Another Side of Bob Dylan, was Dylan's fourth full-length album. The title seemingly refers to a conscious shift from the issue-oriented folk music in his previous work, especially The Times They Are A-Changin' LP. Another Side is filled with mostly introspective and occasionally surreal lyrics, seen by many as a nod to the rock'n'roll he would experiment with on his next record. This break from his traditionalist roots prompted sharp criticism from influential figures in the folk community. Sing Out! editor Irwin Silber famously complained that Dylan had "somehow lost touch with people" and was tangled up in "the paraphernalia of fame." Most critics outside of these circles, however, praised its innovations in songwriting, which would have a tremendous influence on such rock acts as The Beatles.

Dylan recorded the album in a single session on the night of June 9, 1964. Dylan told Nat Hentoff in The New Yorker, "there aren't any finger-pointin' songs" on Another Side of Bob Dylan, which was a significant step in a new direction. "As a set, the songs constitute a decisive act of non-commitment to issue-bound protest, to tradition-bound folk music and the possessive bonds of its audience," writes NPR's Tim Riley. "The love songs open up into indeterminate statements about the emotional orbits lovers take, and the topical themes pass over artificial moral boundaries and leap into wide-ranging social observation."

One of the most celebrated songs on Another Side of Bob Dylan is sung from the point-of-view of two friends (or possibly lovers) huddled in a church doorway, watching the sky during a thunderstorm. "Chimes of Freedom" can be traced to "Lay Down Your Weary Tune," an outtake from The Times They Are A-Changin'. "Its sense of the power of nature...closely mirrors 'Lay Down Your Weary Tune,'" writes Clinton Heylin. "Unashamedly apocalyptic...the composition of 'Chimes of Freedom' represented a leap in form that permitted even more intensely poetic songs to burst forth."

"The compassion that laces all the complaints in 'All I Really Want To Do' and 'It Ain't Me, Babe' is round with idealism and humor," writes Riley. "That [both songs] work off a pure Jimmie Rodgers yodel only makes their ties to wide-open American optimism that much more enticing (even though they are both essentially reluctant good-byes)."

"It Ain't Me, Babe" also reworks the same "Scarborough Fair" arrangement that was written into Dylan's earlier composition, "Boots of Spanish Leather." Johnny Cash would record his own hit version of this song soon after Another Side of Bob Dylan was released, while The Turtles' version would chart even higher.

Riley describes "My Back Pages" as "a thorough X-ray of Dylan's former social proselytizing...Dylan renounces his former over-serious messianic perch, and disowns false insights." ("I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now.")

According to Heylin, "Ballad in Plain D" takes its melody and refrain ("my friends say unto me...") from the British folk song, "Once I Had A Sweetheart" (aka "The False Bride"). "The song graphically details the night of his breakup with Suze," writes Heylin. "Dylan's portrayal of Carla as the 'parasite sister' remains a cruel and inaccurate portrait of a woman who had started out as one of [Dylan's] biggest fans, and changed only as she came to see the degrees of emotional blackmail he subjected her younger sister to." Asked in 1985 if there were any songs he regretted writing, Dylan singled out "Ballad in Plain D," saying "I look back at that particular one and say... maybe I could have left that alone."

"'Spanish Harlem Incident' is a new romance that pretends to be short and sweet," writes Riley, "but it's an example of how Dylan begins using uncommon word couplings to evoke the mysteries of intimacy...her 'rattling drums' plays off his 'restless palms'; her 'pearly eyes' and 'flashing diamond teeth' off his 'pale face.'"

Described by Heylin as "the most realized song on Another Side," "To Ramona" is one of the more celebrated songs on the album. A soft, tender waltz, Riley writes that the song "extends the romance from ideals of emotional honesty out into issues of conditioned conformity ('From fixtures and forces and friends / That you gotta be just like them')...in 'Spanish Harlem Incident,' [Dylan's] using flattery as a front for the singer's own weak self-image; in 'To Ramona,' he's trying to save his lover from herself if only because he knows he may soon need the same comfort he's giving her."

Described by Riley as "the unalloyed sting of a romantic perfidy," "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" would be dramatically rearranged for a full-electric rock band during Dylan's famous 1966 tour with the Hawks.

Four songs from Another Side of Bob Dylan were eventually recorded by The Byrds: "Chimes of Freedom," "My Back Pages," "Spanish Harlem Incident," and "All I Really Want To Do," all of which received their share of critical acclaim.

