Tag: Bob Dylan

Blog, Song Lyric Sunday

Song Lyric Sunday – Bob Dylan

by  • 

One of the most influential American singer, songwriter, poets of my generation is Bob Dylan. I have chosen him as my artist for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday post, hosted by Jim Adams, who asked us to concentrate on honoring American artists in honor of Independence Day July 4th.

My song choice, Positively 4th Street, is a personal favorite. I used this song back in July of 2018 when SLS was hosted by Helen Vahdati. She had prompted us with the word ‘Street’. I figured enough time had passed and I could share it again.

Only Dylan could answer what this song is actually about. There are many theories shared online as to who or what is the subject of the song. Some say it was his departure from acoustic to electric guitar which was not regarded as a good decision at that time. Others allude to a business association gone wrong. There is also discussion about which 4th Street he is referring to. Is it New York’s Greenwich Village or is it the one in San Francisco? It was definitely 4th Street in New York! Crazy theories in my opinion. I have always regarded it as the ultimate break-up song with unforgettable last lines that have always stuck with me.

Whatever you may think, it is an iconic song that will always put me in a place and time as music usually does.

The Artist

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman; May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author and visual artist. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career spanning nearly 60 years. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” (1963) and “The Times They Are a-Changin'” (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and anti-warmovements. His lyrics during this period incorporated a range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counter culture.

Following his self-titled debut album in 1962, which mainly comprised traditional folk songs, Dylan made his breakthrough as a songwriter with the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan the following year. The album features “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the thematically complex “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”. Many of his songs adapted the tunes and phraseology of older folk songs. He went on to release the politically charged The Times They Are a-Changin’ and the more lyrically abstract and introspective Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan drew controversy when he adopted electrically amplifiedrock instrumentation, and in the space of 15 months recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). Commenting on the six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965), Rolling Stone wrote: “No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time”.

In July 1966, a motorcycle accident led to Dylan’s withdrawal from touring. During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were released as the collaborative album The Basement Tapes in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes in John Wesley Harding(1967), Nashville Skyline (1969), and New Morning (1970). In 1975, he released Blood on the Tracks, which many saw as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he became a Christian and released a series of albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. Dylan’s 1997 album Time Out of Mind marked the beginning of a renaissance for his career. He has released five critically acclaimed albums of original material since then, the most recent being Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He also recorded a series of three albums in the 2010s comprising versions of traditional American standards, especially songs recorded by Frank Sinatra. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour.

Since 1994, Dylan has published eight books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. He has sold more than 125 million records, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2008 awarded him a special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power”. In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

The Song – Positively 4th Street

The song, written and performed by Bob Dylan, was first recorded in New York City on July 29, 1965.  It was released as a single by Columbia Records on September 7, 1965, reaching No. 1 on Canada’s RPM chart, No. 7 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and No. 8 on the UK Singles Chart. Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song as No. 206 in their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.

The song was released between Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, as the follow-up to Dylan’s hit single”Like a Rolling Stone”, but was not included on either album.[7] The song’s title does not appear anywhere in the lyrics and there has been much debate over the years as to the significance or which individual the song concerns.

An unreleased promo spot of the song can be found on the No Direction Home DVD special features.

Courtesy of Wiki

The Lyrics

You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinnin'
You've got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winnin'

You say I let you down, ya know its not like that
If you're so hurt, why then don't you show it?
You say you've lost your faith, but that's not where its at
You have no faith to lose, and ya know it

I know the reason, that you talked behind my back
I used to be among the crowd you're in with
Do you take me for such a fool, to think I'd make contact
With the one who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with?

You see me on the street, you always act surprised
You say "how are you?", "good luck", but ya don't mean it
When you know as well as me, you'd rather see me paralyzed
Why don't you just come out once and scream it

No, I do not feel that good when I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief perhaps I'd rob them
And tho I know you're dissatisfied with your position and your place
Don't you understand, its not my problem?

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you

Writer/s: Bob Dylan 
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Blog, Song Lyric Sunday

Song Lyric Sunday – Blowin’ in the Wind

by  • 

Good Sunday morning! This week’s Song Lyric Sunday, hosted by our friend Jim Adams, is prompting us to find a song with Breeze, Cloud, Sky or Wind In the title or lyrics. I was torn between two great songs by favorite artists but in the end I went with the one with the best lyrics. ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ by Bob Dylan. To me this song is timeless and it is as relevant today as it was in the 60s. I hope you enjoy it.

