It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan and featured on his Bringing It All Back Home album, released on March 22, 1965, by Columbia Records.
[1] The master take of the song was recorded on January 15, 1965, during the sessions for the Bringing It All Back Home album and was produced by Tom Wilson.
[2] Bill Janovitz of AllMusic describes the music as beautiful, with folk guitar chord changes and a somber melody, while the chorus, with its line "and it's all over now, Baby Blue" has a heartbreaking quality to it.
[5] Like other Dylan songs of the period, such as "Chimes of Freedom" and "Mr. Tambourine Man", the lyrics of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" bear the strong influence of Symbolist poets such as Arthur Rimbaud.
[5] Dylan's choice of performing "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" as his last acoustic song at the infamous Newport Folk Festival of 1965, after having had his electric set met with boos, is often used as evidence to support this theory.
[5] Dylan played the song for Donovan in his hotel room during his May 1965 tour of England in a scene shown in the 1967 D. A. Pennebaker documentary Dont Look Back.
[14] A live version from December 1975, recorded during the first Rolling Thunder Revue tour, is contained on The Bootleg Series Vol.
"[23] Morrison's record producer at the time, Bert Berns, encouraged him to find models for his songs, so he bought Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home album in March 1965.
[24] One of the songs on the album held a unique fascination for Morrison and he soon started performing "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" in small clubs and pubs as a solo artist (without Them).
[24] Producer Tommy Scott was conscious of the importance of Dylan's music on the current pop scene and was eager for Morrison to cover "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" during the 1965 sessions for Them's second LP.
[24][25] After a failed, preliminary attempt to record the track with session pianist Phil Coulter at Regent Sound studios in London, Scott reconsidered his approach to the song.
[25] Scott decided to rearrange the song's musical backing, incorporating a distinctive recurring blues riff and piano work from Them's keyboard player, Peter Bardens, resulting in a finished recording that the band were satisfied with.
Played very fast, Van's voice virtually fighting for control over the band, 'Baby Blue' emerges as music that is both dramatic and terrifying.
"[26] In 2003, author Clinton Heylin called Them's 1966 recording of the song a "genuine rarity, a Dylan cover to match the original.
[31] Beck used a sample of Them's 1966 recording of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" as the basis for his single "Jack-Ass", which appeared on his 1996 album, Odelay (see 1996 in music).
[35] In 1984, Morrison made a guest appearance at one of Bob Dylan's concerts in London and the two musicians performed a duet of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue".
[37] In a 2009 Paste magazine readers, writers and editors poll of the 50 Best Bob Dylan Covers of All Time, Them's version of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" was ranked at number 28.
[38] The Byrds' recording of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" first saw release on October 29, 1969, as part of the band's Ballad of Easy Rider album.
[39][40] The song also appeared on the B-side of the band's December 1969 single, "Jesus Is Just Alright", which reached number 97 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
[40][41] The Byrds had previously attempted to record the song on two separate occasions, some four years earlier, during studio sessions for their second album, Turn!
[42] At that time, the Byrds planned to release "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" as a follow-up to their previous hit Bob Dylan covers, "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "All I Really Want to Do".
[42] A program director from KRLA, who was present at the recording sessions, was impressed enough to play an acetate disc of the track on air, plugging it as the Byrds' new single.
[48] He decided to slow down the tempo and radically alter the song's arrangement to fashion a more somber and serious version than those that the Byrds recorded in 1965.
[43] Ultimately, McGuinn was dissatisfied with the recording of the song included on Ballad of Easy Rider, feeling that it tended to drag within the context of the album.
"[54] [Graham Bonnet]] recorded a cover version of the song, which entered the Australian Top 100 chart in August 1977 and peaked at Number 3 in November that year.
[58] In 2021, Rolling Stone magazine put the version by the 13th Floor Elevators in ninth position in their '80 Greatest Dylan Covers of All Time' article.