As Another Side of Bob Dylan was prepared for release, Dylan premiered his new songs at the Newport Folk Festival in July of 1964. The festival also marked Dylan's first meeting with country legend Johnny Cash; Dylan was already an admirer of Cash's music, and vice versa. The two spent a night jamming together in Joan Baez's room at the Viking Motor Inn. According to Cash, "we were so happy to [finally] meet each other that we were jumping on the beds like kids." The next day, Cash would perform Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" as part of his set, telling the audience that "we've been doing it on our shows all over the country, trying to tell the folks about Bob, that we think he's the best songwriter of the age...Sure do."

Though the audience at Newport seemed to enjoy Dylan's new material, the folk press did not. Irwin Silber of Sing Out and David Horowitz criticized Dylan's direction and accused Dylan of succumbing to the pressures/temptations of fame. In an open letter to Dylan published in the November issue of Sing Out, Silber wrote "your new songs seem to be all inner-directed now, inner-probing, self-conscious" and, based on what he saw at Newport, "that some of the paraphernalia of fame [was] getting in your way." Horowitz called the songs an "unqualified failure of taste and self-critical awareness."

The album was a step back commercially, failing to make the Top 40, indicating that record consumers may have had a problem as well.

Dylan would soon defend his work, writing that "the songs are insanely honest, not meanin t twist any heads an written only for the reason that i myself me alone wanted and needed t write them." (Transcribed as typed.)

Dylan would concede in 1978 that the album title was not to his liking. "I thought it was just too corny," he said, "I just felt trouble coming when they titled it that." However, it's worth noting that the original manuscripts to the album make two references to the eventual album title: an early draft of "I Shall Be Free No. 10" has the line "You're on another side" while the only line occupying one final page says "there is no other side of bob dylan."

Years later, mixed reactions over Another Side of Bob Dylan would remain but not for the same reasons. Critics would later view it as a 'transitional' album. Clinton Heylin would claim that "Dylan was simply too close to the experiences he was drawing upon to translate them into art. He was also still experimenting with the imagery found on 'Chimes of Freedom' and 'Mr. Tambourine Man.' 'My Back Pages,' the least successful example of the new style, was replete with bizarre compound images ('corpse evangelists,' 'confusion boats,' etc.)." Salon.com critic Bill Wyman would dismiss it as "a lesser, 'relationship' album," but conceded that "Chimes of Freedom" was a "lovely hymn to the 'countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse."

However, NPR's Tim Riley would call it "a bridge between folkie rhetoric (albeit superior) and his troika of electric rants...a rock album without electric guitars, a folk archetype that punches through the hardy, plainspoken mold. Built on repeated riffs and coaxed by the controlled anxiety of Dylan's voice, the songs work off one another with intellectually charged élan. It's a transition album with a mind of its own."

Discography
1962 Bob Dylan • Columbia
1963 The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan • Columbia
1964 The Times They Are A-Changin' • Columbia
1964 Another Side of Bob Dylan • Columbia
1965 Bringing It All Back Home • Columbia
1965 Highway 61 Revisited • Columbia
1966 Blonde on Blonde • Columbia
1967 John Wesley Harding • Columbia
1969 Nashville Skyline • Columbia
1970 Self Portrait • Columbia
1970 New Morning • Columbia
1973 Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Soundtrack) • Columbia
1973 Dylan • Columbia
1974 Planet Waves • Columbia
1974 Before the Flood (Live) • Columbia
1975 Blood on the Tracks • Columbia
1975 The Basement Tapes • Columbia
1976 Desire • Columbia
1976 Hard Rain (Live) • Columbia
1978 Street Legal • Columbia
1979 Slow Train Coming • Columbia
1979 At Budokan (Live) • Columbia
1980 Saved • Columbia
1981 Shot of Love • Columbia
1983 Infidels • Columbia
1984 Real Live • Columbia
1985 Empire Burlesque • Columbia
1986 Knocked Out Loaded • Columbia
1988 Down in the Groove • Columbia
1989 Dylan & the Dead (Live) • Columbia
1989 Oh Mercy • Columbia
1990 Under the Red Sky • Columbia
1992 Good as I Been to You • Columbia
1993 World Gone Wrong • Columbia
1995 MTV Unplugged (Live) • Columbia
1997 Time Out of Mind • Columbia
2001 Love and Theft • Columbia
2005 No Direction Home • Columbia
2006 Modern Times • Columbia

Related links:
Official Website
Bob Dylan Lyrics
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Rolling Stone
All Music Guide

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