Dylan claims that he wrote this song in about 10 minutes one afternoon. He put words to the melody of an old slave song called “No More Auction Block,” which he might have learned from Carter family records. In the evening, Dylan took the song to the nightclub Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, where he was due to play a set. Before playing it, he announced, “This here ain’t no protest song or anything like that, ’cause I don’t write no protest songs.” During this first performance, Dylan couldn’t read some of his own handwriting and made up some of the lyrics as he went along.

The Dylan version of this song was never a hit – it was a cover by Peter, Paul & Mary that made #2 in the US in February 1963, introducing many people to the music of Bob Dylan, who was an obscure folk singer at the time.

Dylan gained National exposure when he performed this song with Peter, Paul & Mary at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. Magazines like Time, Playboy, and The New Yorker ran stories on Dylan after the performance.
Dylan wrote this in 1962, but did not release it until his second album a year later. It was common for Dylan to play songs for a while before he recorded them, which gave him control over when they could be covered. Once a song is recorded, anyone can cover it if they pay the mechanical licensing fees.

A November 1963 Newsweek article fueled rumors that Dylan stole this song from a New Jersey high school student. The article stated:

There is even a rumor circulating that Dylan did not write ‘Blowin’ In The Wind,’ that it was written by a Millburn (NJ) High student named Lorre Wyatt, who sold it to the singer. Dylan says he did write the song and Wyatt denies authorship, but several Millburn students claim they heard the song from Wyatt before Dylan ever sang it.

In 1962, Dylan let a folk magazine called Sing Out! publish the lyrics. The student, Lorre Wyatt from Millburn, New Jersey, got the magazine and played it for the band he was in, claiming he wrote it. They performed it for their school a few months before Dylan released the song, which led everyone in the school to believe Dylan had stolen the song from Wyatt.

The rumor became a bigger kerfuffle thanks to some circumstantial evidence linking Dylan to the student:

1) Dylan visited an ailing Woody Guthrie, who was living at Greystone Hospital in New Jersey at the same time Wyatt was a volunteer there, known for singing songs to the patients. (Guthrie spent his Sundays as outpatient, where a couple from East Orange looked after him in their apartment. This is where he and Dylan got together.)

2) Dylan and Wyatt were both known to hang out in Greenwich Village around 1962.

3) Dylan didn’t publish the song until July 30, 1962, which was three weeks after he recorded it. This was unusual in that musicians like to publish their works first to keep them from getting stolen, and it set up a scenario where Dylan heard the song, recorded it, found out it wasn’t published and then published it himself. The truth was that Dylan didn’t always tend to the legal details at a time when he was cranking out song after song.

4) When Mike Royko of the Chicago Daily News contacted Wyatt in 1974 and asked if he wrote the song, Wyatt didn’t deny it and refused comment, which supported his claim that he had sold the song for $1,000 and was forbidden from talking about it as part of the terms.

Later that year, Wyatt came clean, but in the New Times, which had a much smaller circulation than the Chicago Daily News. Wyatt explained how things got out of control, as by trying to downplay his role in the song, it fueled the rumors and led his classmates and teachers to believe they had the inside scoop. Said Wyatt: “I’d begun to make Pinocchio look like he had a pug nose.” For a fictional portrayal of a similar story, check out the movie The Squid And The Whale, where a high school student passes off “Hey You” as his own.

This song was a major influence on Sam Cooke and prompted a change in his music. Cooke felt this could easily have been about racial injustice and thought it had special relevance to the black community. He performed a soulful version on the ABC show Shindig and released a live version on his album Sam Cooke At The Copa. In December 1964, just as Cooke began writing more political music, he was shot and killed by a motel manager who claimed she acted in self-defense. Released shortly after his death, Cooke’s song “A Change Is Gonna Come” may be the best example of Dylan’s influence on him.

