Bob Dylan
May 17, 1964
Royal Festival Hall
London, UK

Professional/line recording
Original regording by PYE records for Columbia
as mastered/mixed for possible release on "Bob Dylan In Concert"

1. Mr. Tambourine Man (live debut)
2. Eternal Circle

I don't believe these tracks have ever been torrented on DIME before (except, perhaps, briefly on compilation torrents quickly banned for including official performances.)

"Mr. Tambourine Man" is probably the live/public debut of the song. No earlier live performances are known, It is possible that Dylan gave the song a test run at a lower profile performance, as he frequently did in the mid-1960s, but Festival Hall was the only concert scheduled on his British visit, and there's no evidence it was played at a spring US show..

The recordings first surfaced a few years back on a reel-to-reel tape of an acetate prepared for Ralph J. Gleason, probably in late 1965. The acetate was clearly part of the series of "drafts" Columbia prepared for the "Bob Dylan In Concert" project. Columbia regularly prepared live albums from its folk roster, for release whenever the artists could not complete a studio album on schedule, or to rush to market to capitalize on unexpected demand. "Bob Dylan In Concert" was originally compiled in 1964, when Dylan had been absent from Columbia's studios for more than six months. But Dylan recorded "Another Side" in a single June session, and the project, already announced, was shelved. Presumably Columbia revisited the project when the New York Hawks sessions faltered and the expected followup to "Highway 61" seemed chancey.

More details on the acetate in the "BDIC Acetate" textfile included in this torrent, and even more information at Alan Fraser's superlative "Searching For A Gem" website.

http://www.searchingforagem.com/1960s/1964InConcert.htm

At one point, Columbia reportedly considered releasing a full album from this concert. After Columbia's initial contract with Dylan expired and Albert Grossman was negotiating with other labels, Columbia made rumblings about a vast trove of Dylan recordings it could use to compete with any new releases, Grossman is said to have claimed (not so accurately) that all Columbia held was a single, older concert recording from England. That would almost certainly have been the Festival Hall recording.

The tape of the acetate which surfaced was made for Gleason during the 1970s. Gleason had written the original album notes, and had presumably been asked to revise them for a decade-later release, This would likely date the plans to mid-1974, when Columbia was floundering in the wake of the Clive Davis-firing debacle, and tended to shove into release whatever was on hand and ready. I remember being on a phone conversation with a Columbia exec, along with other folks from the radio station I worked at, begging him to release that "Royal Albert Hall Concert" as a counter to "Before The Flood," and learning, obliquely, that Dylan was returning to Columbia, which was far from public knowledge.

After recordings of the acetate began to circulate, its two "new" tracks were issued on a few shoddy compilation commercial boots, including the not-so-Genuine Bootleg Series 4. All of those boots, so far as I recall, were laced with official material, and so couldn't run on DIME. (Quick note: While "Searching For A Gem" describes these tracks as "official rarities," its definition of "official" means officially prepared, not officially released, and includes a range of recordings, especially from the 1960s, which never saw an actual official release -- like acetates, test pressings, and copyright tapes. While most of the officially prepared recordings saw official release in some form, these tracks are among the set that haven't.)