The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival is a 2007 documentary film about Bob Dylan's appearances at the Newport Folk Festival in three successive years: 1963, 1964, and 1965, directed by Murray Lerner.
The film adds to the footage previously seen in Lerner's Festival! (1967), with full-length song performances. It includes Dylan's controversial electric set from 1965.
This film features previously unseen footage, chronicling the changes in Dylan's style when he appeared at Newport in three successive years. This film was broadcast by BBC Four on October 14, 2007. Director Murray Lerner commented: "Over the course of three Newport gigs, Dylan becomes more conscious of his power. His charisma is startling. With electricity and radio, he did what Yeats, Lorca, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound never achieved. He reached a mass audience with poetry." [1]
The documentary garnered positive reviews from critics. In his review for The New York Times , A.O. Scott picked out Like A Rolling Stone and It's All Over Now, Baby Blue as being "great" versions that "provide a thrilling climax to the film without quite overshadowing the others." [2]
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| Australia (ARIA) [3] | Platinum | 15,000^ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. | ||
Joan Chandos Baez is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums.
Bringing It All Back Home is the fifth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in March 1965 by Columbia Records. In a major transition from his earlier sound, it was Dylan's first album to incorporate electric instrumentation, which caused controversy and divided many in the contemporary folk scene.
Another Side of Bob Dylan is the fourth studio album by the American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 8, 1964, by Columbia Records.
"Blowin' in the Wind" is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1962. It was released as a single and included on his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963. It has been described as a protest song and poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war, and freedom. The refrain "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind" has been described as "impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind".
Newport Folk Festival is an annual American folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the Newport Jazz Festival. The festival was founded by music promoter and Jazz Festival founder George Wein, music manager Albert Grossman, and folk singers Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, and Oscar Brand. It was one of the first modern music festivals in America, and remains a focal point in the expanding genre of folk music. The festival was held in Newport annually from 1959 to 1969, except in 1961 and 1962, first at Freebody Park and then at Festival Field. In 1985, Wein revived the festival in Newport, where it has been held at Fort Adams State Park ever since.
"It Ain't Me Babe" is a song by Bob Dylan that originally appeared on his fourth album Another Side of Bob Dylan, which was released in 1964 by Columbia Records. According to music critic Oliver Trager, this song, along with others on the album, marked a departure for Dylan as he began to explore the possibilities of language and deeper levels of the human experience. Within a year of its release, the song was picked up as a single by folk rock act the Turtles and country artist Johnny Cash. Jan & Dean also covered the track on their Folk 'n Roll LP in 1965.
Renaldo and Clara is a 1978 American film directed by Bob Dylan and starring Bob Dylan, Sara Dylan and Joan Baez. Written by Dylan and Sam Shepard, the film incorporates three distinct film genres: concert footage, documentary interviews, and dramatic fictional vignettes reflective of Dylan's song lyrics and life.
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan is a 2005 documentary film by Martin Scorsese that traces the life of Bob Dylan, and his impact on 20th-century American popular music and culture. The film focuses on the period between Dylan's arrival in New York in January 1961 and his "retirement" from touring following his motorcycle accident in July 1966. This period encapsulates Dylan's rise to fame as a folk singer and songwriter where he became the center of a cultural and musical upheaval, and continues through the electric controversy surrounding his move to a rock style of music.
"Maggie's Farm" is a song written by Bob Dylan, recorded on January 15, 1965, and released on the album Bringing It All Back Home on March 22 of that year. Like many other Dylan songs of the 1965–66 period, "Maggie's Farm" is based on electric blues. It was released as a single in the United Kingdom on June 4, 1965, and peaked at No. 22 on the chart. Dylan only needed one take to record the song, as may be heard on the exhaustive 18-disc Collector's Edition of The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966, which includes every alternate take recorded during Dylan's 1965–1966 sessions but only the one version of "Maggie's Farm".
Bruce Langhorne was an American folk musician. He was active in the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s, primarily as a session guitarist for folk albums and performances.
Message to Love is a feature documentary film of the Isle of Wight Festival 1970. Directed and produced by Murray Lerner, the film includes performances by popular rock acts, such as Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and the Doors, as well as folk and jazz artists, such as Joni Mitchell and Miles Davis. The title of the film is taken from a song by Hendrix.
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan and featured on his Bringing It All Back Home album, released on March 22, 1965, by Columbia Records. The song was recorded on January 15, 1965, with Dylan's acoustic guitar and harmonica and William E. Lee's bass guitar the only instrumentation. The lyrics were heavily influenced by Symbolist poetry and bid farewell to the titular "Baby Blue". There has been much speculation about the real life identity of "Baby Blue", with possibilities including Joan Baez, David Blue, Paul Clayton, Dylan's folk music audience, and even Dylan himself.
Murray Lerner was an American documentary and experimental film director and producer.
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.
Festival is a 1967 American documentary film about the Newport Folk Festivals of the mid-1960’s, and the burgeoning counterculture movement of the era, written, produced, and directed by Murray Lerner.
By 1965, Bob Dylan was the leading songwriter of the American folk music revival. The response to his albums The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The Times They Are a-Changin' led the media to label him the "spokesman of a generation".
"To Ramona" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, first released on his fourth studio album, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964). The song was written by Dylan, and produced by Tom Wilson. The lyrics were started at the May Fair Hotel in London in May 1964, and finished during a week-long stay in the Greek village of Vernilya later that month. Dylan recorded all the tracks for the album, including the song, in a single three-hour session on June 9, 1964, at Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios, New York. Its narrator advises Ramona, who is preparing to return to "the South", not to follow the advice of others. Critics have suggested several different people as inspirations for the song, including Joan Baez, Suze Rotolo, and Sara Lownds.
Celebration at Big Sur is a film of the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival in Big Sur, California, featuring Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and others.
From Newport to the Ancient Empty Street in L.A is a bootleg recording of live performances by Bob Dylan. It contains recordings of Dylan performing at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1964 and July 1965. There are also recordings of Dylan performing at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1965. The album contains one performance omitted from the film The Other Side of the Mirror which records Dylan's Newport performances: a live version of "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" from July 1965.
The Big Sur Folk Festival, held from 1964 to 1971 in California, was an informal gathering of prominent and emerging folk artists from across the United States. Nancy Jane Carlen (1941–2013) was working at the Esalen Institute when Joan Baez was asked to lead workshops on music. Carlen was a good friend of Baez, and they decided to invite other artists, which turned into the first festival.
