"IF I THOUGHT THIS RECORD was any good, it would have been released a long time ago." Bob Dylan has often been called a prophet, but on this occasion, most of the world would beg to disagree with him. The above quote was given by Dylan to Columbia/Legacy Records for use in conjunction with the upcoming release of The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966 (The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert), due in stores on October 13. After years of promising to do so, Columbia is finally releasing the famous May 17, 1966 Dylan concert from Manchester, England, that has been widely bootlegged - at least in part - for over 25 years. The concert is famous for being a key turning point in Dylan's mid-'60s transition from folk hero to rock star, a musical metamorphosis as important as Elvis Presley turning from "the hillbilly cat" into a polished RCA Records recording artist, or the Beatles shedding their black leather street clothes for suits and ties. The new Columbia release contains every song and spoken-word moment that appeared on the legendary bootleg; nothing has been excised. Disc One, the acoustic half of the concert, consists of "She Belongs to Me," "4th Time Around," "Visions of Johanna," "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Desolation Row," "Just Like a Woman" and "Mr. Tambourine Man." ("Baby Blue" was released on Dylan's Biograph box set; every other performance on this album is previously unreleased.) Dylan then takes the stage with The Hawks, most of whom later became The Band, and Disc Two contains their entire, electrified full-band performance: "Tell Me Mama" (an unreleased Dylan original), "I Don't Believe You," "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," "One Too Many Mornings," "Ballad of a Thin Man" and "Like a Rolling Stone." The two CDs come housed in a slim-line brilliant box, which fits inside an outer slipcase. Also inside the slipcase is a 56-page booklet filled with rare photographs of Dylan, spanning his brief but meteoric career to that point. "I'd guess that 90% of the photographs have never been seen before," Geoff Gans, the Grammy-nominated art director who oversaw the package, tells ICE. The booklet also includes voluminous liner notes by Dylan's longtime friend Tony Glover, who dates back to Dylan's days in Minnesota. Several factors mark The Bootleg Series Vol. 4 as an important, and fascinating, release. For one thing, most fans consider 1966 to be the zenith of Dylan's live performing career, and the tour itself to be a high-water mark in rock history. Thus, the bootleg album has always been held in high regard by critics; its official release will likely give it overnight status as one of the best live albums ever released. In fact, when an adventurous bootlegger pressed up the entire concert on CD a few years ago (enigmatically titled Guitars Kissing and the Contemporary Fix), one English fanzine called it "unquestionably the all-time greatest Bob Dylan bootleg CD. Some might say it's the all-time greatest Bob Dylan album, period. They'd probably be right."