Chimes of Freedom | <B>Editor's Choice</B> |Axisoflogic.com

Chimes of Freedom – performed by the Byrds live at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival in Monterey County, California

It will soon be 54 years to the day (June 16–18) that the first major music or open-air pop festival took place during the cultural transformation of the 1960s.

In many ways, the Monterey festival set the template for other music festivals in the last five years of the decade such as Woodstock and culminating at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970.

At Monterey one of the class acts on day 2 in the evening of Saturday June 17 was the Byrds – a band that made their name by playing “electric Dylan” poetry punctuated by the unique 12-string Rickenbacker guitar sound of the great Roger McGuinn who had originally learned his craft picking on a banjo.

Due to the epic nature of Dylan’s poetry, this song has been performed by many artists such as the star-studded Traveling Wilburys, Dylan himself, Neil Young, Tom Petty (RIP), George Harrison (RIP), Eric Clapton amongst others and notably by Bruce Springsteen in an open-air concert held in July 1988 in East Berlin.

In the Monterey video the Byrds lineup is Chris Hillman, David Crosby and McGuinn in a stellar performance of a song that meant so much to the 60’s generation and can be regarded as “real music” with a social/political undercurrent. In other words, a work of art and not a cheap product-managed auto-tuned marketing for artists who cannot sing to get kids to download and pay sites such as Spotify on their $300 smart phones.

For readers that are interested, here are the lyrics of this Dylan poetry sun by McGuinn himself:

Chimes of Freedom
The Byrds (written by Bob Dylan)

Far between sundown's finish
An' midnights broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts
Struck shadows in the sound
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An' for each an' every underdog soldier in the night
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

Even though a cloud's white curtain
In a far-off corner flashed
An' the hypnotic splattered mist Was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An' for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

Starry-eyed an' laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an' we watched with one last look
Spellbound an' swallowed 'til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse
An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.