Dylan, Donovan, Them and 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue'

 

There's a great scene in D.A. Pennebaker's fly on the wall documentary of Bob Dylan's 1965 British tour. Dylan has been plagued with questions about Donovan, the young 'British Dylan' on virtually every press conference or interview he's had. He's clearly getting tired with it all. Finally a meeting between the two is set up in back stage room following a concert. Both men are surrounded by acolytes and hangers on. The atmosphere is thick with judgement.  A guitar comes out. Donovan takes it and plays a slight and gentle song To Sing For You filled with loving, peaceful sentiments. It's likeable but quite lightweight, naïve and clearly also comes with a heavy, indisguisable debt to Dylan but without his trademark dripping cynicism. Dylan says halfway through 'Hey that's a good song,' but his encompassing shades make the degree of his sincerity unclear. It could easily be read quite the other way. Afterwards the guitar gets passed in turn to him and he sings the recently written 'It's All Over Now,' at Donovan's request. He's taken off his shades. The chasm between the quality of the two songs is so infinite that the idea of actually cutting the atmosphere in the room with a knife suddenly almost seems plausible. Donovan's face is surely a picture of shy, apprentice humiliation.

 

 

The lyrics of the song have been said to be written following the influence and example of the French symbolist poets, Rimbaud and Verlaine amongst others. They're quite extraordinary and unprecedented in this format and bear almost no relation to anything else in the Rock canon except perhaps to other Dylan songs. They're clearly a withering put down of someone or something. It's been debated of whom exactly. Figures on the Greenwich Village Folk Scene. Folk music itself. Joan Baez.

 

I don't actually think Dylan's is the best version of the song . Them's cover version with Van Morrison at the helm surpasses it for me. The circling piano work and his hypnotic vocals take it into the realm of dream. Beck later sampled Them's version to great effect.

 

 

But the key to its indescribable greatness rests squarely within its lyrics:

 

'You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin’ through
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home
All your reindeer armies, are all going home
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue'

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music