Review: 1966 World Tour

1966 World Tour
Joel Gilbert

Highway 61 Entertainment
Street: 06.06.2006

From the look of the cover you might think this movie is about Bob Dylan’s 1966 world tour. You might think that you’re going to see and hear some of the tour or even some of Bob Dylan. You might expect an interesting glimpse into the mind of young Bob on his first electric tour. You would be wrong in every case. This movie is the last card Mickey Jones, the drummer for Dylan on the 1966 tour, being flopped onto the table in a last ditch effort to make himself famous. This movie is really Jones’ home films from the tour, but since he was playing during the actual shows him home movies consist primarily of him and the bass player wandering around whatever city they were in at the time. Since there’s no sound on his movies who better to narrate than Jones himself who manages to throw in as many stories about himself and actually relevant musicians as possible. This movie is Mickey sitting next to a TV narrating his own movies, basically the equivalent of watching a strangers’ vacation slide show. There are a few previously unseen shots of musicians who at the time were also very young, like the Beatles, on stage and off. But without the sound and all taken from a handheld the shots are hardly worth the time it takes to get to them. I will say that a few Mickey’s stories are entertaining and his story telling is well executed, however these few bright spots hardly make up for the general lack of content inside this movie which plays more like a “Look what I did!” than a serious analysis of a historical artifact. – Jesse Kennedy