By Tony Attwood
Updated 22 October 2017, with addition (at the end) of a link to the original version.
According to Dylan’s notebooks, this was the third of the Blood on the Tracks songs written. The order of writing appears to be
- Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
- Tangled up in blue
- You’re a big girl now
Lily, Rosemary etc is a song that takes us back to Billy the Kid, and obviously relates to the thinking he had at the time of working on the movie. As such it is outside the ambit of much of the rest of the album.
Tangled up in blue is different – such a magnificent work of art that it is hard to classify. It plays games with us in terms of the order in which things happen – it is almost as if the singer can’t remember exactly what happened when and how, cause and effect have broken down.
There is also the feeling that the “I hate myself for loving you” concept of “Dirge” has all been set aside, he’s mastered the events of his private life, and now he moves on. But then Dylan wrote “You’re a big girl now”. It (and four other songs from the album) were recorded in New York in September 1974 and then again in Minneapolis in December. One version (the second) appears on the album and the other (the New York) on Biograph.
It really is necessary to hear both versions, to get to grips with the song, and indeed if you familiar with the album version I can guarantee that the Biograph version will make you stop in your tracks and just listen if you have not heard it before.
It has been suggested by many writers that the song relates back to “Just Like a Woman” written eight years earlier, in particular “I’m back in the rain” relating to “Tonight as I stand inside the rain”. Maybe, but the basic essence of the two songs is quite different. In “Just like a Woman” she breaks just like a little girl.
I don’t see any woman or girl breaking in “Big girl”. Rather I find a man who is broken, and there really is only one way to read lines such as…
I’m going out of my mind, oh,
With a pain that stops and starts
Like a corkscrew to my heart
Ever since we’ve been apart
There are also moments of Hank Williams here, in particular “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love With You),” but that is a simple way of saying it all. I am not knocking “I can’t help it” but compare the end of Williams’ song with the four lines of Dylan above
It’s hard to know another’s lips will kiss you
And hold you just the way I used to do
Oh, heaven only knows how much I miss you
I can’t help it if I’m still in love with you.
To me “Big Girl” is one of the most successful overpoweringly emotional songs of Dylan’s whole writing career – perhaps the ultimate emotional song in his entire output – although I think one has to listen to the Biograph version and the album version to get this completely.
There is just so much here to hit anyone who has had a deep, intense, meaningful loving relationship which has ended with the other party leaving. So much that one could sink into its hurt and pain and never re-emerge. Perhaps I feel the song so deeply because I seem to have had far more than my fair share of such events. And I know that in the aftermaths I’ve never been able to approach within a million light years of this song. I need the mists of Visions and Johanna, or the anger of Idiot Wind, not the sheer plaintive agony of this song – and again especially not that of the Biograph version.
It is not just “Our conversation was short and sweet, It nearly swept me off my feet, And I’m back in the rain, oh, And you are on dry land,” it is also that absolute self-destructiveness of the whole concept.
I’m going out of my mind, oh,
With a pain that stops and starts
Like a corkscrew to my heart
Ever since we’ve been apart
He doesn’t even have the strength to blame her, he has lost so much of himself every normal male emotion has gone. This is desolation and isolation, hopelessness and emptiness, all rolled into one song. You can face the sheer horror of “selling postcards of the hanging” and know that this actually happened, but you can’t deal with lost love when it is this overpowering.
On Blood on the Tracks, the sleeve notes quote Yates, “We make out of the quarrel with others rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” Or as the All Music review said of this song, “It is like seeing your father cry for the first time.” There really is no escape from pain of this sort… you just have to let it take its course.
In another review I found, the writer reflects on taking a regular session called “Sociology of Rock ‘n Roll” at OhioUniversity taught by a lecturer who himself wrote protest and folk songs.
One Friday he solemnly laid down his guitar, put his hand over his heart, and vowed that he could never write another song. It was all hopeless. He waved a purple album cover in front of us. “This,” he said, “has done me in. You can’t write a better album than this. There’s no sense in even trying.”
It was Blood on the Tracks, … There was only one song that immediately struck me, sitting in that bar, and it still raises the hairs on the back of my neck.
The writer of that piece then takes us into “Big Girl”.
Musically the two versions (the original New York version and the later album version) are very different – even the chord structure has changed, the NY version being much, much more complex, but then sounding (strangely) simpler because of the way the accompaniment is arranged.
I appreciate that you, dear reader, might not know what I am rambling on about when I start to do my thing about chord sequences, but please nonetheless, stay with me for a moment.
