Editing Another Side of Bob Dylan (section)

== Reception ==
As ''Another Side of Bob Dylan'' was prepared for release, Dylan premiered his new songs at the [[Newport Folk Festival]] in July 1964. The festival also marked Dylan's first meeting with [[Johnny Cash]]; Dylan was already an admirer of Cash's music, and vice versa. The two spent a night jamming together in [[Joan Baez]]'s room at the Viking Motor Inn. According to Cash, "we were so happy to [finally] meet each other that we were jumping on the beds like kids." The next day, Cash performed Dylan's "[[Don't Think Twice, It's All Right]]" as part of his set, telling the audience that "we've been doing it on our shows all over the country, trying to tell the folks about Bob, that we think he's the best songwriter of the age since [[Pete Seeger]]{{nbsp}}... Sure do."<ref>{{cite book|last=Chadwick|first=Julie|date=May 27, 2017|title=The Man Who Carried Cash: Saul Holiff, Johnny Cash, and the Making of an American Icon|page=162|publisher=[[Dundurn Press]]|location=Toronto|isbn=9-781-4597-3724-2|url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=FR2vDAAAQBAJ |page=162}}}}</ref>

Though the audience at Newport seemed to enjoy Dylan's new material, the folk press did not. [[Irwin Silber]] of ''[[Sing Out!]]'' and David Horowitz criticized Dylan's direction and accused Dylan of succumbing to the pressures/temptations of fame. 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." Horowitz called the songs an "unqualified failure of taste and self-critical awareness."{{sfn|Heylin|2011|pages=162-63}}

The album was a step back commercially, failing to make the Top 40, indicating that record consumers may have had a problem as well.{{sfn|Heylin|2011|p=165}}

Dylan soon defended his work, writing to columnist [[Ralph J. Gleason]] that "the songs are insanely honest, not meanin t twist any heads an written only for the reason that i myself me alone wanted and needed t write them{{sic}}."{{sfn|Heylin|2011|p=164}}