The Never Ending Tour Extended: I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight

I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

The Never Ending Tour Extended: This series primarily uses recordings selected by Mike Johnson in his inestimable masterpiece The Never Ending Tour, and looks at how those performances of individual songs change as time goes by. The selection of songs from the series, and the commentary below, are by Tony Attwood. A list of all the songs covered in the series is given at the end.

I’ll be your Baby Tonight was played 654 times between 1969 and 2024, although here we are looking at the performances that form part of the Never Ending Tour, not the most recent Rough and Rowdy tour. As such it is the 23rd most performed song by Dylan across the years, and in terms of John Wesley Harding tracks, second only to the all-time most performed composition, “All along the Watchtower” which had 2268 performances, concluding in 2018.

1991 King of the unsteady

Our first sampling gives no real indication of what the song is going to be from the introduction – it’s a gentle rocker which includes just the hint of a melody from the lead guitar. Then just past the minute mark we get the harmonica coming in, and finally Bob gives us vocals – which to me seem to be unsteady, or perhaps even on might say, uncertain. Which is strange for a song chosen to be one of the most performed of all his compositions.

I’d also say that the instrumental breaks sound something of a mess to me – every instrument ploughing in with its own contribution without direction. Indeed this is one of those performances which I feel, if I heard it without any knowledge of Dylan, I’d just dismiss it as one from an ok band which could do with a new vocalist, and some more rehearsals. (In fact rather like the bands I used to play in).

Around the 5 minute 30 mark there is a harmonica solo which does little more than repeat one phrase. And then it comes to an end. Not Bob’s finest performance in my opinion, although the second or two of audience reaction we can hear before the cut off suggests they liked it.

2003 Pounding pianos and hectic harps

In 2003 the lively, bouncy approach to the song is maintained, but with a much shorter introduction. Bob uses a sort of pleading voice with the lyrics coming out in bursts, in a vocal performance that still doesn’t seem to match the relaxed approach from the music.

Indeed I think that is the main point with this performance. The music and the singing are out of touch with each other. Just listen to the instrumental break around 2 minutes 20 seconds and onwards. It is lighthearted, fun, jokey, relaxed… the second verse of that instrumental break also plays with the timing.

Then with the vocals coming back for the middle 8 it seems everything is working well with vocals and instruments, but as Bob returns to singing, we still have that pleading effect from his voice. Also from this point on we can occasionally hear Bob on the piano – and he’s not really playing in keeping with the band.

But then, there is an instrumental break with the harmonica. Unfortunately, the recordist picked up a conversation as well, which is off-putting, but if one can ignore that, the performance is saved by that final verse.

2015: Singing to you, not at you

Our final recording of the song still keeps that bounce, but Bob has returned to singing – and how he has returned. It is now more experimental and varied and as a result very much more in keeping with the song. I love the way he sings “Take your shoes off” and “Bring that bottle over here”.

The instrumental breaks too seem to be much more in keeping with the rest of the song – carrying the same relaxed feel through the entire performance – which of course is what is needed to stay in touch with a song called “I’ll be your baby tonight”.

It is incidentally one of the few Dylan compositions in which the composer modulates (ie changes key). The fact that we don’t particularly notice it now, is in part because we are used to those chord changes, but also in part because of the way the song swings long Just listen to the last minute of the performance.

And that’s it. We just have three recordings of this song from the tour selected in the Never Ending Tour series which suggests to me that Mike Johnson, in selecting the recordings to include in his articles, didn’t find much going on in terms of the evolution of the song, and so didn’t include more in his articles.

And because of the structure of the chord sequence and the importance of the melody that is quite true. So Bob played with the rhythm, which is fair enough, although what could have taken the song further forward would be harmony singing, which of course Bob doesn’t do often. But just to show where the song could go here’s another interpretation. The melody and chords are the same. It is the harmonies that do it.

Other articles in this series…

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