Stevie Wonder became the first black artist to take a Dylan song into the US Top 10 when his version of “Blowin’ In The Wind” went to #9 in 1966.
Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary said in the Radio Times, October 13-19, 2007: “His (Bob Dylan’s) writing put Peter, Paul and Mary on another level. We heard his demos and Albert (Grossman, both Dylan and the trio’s manager) thought the big song was ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,’ but we went crazy over ‘Blowin’ In The Wind.’ We instinctively knew the song carried the moment of its own time. He was rising so fast over anybody else, in the level of poetry and expression, to a shatteringly brilliant level.”

Speaking of Dylan in a Songfacts interview, Yarrow added, “He was just a fountain of brilliance of poetry. And he was as a person just a normal human being, like everybody else.”
This may be the most-covered of Bob Dylan’s songs. Some of the many artists who performed it include Dolly Parton, Nickel Creek and Neil Young. When The Staple Singers recorded it in 1963, they became the first black group to cover a Bob Dylan song.

A rendition by the saxophone player Stan Getz went to #110 in 1964, and the gospel group The Edwin Hawkins Singers took it to #109 in 1969, following their hit “Oh Happy Day.”
Bob Dylan performed this in the BBC play Madhouse On Castle Street, which aired January 13, 1963. Dylan performed songs throughout the play, closing with “Blowin’ In The Wind.” >>
Peter, Paul & Mary performed this song at the March on Washington, which took place August 28, 1963. This was a seminal event in American history, epitomized by Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech. Mary Travers described having an epiphany during the performance. “Looking out at those 250,000 people, I truly believed at that moment it was possible for human beings to join together to make a positive social change,” she said.

Bob Dylan also performed at the event, appearing with Joan Baez before Peter, Paul & Mary went on.

Dylan performed this song sporadically from 1962-1965, and didn’t play it at all on his 1966 tour, which was cut short by a motorcycle accident. Over the next eight years, he made just a few select live appearances, and performed “Blowin’ In The Wind” at only one of them: George Harrison’s “Concert For Bangladesh” in 1971. This was the first charity concert on this scale, with proceeds helping Bangladeshi refugees in India. It was a good cause, so Dylan acquiesced and played some of his most popular songs during the set, including “Blowin’ In The Wind” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” When Dylan hit the road in 1975, he included “Blowin’ In The Wind” in his setlist, and he played it at many of his subsequent shows throughout his career, making it one of his most-performed songs at his shows.

This was used in the UK by the British consumer-owned Cooperative Group in a series of adverts. It was the first time one of Dylan’s songs has been used in a UK advert, though his music has previously been used to advertise iTunes and Victoria’s Secret lingerie in America. Some of Dylan’s fans claimed the singer was selling out, but his record company argued that the co-op’s adherence to high ethical guidelines regarding fair trade and the environment influenced his decision.
This song is played in the movie Forrest Gump by the character Jenny (Robin Wright). She’s in a strip club, performing as “Bobbi Dylan.” She’s sitting on a stool naked playing guitar and singing, and when the drunk men start to get fresh, Forrest tries to save her. Joan Baez’s version is featured on the official soundtrack.

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan made a huge impact on The Beatles. “We just played it, just wore it out,” said George Harrison. “The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude – it was incredibly original and wonderful.”

The song prompted a homily by Pope John Paul II. Playing for the Pontiff at the World Eucharistic Congress in Bologna in 1997, Dylan was greeted by him with the reflection: “You say the answer is blowing in the wind, my friend. So it is: but it is not the wind that blows things away. It is the wind that is the breath and life of the Holy Spirit, the voice that calls and says, ‘Come!'”

The Pope even answered a question Dylan posed in the song: “You’ve asked me: ‘How many roads must a man walk down before he becomes a man?’ I answer you: One. There is only one road for man and it is Christ, who said ‘I am the life.'”

Dylan took some heat for appropriating lines from old poems on some of his tracks from his 2006 Modern Times album, including they lyrics “Where wisdom grows up in strife” from his song “When the Deal Goes Down,” which borrows from a passage from a mid-1800’s poem by Henry Timrod, who wrote, “There is a wisdom that grows in strife.”

