ABSTRACT
Joe Boyd, the stage manager when Dylan went electric at the Newport Festival, wrote: ‘Anyone wishing to portray the history of the sixties as a journey from idealism to hedonism could place the hinge at around 9.30 on the night of 25 July 1965’ (Epstein, 160). Yet one might equally claim the same of the Newport performances of a year earlier, where hedonism and idealism appear strangely entangled. Murray Lerner’s film, The Other Side of the Mirror, captures Dylan singing of ‘Chimes of Freedom’ towards the end of his main set on Friday 26 July 1964, before the capacity audience of 15,000. 1 John Hammond Sr, Pat Clancy, and others, were privately to lambast the performance as slipshod and careless, while Tony Glover felt Dylan backstage was tense, reluctant. Robert Shelton noted that:
As he tuned between numbers, Dylan sometimes staggered onstage. Being stoned had rarely prevented his giving winning performances, but he was clearly out of control. (Shelton, No Direction Home, 181)
