The album deviates from the more socially conscious style which Dylan had developed with his previous LP, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964).
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.
"[6] 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."
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!
"[9] In January 1964, 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!"
"[13] Dylan later left for Europe, completing a few performances in England before traveling to Paris where he was introduced to a German model, Christa Paffgen, who went by the name of Nico.
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.
"[16] Nat Hentoff's article on Dylan for The New Yorker, published in late October 1964, includes remarkable descriptions of the June 9 session.
[17] 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.
"[18] "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).
[20] "'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.
"Unashamedly apocalyptic [...] the composition of 'Chimes of Freedom' represented a leap in form that permitted even more intensely poetic songs to burst forth.
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.
"[21] "Motorpsycho Nitemare", based in part on Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho (1960), satirizes both the rise of the American '60s counter-culture as well as the mainstream's paranoid reactions to it.
'"[26] Described by Riley as "the unalloyed sting of a romantic perfidy",[27] "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.
According to Heylin, "Ballad in Plain D" takes its melody and refrain ("my friends say unto me...") from the Scottish folk song, "I Once Loved a Lass (The False Bride)".
"[29] "It Ain't Me, Babe" also reworks the same "Scarborough Fair" arrangement that was written into Dylan's earlier compositions, "Girl from the North Country" and "Boots of Spanish Leather".
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".
In addition, they were introduced to their breakthrough hit single "Mr. Tambourine Man" through a copy of Dylan's unreleased recording from the June 9, 1964 album session.
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."
"[41] Salon.com critic Bill Wyman dismissed 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'.
Built on repeated riffs and coaxed by the controlled anxiety of Dylan's voice, the songs work off one another with intellectually charged élan.
Described by Tim Riley as "the echo of a left-behind affair that rebounds off a couple of self-aware curves ('I am not askin' you to say words like 'yes' or 'no,' / ...
I'm just breathin' to myself, pretendin' not that I don't know),"[44] the song was soon covered by Joan Baez, as well as Judy Collins, who had a considerable amount of commercial success with it.
Rod Stewart would later cover the song for his critically acclaimed album, Never a Dull Moment (1972), and a version by Jeff Buckley appears as an out-take on the 2004 reissue of Grace (1994).
It was covered by Linda Ronstadt on her 1969 album Hand Sown ... Home Grown with altered lyrics as "Baby, You've Been on My Mind".
A small section of the "California" lyrics were reused in "Outlaw Blues", a song that appeared on Dylan's next album, Bringing It All Back Home.