'Another Side Of Bob Dylan': A Personal History On The Road And Off the Tracks

This year marks 50 years since Bob Dylan released his fourth studio album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. It also marks the release of a new book about the life and times of Dylan as told by his tour manager and friend Victor Maymudes. Maymudes passed away before he could finish writing the book, but his son Jacob Maymudes set to the task of completing his father’s work. The book, Another Side of Bob Dylan: A Personal History on the Road and Off the Tracks, lends new perspective to famous stories, like the time when Dylan met The Beatles and the motorcycle accident that marked a break in his relentless touring.

In the book, Maymudes talks about first meeting Dylan and being shown the beginnings of the song "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall." Instead of being concerned about whether it was good or not Dylan wanted to know how it made him feel.

“He was writing it, and showed him pieces of it like poetry,” Jacob Maymudes says in a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer. “Throughout their relationship that is how they talked about his music. Bob always wasn’t necessarily looking for help with writing, but what the meaning was.”

Interview Highlights

Jacob Maymudes on why he felt the need to finish his father’s work:

My father died 13 years ago in the middle of writing this book. In his process he recorded lots of audio -- 24 hours worth of stories and that’s what I took and shaped this story. For 12 years I really avoided the idea of writing this book, of finishing it for a variety of reasons. One it was just too emotional and two, I didn’t really feel like it was my place. It was something that he needed to do and it would have been a much different story if he did do it and I wanted him to have completed it. I was very excited about it when he was doing it. But through a series of unfortunate events – my family home burning down – I felt that I had to take this on to sort of rebuild my father’s memory. We lost a lot of things that belonged to him and it was important for me to do this for him.

On the events surrounding the writing of material that would become Another Side of Bob Dylan:

It was on a personal trip. They were on tour in the U.K. and left to spend some time together and relax and go to the beach. They would drive around Athens on their days off and go look for hash and smoke cigarettes and go eat wonderful meals on the ocean. They would go back and Bob would just lock himself up and write. For their relationship my father didn’t put any pressure on him, he was always very welcoming of that.

My father loved to explore so he’d just go off by himself, jump in the ocean, walk around, and come back. If Bob felt like hanging out they’d hang out. The entire time they are in Greece Bob is never playing or rehearsing with a guitar, he’s just writing, always writing. When they get back to New York Bob walks into the studio and lays out the entire album, song after song, just explodes with content and my father is blown away. He told me this story in person as well on these tapes and remembers just being floored -- just completely shattered at how wonderful these songs are.

On Victor Maymudes and Bob Dylan’s close relationship:

My father really respected Bob. He in a way loved him. He wanted to foster his genius. In the '60s my father was a guitar player as well and a poet and he knew from the second that he met Bob that his ability outstripped his. He could see further with that and he wanted to help him, he wanted to be a part of it. He took that serious for the next four decades.