The album version runs a chord sequence of
- Bm, Am, Bm Am
- G C G C
- Am Bm Am D
On the New York version the guitar is tuned in a completely different way and the chords are (thanks to Dylanchords.info because I certainly struggled with this)…
Emaj7, B11, Emaj7, B11
E, B, A, E, B, A
F#7, Emaj7, B11, E, A, E, B
If you are a musician you’ll know what I mean, but even if not, you might notice that we have in here chords I’ve never mentioned before in any review on this site – Dylan rarely, if ever, at this stage of his career used chords like “E major 7” or B11. I won’t take up your time describing them – just take it from me, a lot of very good guitarists would have to pause and work out how exactly you play these chords. Dylan is, indeed, off in a different land – a land he returned to much, much later.
So the song rolls from its false opening
Our conversation was short and sweet
It nearly swept me off my feet
which sounds like it could have been a really good meeting, because sweeping a person off his/her feet is normally a positive emotion (at least in English English) but then
And I’m back in the rain, oh, oh,
And you are on dry land
You made it there somehow
You’re a big girl now
And so we know this is something going terribly, terribly, terribly wrong.
Bird on the horizon, sittin’ on a fence
He’s singin’ his song for me at his own expense
And I’m just like that bird, oh, oh,
Singin’ just for you
I hope that you can hear
Hear me singin’ through these tears
No one is making me do this, no one is paying me to do this, I’m just making this record because I can’t find any other way to deal with this hurt and pain. This is all I have.
Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast
Oh, but what a shame if all we’ve shared can’t last
I can change, I swear, oh, oh
See what you can do
I can make it through
You can make it too
Yes he really is desperate – that plea “I can change” is always the last desperate “give me one more chance” of the hopeless man with a hopeless case.
Love is so simple, to quote a phrase
You’ve known it all the time
I’m learnin’ it these days
Oh, I know where I can find you, oh, oh
In somebody’s room
It’s a price I have to pay
You’re a big girl all the way
I have no escape, there is no solution, there is, in fact, nothing.
My one hope, if you are reading this, and you feel up to it (ie not if you are within six months of a serious breakup and there is no sign of anyone new on the horizon), you listen to both versions of the song, and then maybe listen again, not to the voice, but to what the instruments are doing. We are talking two different languages in the construction of this song, and that in itself is a masterpiece.
Between 1 May 1976 and 29 October 2007 Dylan played this song 212 times live. Looking at the totals of live performances that is only three fewer than Visions, and half the number of times he’s played Tweedle Dum. Make of that what you will.
But let me leave you with a comment from a reviewer on the internet.
“I haven’t played Blood in the Tracks for a few years, but I’ve been listening to it over the past few days. I’m going to play that song at an upcoming arts conference. And I’m going to talk about why the words “oh, oh” might constitute some of the best songwriting ever.”
I can see exactly what he means.
Here’s the original version
What else is on the site
1: Over 400 reviews of Dylan songs. There is an index to these in alphabetical order on the home page, and an index to the songs in the order they were written in the Chronology Pages.
2: The Chronology. We’ve taken all the songs we can find recordings of and put them in the order they were written (as far as possible) not in the order they appeared on albums. The chronology is more or less complete and is now linked to all the reviews on the site. We have also recently started to produce overviews of Dylan’s work year by year. The index to the chronologies is here.
3: Bob Dylan’s themes. We publish a wide range of articles about Bob Dylan and his compositions. There is an index here.
4: The Discussion Group We now have a discussion group “Untold Dylan” on Facebook. Just type the phrase “Untold Dylan” in, on your Facebook page or follow this link
5: Bob Dylan’s creativity. We’re fascinated in taking the study of Dylan’s creative approach further. The index is in Dylan’s Creativity.
6: You might also like: A classification of Bob Dylan’s songs and partial Index to Dylan’s Best Opening Lines
And please do note The Bob Dylan Project, which lists every Dylan song in alphabetical order, and has links to licensed recordings and performances by Dylan and by other artists, is starting to link back to our reviews
Brilliant and heartfelt review Tony, it brought a tear to my eye reading it. Two great versions of a magnificent song
And of course “Yates” is “Yeats.”
Another great analysis by Tony. Have you read enough? Then come inside Bob Dylan’s Music Box and listen to every version of every song http://thebobdylanproject.com/Song/id/781/You're-a-Big-Girl-Now
This song kind of takes on a whole new meaning when you hear it just after your daughter leaves home for college.
I rarely read about songs, but I just listened to this one abut 20x in a row, with about 10 rounds of Idiot Wind in between. Agony, that’s the word.
You can listen to the words, and it’s gut-wrenching, and brilliant.
You can listen to the guitars, and the piano (on the release version), and it is absolutely gorgeous.
Two beautiful (and truly out-of-this world) experiences, wrapped into one song.
I don’t know how things like this are even possible.
Thank you for your review, Tony.
