same as I'd done.

Only when Columbia released the live recording officially in , confirming that the location was Manchester and not, as had long been assumed, London, did John Cordwell realise that he was, after all, the most famous heckler in rock'n'roll history.

So when and why did he make the decision to "come out" after more than 30 years? I supposed I rationalised it by saying, well, maybe two people in the auditorium shouted 'Judas' but I'm absolutely convinced that it was me that the microphones picked up. And, being a bit of an amateur historian, I wanted to set the record straight. At this point, for some very unscientific voice analysis, I sent Cordwell to the very end of the empty lounge bar and asked him to shout "Judas" as he'd done on the night.

When the group learned it would be going overseas with Dylan in early , Helm conveyed his feelings to pianist Richard Manuel. I can take getting booed here. This is my country. Helm left the Hawks and drifted down to New Orleans, working for a while on an oil rig outside of Houma.

Dylan had developed a particularly close friendship with the guitarist, Robbie Robertson , whom Dylan described as "the only mathematical guitar genius I've ever run into who does not offend my intestinal nervousness with his rear guard sound.

The audience greeted the material warmly, even rapturously at times. But it was during the electric set where, as had been the case for nearly a year, the atmosphere got ugly.

That was all the crowd needed to hear. Though there was plenty of applause following each song, it was during the numerous tuning breaks that things took a darker turn for Dylan and the band. Many in the audience clapped in rhythm — a sign of derision in Britain — and there was some shouting.