Bob Dylan’s greatest compositions year by year: 1969 – I’ll have you any time

By Tony Attwood

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Previously in this series….

• 1961.  “I was young when I left home”
• 1962:  Tomorrow is a long time
• 1963: Seven Curses
• 1964: Gates of Eden
• 1965: Visions of Johnanna
• 1966: One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)
• 1967 part 1: “Drifter’s Escape”
• 1967 part 2:  I’m not there
• 1968: Bob stops but even so (Lay Lady Lay)

As we saw in the last episode of this series (1968) Bob had a compositional slow down at this time, and in 1968 wrote only one song, but it was a real corker (sorry that might be a phrase only known in the UK – it means something really good), so that’s what I included in the last episode.

But in 1969 things were back to normal with 15 songs being composed.  Except that I personally don’t really rate any of them except one – and that was a co-composition: “I’ll have you any time” written with George Harrison.

Now there are a few articles about how the two composers worked together, but I’ve not read anything in which one of the composers sets out how this song was written.

So, without such guidance, I am offering my guess.   And that is that George wrote most of the song, and then Bob added what became the “middle 8” (the bit where the verse stops and a new section of music comes in) – which starts “All I have is yours.”

Therefore, I am guessing that the two composers each wrote a separate part of the song and then these two parts were welded together.   George, I believe, wrote the music of the verses (and I am specifically talking about the music here, not the lyrics) and Bob wrote the chorus.

Musically, in the verse as you can perhaps hear, we go through a series of chords which are not related to each other in terms of how music conventionally works.  And indeed I can’t think of a song that Bob wrote which uses such sequences as Gmaj7, Bbmaj7, Cm7, G, Am, Em, D.  That is not a Bob Dylan chord sequence.

The song clearly is in G major, but the first three chords are not chords that are normally found in songs in G major.   They can be, but it is not normal – any more than it is normal to start a song with three chords that aren’t directly from the key one is playing in.

But George Harrison did this in his compositions sometimes, so it is not too much of a jump to say he wrote that.

However, then we have the chorus, and here the whole approach to the music changes, which now has a somewhat ambiguous feeling toward the issue of key, but if one is forced to say it is in a partiuclar key, that key has to be A major – where it starts and ends.

A      E       D
 All I have is yours
C        G      F   A
 All you see is mine
        D                D/C
And I'm glad to hold you in my arms
D/B           D/Bb  A  Asus4 A
 I'd have you any - time

Now we may argue about exactly which key each part of the song is in, but one thing is clear: the chorus and the verse are in different keys.  In fact, one might even say that they are from different songs – which is a bit of a giveaway when two famous composers have come together to write a piece of music.

So my guess is the song was written by George Harrison, but without the “All I have is yours” bit which Bob then wrote and added into the full composition.

As a combined it is unusual in the way that it moves keys, but it works.  And there is another thing: the lyrics of the chorus really are quite different from the lyrics of the verses.  I don’t know if that means Bob wrote the lyrics and the music of his part, but that is a possibility.

Now just to do a bit of boasting, I wrote the above before looking up any background on the song, and it does appear that there is a general acceptance of this approach to the song – along with some comments about Bob being keen to learn some of the more unusual chords and chord sequences that George Harrison was known for using – and indeed used here.

It does make for a very good and very enjoyable song, although one can debate whether the change of chord in the sequences from the start, which runs Gmaj7, Bbmaj7, Cm7, G, Am, Em, D.   That is nothing like a sequence you will hear in a Dylan song.

So it could be argued that the jump from the verse to the chorus is rather forced, with each composer, firstly, unused to working with the other (or indeed any other), and secondly, that the composers were more interested in the chord sequence than the overall effect and feel of the song.

But the two master-composers obviously liked the result, and in fact it was used as the opening track to Harrison’s first solo album.

And what is generally not mentioned is that the other songs Bob wrote in 1969 didn’t seem to have a specific flavour or the flair that we had come to expect from him.  In fact, it can be argued that this was a composition that helped Bob unlock his creative spirit once more after a time when it had been blocked.

Of course I don’t deny Bob wrote 15 songs in the course of 1969 (there is a list on the chronology page for the decade), but the fact is that beyond this song, I don’t find that final burst of uniqueness in the writing that we had come to expect from Bob, if not in every song, then at least in a few each year.

As I have suggested before, I get the feeling that Bob was struggling to get the compositional urge moving again, having only written one song the previous year (“Lay Lady Lay”) so working with George Harrison could have helped him quite a lot.

According to one review, “The song reflects the environment in which it was written, as Harrison’s verses urge the shy and elusive Dylan to let down his guard, and the Dylan-composed choruses respond with a message of welcome.”  Maybe so.  It seems a nice thought and I think I’d agree.

Indeed, we might also note that the above recording has Eric Clapton on lead guitar and Phil Spector as co-producer.  With Bob as a co-writer on this song seemed to have everything – although other than those lines of Bob, as I started to gather my thoughts on writing this review, the only other song from the album that I could eventually conjure up before I dug the box set out and put it on the turntable was “Beware of Darkness,” and if you do choose to listen to this song, do spare a moment to listen to the chord sequence.  That is exactly what Bob was asking George to talk to him about.

Watch out now, take care
Beware of the thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your head
The hopelessness around you
In the dead of night