I “heard” this song last night on The Voice…
Miley Cyrus * Billy Ray Cyrus is her dad, she picked this song for her 2 team members Brooke Simpson & Sophia Bollman
Whoa!!!
My dad had the 8 track of Blood on the Tracks playing all the time. No need to say what year, 8 track is dead give away! Lol
I heard it for the first time again.
Great review here sir
Thanks very much Monica. Glad you liked it.
I finally heard the New York version in the summer of 2006. My brother had given me the “Blood on the Tapes” bootleg on CD. I was spending a lot of time driving up and down the twenty miles of highway from our old house to the hospital where my mother was spending the last few painful weeks of her life.
I kept listening to this song, which was the only thing that seemed to match the pain I was feeling. And my mother, too, was in pain, a pain that was maddening to her.
I mentioned to one of my brothers (also a huge Dylan fan) that the “Blood on the Tapes” CD was hard to listen to, given the difficult times we were experiencing with our mother. He replied, “Especially ‘You’re a Big Girl Now.'”
He got it, too.
The song is one of the saddest ever–one of the saddest and most beautiful ever.
Oh my! I’m gonna be listening to this many times. My guitar playing friends will make clear all of the chord you list as I only catch in my mind a few. Thank you. Bob’s songs always show something new with each new listen.
My take is from a Father estranged – Zero Romantic inference – but from a Father that has fucked up and is hurting terribly wanting to talk to his grown daughter that he lost.
I’t’s everything I feel everyday. My love is gone… my baby.
I think that many Dylan songs and poetries grew unconsciously from real relationships and things that affected his life at the time. The big girl could be Sara Lowlnds or it might also be an impossible love like Joan Baez, who was devoted to raise Gabriel Harris and was a big girl by then, same could be applied to Sara at that time where their separation was getting more into a crucial point. It does not seem to myself that the song could have been written as a father for his daughters leaving home or so. It is more of a lovers song where the female part of the relationship that used to need him, has grown up and does need him that much anymore taking her own wings. Anyway, first candidate is his wife at the time Sara, and the second choice could be Joan Baez.
Thankis for the review. I listened to the NY version for the first toime — very different, not anywhere near so despairing, it even contains a hint of upbeat with the pedal steel (?) organ and other flourishes. Like someone singing about something he’s gotten on the other side of — rather than in deep pain and agony over. I would have gone with all of the NY sessions actually, especially You’re Going to Make Me Lonesome (which is very painful and moving) Idiot Wind and Simple Twist. While the production of these songs is quite classy and snappy in the final studio version, songs like You’re Going to Make Me Lonesome become too fast (like a jet plane?) and lose some of their angst and edge. In the end, though, glad we have both versions. By the way, was Bob ever really in love with Joan Baez? Doubtful. She was heads over heels for him, of course. But she wanted him to be something he wasn’t — or didn’t want to be. She wanted what her sister Mimi had found with Richard. Too all-consuming for Bobbie’s Muse I suspect. Thanks for the site!
A great review. There is an omission, though, that will be a major omission to guitar players. On most of Blood in the Tracks, he plays in an alternate tuning. He plays in
Open D Tuning
I quote from Wikipedia:
Open D tuning is an open tuning for the acoustic or electric guitar. The open string notes in this tuning are (from lowest to highest): D A D F♯ A D. It uses the three notes that form the triad of a D major chord: D, the root note; A, the perfect fifth; and F♯, the major third. [1]
To tune a guitar from standard tuning to open D tuning, lower the 1st (high-E) string down a full step to D, 2nd (B) string down a full step to A, 3rd (G) string down a half step to F♯, and 6th (low-E) string down a full step to D.
In this tuning, when the guitar is strummed without fretting any of the strings, a D major chord is sounded. This means that any major chord can be easily created using one finger, fretting all the strings at once (also known as barring); for example, fretting all the strings at the second fret will produce an E major, at the third fret an F major, and so on up the neck.
This tuning has a distinctive sound, due mostly to the fact that it has 2 consecutive notes in unison. Once you are familiar with the “sound” of an Open D tuning, it is easy to identify in any song.
I began playing songs from ‘Blood on the Tracks’ in the mid-’80s. It remains my favorite album of all time. From 1985 – 2000 I traveled the globe with my backpack playing those songs in 160 countries. We met in Thailand, lived in London, and broke up on a sad night in Tokyo. I played that song for her dozens of times. These days I can listen to it, but playing it is simply impossible. ‘You’re a big girl now’ is a stunning piece that still brings heart-wrenching emotions.
I’m listening to the Biograph version and it’s breaking my heart. Emma swift’s version just came out on her”blonde on the tracks”. It’s quite good. I will now give a listen to blood on the tracks. Thanks for your insight tony.