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.
The album deviates from the more socially conscious style which Dylan had developed with his previous LP, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964). The change prompted criticism from some influential figures in the folk community – Sing Out! editor Irwin Silber complained that Dylan had "somehow lost touch with people" and was caught up in "the paraphernalia of fame".
Despite the album's thematic shift, Dylan performed the entirety of Another Side of Bob Dylan as he had previous records – solo. In addition to his usual acoustic guitar and harmonica, Dylan provides piano on one track, "Black Crow Blues". Another Side of Bob Dylan reached No. 43 in the United States (although it eventually went gold), and peaked at No. 8 on the UK charts in 1965.
A high-definition 5.1 surround sound edition of the album was released on SACD by Columbia in 2003.
Writing Throughout 1963, Dylan worked on a novel and a play. A number of publishers were interested in signing Dylan to a contract, and at one point, City Lights (a small but prestigious company specializing in poetry) was strongly considered. However, as Dylan worked on his book at a casual pace, his manager, Albert Grossman, decided to make a deal with a major publisher.
Macmillan's senior editor, Bob Markel, said, "We gave [Dylan] an advance for an untitled book of writings... The publisher was taking a risk on a young, untested potential phenomenon." When Markel met with Dylan for the first time, "there was no book at the time... The material at that point was hazy, sketchy. The poetry editor called it 'inaccessible.' The symbolism was not easily understood, but on the other hand it was earthy, filled with obscure but marvelous imagery... I felt it had a lot of value and was very different from Dylan's output till then. [But] it was not a book."
It would be years before Dylan finished his book, but the free form poetry experiments that came from it eventually influenced his songwriting. The most notable example came in a six-line coda to a poem responding to President John F. Kennedy's assassination (which took place on November 22, 1963):
the colors of Friday were dull / as cathedral bells were gently burnin / strikin for the gentle / strikin for the kind / strikin for the crippled ones / an strikin for the blind
This refrain would soon appear in a very important composition, "Chimes of Freedom", and, as biographer Clinton Heylin writes, "with this sad refrain, Dylan would pass from topical troubadour to poet of the road."
In February 1964, Dylan embarked on a 20-day trip across the United States. Riding in a station wagon with a few friends (Paul Clayton, Victor Maymudes, and Pete Karman), Dylan began the trip in New York, taking numerous detours through many states before ending the trip in California. (At one point, Dylan reportedly paid a visit to poet Carl Sandburg.) "We talked to people in bars, miners," Dylan would later say. "Talking to people – that's where it's at, man."
According to Heylin, "the primary motivation for this trip was to find enough inspiration to step beyond the folk-song form, if not in the bars, or from the miners, then by peering deep into himself." Dylan spent much time in the back of the station wagon, working on songs and possibly poetry on a typewriter. It was during this trip that Dylan composed "Chimes of Freedom", finishing it in time to premiere at a Denver concert on the 15th. "Mr. Tambourine Man" was also composed during this trip.
It was also during this trip that the Beatles arrived in America. Their first visit to the United States remains a touchstone in American culture. Maymudes recalled how Dylan "nearly jumped out the car" when "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" came on the radio and his comments: "Did you hear that?..that was fuckin' great! Oh man.." and how Dylan seemed lost in thought replaying the record over in his head. Dylan, however, had already been following the Beatles since 1963. There have been different accounts regarding Dylan's attitude towards the Beatles at this time, but it is known that Suze Rotolo and Al Aronowitz immediately took to them and championed their music to Dylan. Aronowitz later claimed that Dylan dismissed them as "bubblegum", but in an interview in 1971, Dylan recalls being impressed by their music. "We were driving through Colorado, we had the radio on, and eight of the Top 10 songs were Beatles songs... 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' all those early ones. They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid... I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go." In January1964, while the Beatles were in France, George Harrison bought the French release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), titled En Roue Libre, which they played repeatedly, impressed by the lyrics and "just the attitude!"
