Yearlong Dylan-a-Thon, Update 2/4/25

[Note: I published my previous travelogue entry yesterday in a hurry, before I proofread it thoroughly. I apologize to any reader who encountered, and was justifiably horrified by, my sloppy work, which I have hopefully fully rectified.]

Welcome to this week’s update to my Yearlong Dylan-a-Thon.

Bob Dylan opens his fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, by noting that all he really wants to do is, baby, be friends with you. Nearly an hour later, he closes it by stating, “it ain’t me you’re looking for, babe.” A whole ton of emotional stuff happens between those two contradictory statements.

Here is what my friend Chris Ingalls had to say about Another Side when he and I wrote a PopMatters article on our favorite underrated Dylan albums:

“With the possible exception of his mostly-covers debut album (1962’s Bob Dylan), Another Side of Bob Dylan is probably the most ignored of Dylan’s early acoustic works. It’s a shame because the majority of its songs are top-notch, and the performances—recorded on one June evening in 1964—are inspired, intimate, and sublime. While he largely abandoned the “protest” flavor of his previous records (typically aggravating Dylan purists in the process), the sheer variety he ekes out of his solo performances is impressive.

For instance, he bangs out 12-bar piano blues on “Black Crow Blues”; unspools more odd surrealism on “Motorpsycho Nitemare” and “I Shall Be Free No. 10”; tosses off a future classic with “It Ain’t Me Babe”; and even adds a couple of multi-verse epics (“Chimes of Freedom” and “Ballad in Plain D”) before he’s done. Vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica, and piano rarely sounded this fully formed.”

Chris nails it. That’s the essence of Another Side of Bob Dylan in two paragraphs. If I were to add anything else, I might say that on Another Side, it feels like Dylan is skipping back over The Time’s They Are A-Changin’ to explore and expand upon some of the ideas that he was mapping out on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

As for listening to Another Side of Bob Dylan within the context of 2025, I will just say this. During the politically fraught year of 1964, it was probably natural for a certain segment of listeners to expect that Dylan would follow The Time’s They Are A-Changin’ with another album of ripped-from-the-headlines politically charged anthems, rather than an album that spoke to his own creative and personal needs.

The fact that Dylan did not do this speaks clearly to his ambitions as a songwriter, and perhaps his fear of being pigeonholed as a “protest singer”. But it’s a lesson to all of us to stay aware of our present predicament; also to be mindful of our personal care, so that each of us can get beyond dedicating ourselves solely to protest and find our own positive resistance to the current Musk/Trump regime. And perhaps one way to do this is to understand when we need to tap into “another side” of ourselves.