Bob Dylan Mosque Theatre Remembered

I knew leaving the show that this was a concert unlike any I’d previously attended. The person onstage was looser, funnier and wilder than anyone I’d seen up to that point.

Fifty years ago today, I attended my first Bob Dylan concert at the Mosque Theater, in Newark, New Jersey.  I went with my older brother and younger (at the time) stepbrother who could’ve cared less.  Our parents bought us the tickets, and thinking back it was the first concert I went to without parents.  Arriving at the theater, my brother ran into some friends from the camp he attended the previous summer, who were flipping out because Dylan a few moments before had walked right by them on his way into the theater. 

Dylan was not yet a star (though on the way) and the hall was not even close to being sold out as we found out when we took our seats in the balcony, nervously sneaking down to the orchestra during intermission.   

I can’t remember all the songs he did that night.  Our only album was Freewheelin’ and three quarters o…