As the Beatles began to influence Dylan and vice versa, Dylan's personal life was undergoing a number of significant changes. When Dylan returned to New York in March, he rented an electric guitar. He continued his romance with folksinger Joan Baez, though their stage appearances together began to dwindle. Dylan's girlfriend Suze Rotolo apparently had had enough of the affair. Soon after Dylan returned to New York, the two had an argument. At the time, Suze was staying with her sister Carla, and when Carla intervened, Dylan began screaming at Carla. Carla ordered Dylan to leave, but he refused to go. Carla Rotolo pushed Dylan, and he pushed her back. The two of them were soon practically fighting. Friends were called and Dylan had to be forcibly removed, effectively ending his relationship with Suze Rotolo. In a 1966 interview, Dylan admitted that after their relationship ended, "I got very, very strung out for a while. I mean, really, very strung out."
One account of Dylan's first experience with psychedelics places it in April 1964; producer Paul Rothchild told Bob Spitz that he was present when Dylan took his first hit of LSD. By February 1964, Dylan was already telling his friends that "Rimbaud's where it's at. That's the kind of stuff means something. That's the kind of writing I'm gonna do." A nineteenth-century French poet, Rimbaud once wrote to his mentor Georges Izambard in May 1871 that "the poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious and rational disordering of the senses ... He reaches [for] the unknown and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them."
Dylan later left for Europe, completing a few performances in England before traveling to Paris where he was introduced to a German model, Christa Päffgen, who went by the name of Nico. After treating Dylan to a meal at her flat, Nico accompanied Dylan across Europe, a trip that passed through Germany before ending in Vouliagmeni, a small village outside of Athens, Greece. Dylan stayed at Vouliagmeni for more than a week, finishing many of the songs that would appear on his fourth and upcoming album. Nine songs of these would be recorded upon his return to New York: "All I Really Want to Do", "Spanish Harlem Incident", "To Ramona", "I Shall Be Free No. 10", "Ballad in Plain D", "It Ain't Me, Babe", "Mama, You Been on My Mind", "Denise Denise", and "Black Crow Blues". Dylan also completed another song called "I'll Keep It With Mine", which, according to Nico, was "about me and my little baby". Dylan gave the song to Nico, who would eventually record it for her own album, Chelsea Girl, released in 1967.
Recording With Dylan's commercial profile on the rise, Columbia was now urging Dylan to release a steady stream of recordings. Upon Dylan's return to New York, studio time was quickly scheduled, with Tom Wilson back as producer.
The first (and only) recording session was held June 9 at Columbia's Studio A, located at 799 Seventh Avenue in New York City. According to Heylin, "while polishing off a couple of bottles of Beaujolais", Dylan recorded 14 original compositions, in a single three-hour session between 7pm and 10pm that night, 11 of which were chosen for the final album. The three that were ultimately rejected were "Denise Denise", "Mr. Tambourine Man", and "Mama, You Been on My Mind".Heylin, Clinton (1997). Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960–1994, pp. 29–32. Macmillan. .
Nat Hentoff's article on Dylan for The New Yorker, published in late October 1964, includes remarkable descriptions of the June 9 session. Hentoff describes in considerable detail the atmosphere in the CBS recording studio and Dylan's own asides and banter with his friends in the studio, with the session's producers, and Hentoff himself.
Ramblin' Jack Elliott was present during part of this session, and Dylan asked him to perform on "Mr. Tambourine Man". "He invited me to sing on it with him," recalls Elliott, "but I didn't know the words 'cept for the chorus, so I just harmonized with him on the chorus." Only one complete take was recorded, with Dylan stumbling on some of the lyrics. Though the recording was ultimately rejected, Dylan would return to the song for his next album.
By the time Dylan recorded what was ultimately the master take of "My Back Pages", it was 1:30 in the morning. Master takes were selected, and after some minor editing, a final album was soon sequenced.
Songs and themes As 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. Music critic Tim Riley writes, "As a set, the songs constitute a decisive act of noncommitment to issue-bound protest, to tradition-bound folk music and the possessive bonds of its audience [...] 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."
"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)."
"Black Crow Blues" is a traditional twelve-bar blues arrangement with original lyrics.
"'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' play off his 'restless palms'; her 'pearly eyes' and 'flashing diamond teeth' off his 'pale face.'"
"Chimes of Freedom" can be traced to "Lay Down Your Weary Tune", an outtake from The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964). "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."
Along with the later track "Motorpsycho Nitemare", the lyrics on "I Shall Be Free No. 10" have been referred to as "surrealistic talking blues".
Described by Heylin as "the most realized song on Another Side", "To Ramona" is one of the most 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."