These accusations resurfaced in Dylan’s 2012 Rolling Stone interview, where he invoked “Blowin’ In The Wind” as evidence that he has dealt with these questions for quite a while. Said Dylan, “Newsweek magazine lit the fuse way back when. Newsweek printed that some kid from New Jersey wrote ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ and it wasn’t me at all. And when that didn’t fly, people accused me of stealing the melody from a 16th century Protestant hymn. And when that didn’t work, they said they made a mistake and it was really an old Negro spiritual. So what’s so different? It’s gone on for so long I might not be able to live without it now. F–k em. I’ll see them all in their graves.”

This song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
In 1997 a review in the biomedical journal Nature Medicine was published under the title “Nitric Oxide And Inflammation: The Answer Is Blowing In The Wind.” It turned out that this was part of a bet among Swedish scientists who were trying to embed Dylan lyrics into their articles.

Courtesy of Songfacts

LYRICS

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, 'n' how many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, 'n' how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Writer/s: Bob Dylan 
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind
Blog, Song Lyric Sunday

Song Lyric Sunday – The Times They Are A-Changin’

by  • 

Jim Adams gave us some difficult prompts this week for Song Lyric Sunday – Acquire, Collect, Gather and Secure. Not sexy at all Jim!

This was the first and only song I thought of that had the word “Gather” in the lyrics. Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changin'” from the 1960. The decade of protest and change. Sadly not much has changed in 50 plus years as we find ourselves fighting for the same civil rights today that we were then. It is certainly a song that will continue to resonate and inspire change.

I am interested to see what the others come up with today.

A call to action, “The Times They Are A-Changin'” became an anthem for frustrated youth. It summed up the anti-establishment feelings of people who would later be known as hippies. Many of the lyrics are based on the Civil Rights movement in the US.

In the liner notes of this album Biograph, Dylan wrote: “I wanted to write a big song, some kind of theme song, with short, concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. This is definitely a song with a purpose. I knew exactly what I wanted to say and who I wanted to say it to.” 

Dylan recorded this song in October 1963. He first performed the song at a Carnegie Hall concert on October 26 that year, using it as his opening number.

On November 22, 1963, United States president John F. Kennedy was assassinated, which made this song even more poignant. This also presented a quandary for Dylan, who had to decide if he would keep playing the song; he found it odd when audiences would erupt in applause after hearing it, and wondered exactly what they were clapping for.

Dylan kept the song in his sets. It was issued on the album of the same name on January 13, 1964.

Dylan covered the Carter Family Song “Wayworn Traveler,” writing his own words to the melody and named it “Paths Of Victory”. This recording is featured on “Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3”. After writing that song, he re-wrote the words again, changed the time signature to 3/4, and created this, one of his most famous songs ever.

This was released as a single in the UK in 1965 before Dylan went there to tour. It became his first hit in that territory, climbing to #9 on April 21. British listeners liked what they heard from Dylan and made a run on his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (released in 1963), sending it to #1 on April 11. This marked the first time in two years that an album by a group other that The Beatles or Rolling Stones was #1 in the UK.

Lyrics

Come gather 'round, people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Bob Dylan

Source: LyricFind
Blog, Song Lyric Sunday

Song Lyric Sunday – It Ain’t Me Babe

by  • 

Another week comes around and I have chosen a Bob Dylan song for Song Lyric Sunday hosted by Jim Adams. This week he prompted us with Babe, Cutie, Doll, Honey or Sweetie. I went with It Ain’t Me Babe. One of Dylan’s classics. His poetic words still resonate.

“It Ain’t Me Babe” is a song by Bob Dylan that originally appeared on his fourth album Another Side of Bob Dylan, which was released in 1964 by Columbia Records. According to music critic Oliver Trager, this song, along with others on the album, marked a departure for Dylan as he began to explore the possibilities of language and deeper levels of the human experience. Within a year of its release, the song was picked up as a single by folk rock act the Turtles and country artist Johnny Cash (who sang it as a duet with his future wife June Carter). 

Dylan’s biographers generally agree that the song owes its inspiration to his former girlfriend Suze Rotolo. He reportedly began writing the song during his visit to Italy in 1963 while searching for Rotolo, who was studying there. 

Clinton Heylin reports that a Times reporter at a May 1964 Royal Festival Hall concert where Dylan first played “It Ain’t Me” took the chorus “no, no, no” as a parody of the Beatles’ “yeah, yeah, yeah” in “She Loves You”.

