Happy 60th Anniversary to Bob Dylan’s fourth studio album Another Side of Bob Dylan, originally released August 8, 1964.
Another Side of Bob Dylan is one of the most important albums in Bob Dylan’s catalogue. Released 60 years ago, Dylan’s fourth studio album marked an important shift in approach for the singer-songwriter, and one that would change his guiding musical philosophy. While the transitional album has stood the test of time and is considered one of Dylan’s stronger recordings, it was seen as a risky move over a half a century ago. Segments of his fanbase saw Another Side as a repudiation of what made him beloved in the first place.
For his first three albums, Dylan was viewed as a modern day savior of folk music. Critics and fans alike hailed him as the next great American poet, the heir to both Woody Guthrie and Walt Whitman. He had an unbelievable flair for language and crafted some of the best socially aware folk hymns of the time. Songs like “Blowin’ In the Wind,” “Masters of War,” “With God On Our Side,” and the entirety of The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964) remain just as meaningful today as they did 60 years ago.
The album is still mostly Bob Dylan and guitar and harmonica, though he opts to also play the piano on “Black Crow Blues.” But the shift in execution went beyond Dylan playing 88 keys. Another Side arrived just months after the release of The Times They Are a-Changin’, an informal starter pistol for a whole movement towards increased social consciousness. Now his critics and peers believed that he had not only forsaken his previous focus, but also that he was openly hostile to it.
Dylan has never been forthcoming about the meaning of the lyrics of his songs, leaving others to try to divine the dense symbolism and language. It’s long been assumed that “My Back Pages” was Dylan’s attempt to “apologize” for his previous screeds. The song does appear to be a hymn to disillusionment, as he fears his idealism and rigid moral code have made him as bad as those that he targeted. His voice practically drips bitterness as he sings, “Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth / ‘Rip down all hate,’ I screamed / Lies that life is black and white / Spoke from my skull, I dreamed.”
The type of material that is prevalent on Another Side are songs like “All I Wanna Do,” “To Ramona,” “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met),” and “Ballad in Plain D.” These are all insightful meditations on love, with Dylan often contemplating how to deal with his complex emotions, and other times struggling to cope with the whole experience. They fit into the mold of a more personal album, one that is nuanced and deals with the individual experience, rather than focusing on the larger societal ills.
There seems to be the prevailing opinion that Funny Bob Dylan isn’t Good Bob Dylan, and I’ve found that unfair. Both of this album’s humor-centered song entries are the object of scorn that they don’t deserve. They’re also the delivery systems for Another Side’s limited political commentary. “I Shall Be Free No. 10,” the sequel to (or tenth part of) “I Shall Be Free” features Dylan using the talking blues style, making cheesy jokes and having a good time in the studio. It’s not exactly timeless satire, but I’ll always find jokes about weird dancing monkeys entertaining. He also constantly lampoons the U.S.’s obsession with right wing ideologues. At one point he states, “Now, I’m liberal, but to a degree / I want everybody to be free / But if you think I’ll let Barry Goldwater/ Move in next door and marry my daughter / You must think I’m crazy!”
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“Motorpsycho Nitemare” is a tongue-in-cheek narrative where Dylan satirizes family story-telling tropes. He mixes the “student on the road gets entangled with the Farmer’s Daughter” by way of Psycho. The undercurrent for the story is the persistent and comical fear of communism by large swathes of the population in America’s heartland during the early ’60s. The song is punctuated by Dylan’s “unpatriotic doctor Commie rat” shouting, “I love Fidel Castro and his beard too!” as he flees the irate farmer. None of it is exactly trenchant social commentary, but it’s ridiculous enough to elicit some wry smiles.
But for all the irreverence of those two songs, “Chimes of Freedom” strikes a much more serious tone while echoing back to the “socially conscious” Dylan of his previous three albums. Dylan strives for epic, poetic beauty and succeeds, utilizing the type of abstract imagery and language that he’d first started to use on songs like “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and continued to utilize throughout the rest of his career. Dylan uses the framing device of taking shelter underneath a doorway during a long violent lightning storm. As the storm rages throughout the night, slowly starting to break as the morning dawns, he reflects on the plight of the underdogs, non-violent protesters, refugees, and those forgotten by society. Dylan strikes the balance between melancholy and hopeful with lines like, “Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind / Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind / And the poet and the painter far behind his rightful time.”
Another Side ends with “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” one of his all-time great recordings. The song contains Dylan’s lamentations on the dissolution of a relationship, telling the former object of his affection that he isn’t what she’s looking for, in no uncertain terms. As Dylan penned kiss-off songs go, it’s not quite as outright mean as “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” But he’s still firmly in “zero f**ks to give” mode here, singing, “Go melt back in the night, everything inside is made of stone / There’s nothing in here moving and anyway I’m not alone.”
Given the content of the album, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” has taken on a different significance after it was released. Now it’s viewed as another example of Dylan rejecting the idea that he’s supposed to be the savior of folk music, expressing his disinterest in being The Voice of a Generation, preferring to let his music speak for itself.
Another Side was integral in directing the next half century of Dylan’s career, as the alternate side of Bob Dylan became the prevalent side. The story goes that Dylan penned “Mr. Tambourine Man” during the sessions for this album, and that remains one of the most beloved songs in his catalogue. He went on to create not only the best albums of his career over the next handful of years, but some of the best albums of any genre in any era. Many of these albums followed the same template as Another Side.
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Dylan’s fans would learn to forgive this album’s “transgressions,” which certainly seem overblown in retrospect. “My Back Pages” is caustically resentful, but Dylan would learn to address his critics in a more poetically artful manner. And besides, Dylan found new ways to further infuriate his devoted fans of folk music, most notably evidenced by the decidedly mixed reaction to him and his band going electric during his set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
Of course, Dylan didn’t give up speaking on society’s ills on his projects, as he remained eloquent and poetic in his efforts to champion the downtrodden within his songs. However, it’s also safe to say that more of his subsequent albums sounded like Another Side of Bob Dylan than The Times They Are a-Changin’.
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Editor's note: this anniversary tribute was originally published in 2019 and has since been edited for accuracy and timeliness.