Dylan Album Project: Another Side of Bob Dylan

Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964)

Just as many consider Times They Are A-Changin’ to be Dylan’s most political album, many consider Another Side to be Dylan’s most introspective album, focusing on emotional turmoil more than anything else. Often times it is also seen as a denouncement of politics. “My Back Pages” certainly is the denouncement of demagoguery, and “It Ain’t Me, Babe” may be Dylan breaking up with the folkies, though it is just as easily about a girl. “Chimes of Freedom” still features political engagement, though, and so do “Motorpsycho Nitemare” and “I Shall Be Free No. 10.” They may be ironic, but Dylan isn’t praising Fidel Castro’s beard for nothing. While Another Side is and isn’t introspective, is and isn’t political, there is little debate over Dylan’s sloppiness. The whole album was recorded in one beaujolais-soaked day. 15 songs were recorded and 11 made the final cut. They are all filled with flubbed chords. “Motorpsycho Nitemare” is completely arrhythmic and “I Shall Be Free No. 10” was so far off the mark that an attempt to save it by splicing together several takes ultimately proved fruitless. If not Dylan’s worst album to date, this at least included his worst performances.

Best song: Spanish Harlem Incident – A beautiful song about a fleeting affair. This song is filled with phantoms of ideal lovers and a bit of gypsy magic.

Worst song: All I Really Wanna Do – Dylan himself said that “Ballad In Plain D,” another track on Another Side, is the worst song he ever wrote. He also said it’s the only autobiographical song he ever wrote, and it is certainly a straight up expose of his breakup with Suze Rotolo. Still, this song, perhaps an attempt at remaining friends, is much worse. Its as gushy as a Hallmark card and twice as silly.

Best outtake: I’m not big on a lot of the overplayed hits (if that wasn’t already obvious), but I do find it pretty amazing that Dylan wrote “Mr. Tambourine Man” and then sat on it for nearly a year before rerecording it for Bringing It All Back Home. This version features a harmony vocal from Ramblin’ Jack Elliot on the choruses.

Best live version: Whenever you read a recent review of a Dylan concert, unsuspecting newspaper reporters are always shocked to find that Dylan has rewritten many of his songs into completely different styles. News Flash: Dylan has been doing this almost since the beginning. When Dylan toured England in 1966, for the acoustic half of his set he performed mostly songs that hadn’t been released yet, or which had been released as electric rock songs. The second, electric half of the set was half made up of old acoustic tunes reworked into hard rock. The most (in)famous of these early rewrites, and deservingly so since it rocks, was “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met).” The version from Royal Albert Hall released on Live 1966, the same concert where a fan likened Dylan to Judas for playing electric, is particularly fierce.

Rhymes: simplify/classify/defy/crucify; analyze/categorize/finalize/advertise (1-2 from “All I Really Wanna Do”); nineteen/spleen (“I Shall Be Free No. 10); Rita/ La Dolce Vita; jerkin’/ Tony Perkins (4-5 from “Motorpsycho Nitemare”)

Images: “your pearly eyes, so fast and slashing;” “the cliffs of your wildcat charms” (1-2 from “Spanish Harlem Incident); “majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sound;” “the sky cracked its poems in naked wonder” (3-4 from “Chimes of Freedom”); “your magnetic movements still capture the minutes” (“To Ramona”)

Axioms: “Without freedom of speech I might live in the swamp” (“Motorpsycho Nitemare”); “I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now;” “I’d become my enemy in the instant that I preached;” “Good and bad – I define these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow” (2-4 from “My Back Pages” – in the last, form mirrors content as the words defy clear definition); “every question, if it’s a truthful question, can be answered by askin’ it” (“some other kinds of songs” [liner notes])