Previously in this series…
- Part 1: 1965.
- Part 2: 1975.
- Part 3: 1984 – 1989
- Part 4: 1990 – 1995
- Part 5: 1996 – 2001
- Part 6: 2002 – 2010
- Part 7: 2011 – 2025.
All over now
By Mike Johnson
[I read somewhere that if you wanted the very best, the acme of Dylan’s pre-electric work, you couldn’t do better than listen to side B of Bringing It All Back Home, 1964. Four songs, ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ ‘Gates of Eden,’ ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ and ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ represent the pinnacle of Dylan’s acoustic achievement. In this series I aim to chart how each of these foundation songs fared in performance over the years, the changing face of each song and its ultimate fate (at least to date). This is the seventh and last article on the fourth and final track, ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.’ You can find the previous articles in this History in Performance series here: ]
In the previous article we found Dylan struggling to breathe life into ‘Baby Blue’ in 2009 and 2010. When lead guitarist Charlie Sexton re-joined the band in 2011, the Never Ending Tour began a renaissance which would continue up to 2019, when Covid put a stop to public performances. If you have followed my NET series will be familiar with this rising curve, and how Dylan’s immersion in Frank Sinatra in 2015 transformed his vocal style.
Unfortunately for our present study, Dylan was not able to bring this newfound vitality to ‘Baby Blue,’ and he continued to struggle with the song. This is reflected in the gaps in performance of the song, and the relatively low number of performances each year. He did about a dozen performances in both 2011 and 2012, then dropped the song until 2016 when he picked it up again for about a dozen performances and then, after a single performance in 2017, dropped the song again until 2019 which saw a mere four performances. It was then dropped again until the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, when he picked it up again, this time with much more success, in 2024 and 2025.
Our story thus does have a happy ending, with stunning performances in 2024/25, but it’s a bit of rocky road getting there. Because I’m writing a history of performance, I’m dutybound to cover the 2011 – 2019 performances, but I have to confess they are not my favourites.
2011, however, saw this interesting performance with Mark Knopfler on lead guitar, and we have an excellent video of that performance. If you’d never heard any of his earlier renditions of the song you might find this one catchy enough in a foot-tapping way, but it comes nowhere near the emotional intensity of some of the previous versions.
2011
In 2012, the year Tempest came out, Dylan shifted from the organ back to the piano. This minimal version, with its charming harp break, has its attractions, but the bouncy, upbeat tempo keeps the song from reaching for the deeper emotions that drive it. He’s keeping the song going, but the 2012 performances are not going to set anybody on fire.
2012
Now we jump to 2016, which saw the song return quite strongly with some twenty performances. Dylan’s voice has certainly improved in terms of range and emotional power, but the arrangement has not changed. Still the same upbeat tempo, with the same limitations we have been witnessing. You may think I’m being a bit tough on Dylan here, as this version certainly has its charm, and I guess I’m comparing it, somewhat unfairly perhaps, to the glories of the past, but I am just not moved by the song as I have been. It sounds like a pleasant fill-in on the setlists, a reminder of the past without the soaring emotions of past performances.
2016
I’m going to skip over the single 2017 performance, as it doesn’t offer anything new or interesting, to jump to 2019, the last year of the NET. In 2019 there is a new arrangement, but the tempo remains the same, inappropriately upbeat (at least to my ear), and the harp break at the end can’t lift it out of its rut. This song can be so much more than this foot-tapper.
2019
Six years later, in 2024 Dylan returns to the song. While he keeps the tempo, we sense that the fire and resilience are still there. Hope never dies. You can hear the hope flaring in the upsinging. With some thirty performances in that year, it’s clear that Dylan has rediscovered the song. Just where it’s leading we won’t find out until 2025.
2024 (a)
That Bournemouth performance is no accident. Here it is again in the same year, from Prague, with a wonderfully jagged, jazzy harp break. We can feel the blood flowing in the veins of the song once more.
2024 (b)
In 2025, however, and I’m writing this in June of that year, we find a completely transformed understanding of the song, and a totally new approach. He abandons the foot-tapping tempo altogether, slows the song right down, packing it out with clusters of piano notes, and employs the half-reciting, half-singing that marks his late vocal style.
The song becomes something new. The passion is back, but with a different flavour. Reeking of nostalgia, it becomes a frame through which we can approach the history of the song, and its origins as a song of farewell. More than that, however, it becomes a valedictory piece, a farewell to a lifetime of performance.
Just as the 1965 original bade farewell, not just to a particular woman, but an era, the era of Dylan the acoustic protest singer, following ‘My Back Pages’ and ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ in signalling a change in direction for the young ‘spokesman of his generation.’ He was about to strike another match and start anew, filled with sorrow and hope, sorrow for what has passed, hope for what is to come.
Sixty years later we arrive at another farewell, that which is fitting for an eighty-four-year-old who may be bidding farewell to his whole career. Every performance could be the last, and he sings it as if he may never sing it again. It’s this finality of these 2024/25 performances that make it a tear-jerker for me personally. Is it really all over now? Is there not perhaps another album, another year or two of performing? The heart-rending harp solo at the end tells the same story. ‘Baby Blue’ has been sent down the road, weeping, but our tears have different roots, stemming as they do from a lifelong love of Dylan and his years of service (you gotta serve somebody) up there on stage pouring out his heart.
Can this really be the end? We can’t know, but these 2025 performances bring us to face that possibility.
This brings me full circle. I began my articles on ‘Baby Blue’ with the Tulsa performance of 2025. It had only just appeared on YouTube. Since then, and to April, there have been seventeen performances, the song having leapt back up into the setlists. The promise of that Tulsa performance is being fulfilled in subsequent performances. Try this one from Kalamazoo.
2025
Sadness becomes the final layer of this complex love song. It now sounds more like a poem than a song, and we bid farewell once more, both to this song and this series on the four songs from side B of Bringing It All Back Home. I plan to do one more article with final thoughts on these songs, and will try to see them as a whole.
Until then
Kia Ora