Nat Hentoff’s late October 1964 New Yorker article on Dylan includes an account of Hentoff’s presence on the evening in June 1964 in the CBS recording studio when Dylan recorded this and a dozen or so other songs. After some description of the recording studio and booth exchanges among Dylan, his friends, and the session’s producers, Hentoff describes the moment. “Dylan,” Hentoff writes, “went on to record a song about a man leaving a girl because he was not prepared to be the kind of invincible hero and all-encompassing provider she wanted.” “‘It ain’t me you’re looking for babe,’ he [Dylan] sang, with finality,” Hentoff writes in his piece. 

The melody in both phrases uses a scale descending through a minor third. (Dylan played at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday, May 17, 1964. The Times reviewed the performance in the following day’s edition under the heading of “A Minnesota Minstrel.” However, the review makes no mention of “It Ain’t Me, Babe.”)

Facts provided by Wiki

Lyrics

Go away from my window
Leave at your own chosen speed
I'm not the one you want, babe
I'm not the one you need

You say you're lookin' for someone
Who's never weak but always strong
To protect you and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe

Go lightly from the ledge, babe
Go lightly on the ground
I'm not the one you want, babe
I will only let you down

You say you're lookin' for someone
Who will promise never to part
Someone to close his eyes for you
Someone to close his heart
Someone who will die for you and more
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe

Go melt back in the night
Everything inside is made of stone
There's nothing in here moving
And anyway I'm not alone

You say you're looking for someone
Who'll pick you up each time you fall
To gather flowers constantly
And to come each time you call
A lover for your life and nothing more
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Bob Dylan
It Ain't Me Babe lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Audiam, Inc
 
Blog, Song Lyric Sunday

Song Lyric Sunday – It’s All Over Now Baby Blue

by  • 

This week’s prompt from Jim Adams for Song Lyric Sunday is “Baby” Spoilt for choice I decided to go with “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” by Bob Dylan. This is one of Dylan’s finest and most memorable. The poetry is exquisite and I wish I could write this well. I hope you enjoy it.

Like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Positively 4th Street,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” is one of Dylan’s “kiss off” songs, this time sung to someone identified only as “Baby Blue.” The song opens with a bitter declaration:
You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
By the end of the first verse, however, Dylan’s voice lilts in grief and regret:
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
The entire song oscillates between these emotions of scorn and sadness. The lyrics combine realist and surrealist images seamlessly and contain some of Dylan’s best-loved lines:
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you

Over the years, many critics and historians have made their case for who the “real” Baby Blue was. Folk musicians John Baez, David Blue, and Paul Clayton have all been floated as suspects, but thus far none of it has amounted to much beyond loose conjecture.

The song was recorded for Bringing It All Back Home on January 15, 1965, the same day as “Gates of Eden,” “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home album contains a solo acoustic version Dylan recorded on January 13, 1965, but didn’t release. The album also contains a semi-electric version from January 14, 1965.

Dylan generally played his songs live a few times before recording them in studio. With “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” he wanted to get it down on record before he had a chance to become too comfortable with it in concert.

This song appears last on the album and has been categorized as one of Dylan’s “farewell” songs. As such, it continues a pattern established with the two preceding albums, which both also wrapped up with “farewell” songs. “The Times They Are A-Changin'” finishes with “Restless Farewell,” and Another Side of Bob Dylan finishes with “It Ain’t Me Babe.”

“It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” has been covered by many artists over the years including: Them featuring Van Morrison, Eric Burdon and The Animals, Marianne Faithful, Joni Mitchell, The Grateful Dead, The Byrds, Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez.

Joan Baez covered the song on her 1965 album Farewell, Angelina. Baez is one of the most frequently fingered suspects for being the “real” Baby Blue. 

Backstory courtesy of Songfacts

Lyrics

You must leave now, take what you need,
you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep,
you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out, the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue
 
The highway is for gamblers,
better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
The sky too is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue
 
All your seasick sailors, they're all rowing home
Your empty-handed army is all going home
Your lover who just walked out the door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet too is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue
 
Leave your stepping stones behind there,
something calls for you
Forget the dead you've left,
they will not follow you
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue
 
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriter: Bob Dylan

It's All over Now, Baby Blue lyrics ©
Special Rider Music, ABKCO MUSIC INC
%d