I Want You (Bob Dylan song)

"I Want You"
Single by Bob Dylan
from the album Blonde on Blonde
B-side "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" (live version)
Released June, 1966
Format 7"
Recorded March 10, 1966
Genre Folk rock, blues rock
Length 3:07 (album version)
2:54 (single edit)
Label Columbia
Writer(s) Bob Dylan
Producer Bob Johnston
Bob Dylan singles chronology
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35"
(1966)
"I Want You"
(1966)
"Just Like a Woman"
(1966)
Blonde on Blonde track listing
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
(4)
"I Want You"
(5)
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"
(6)

"I Want You" is a 1966 song recorded by Bob Dylan. It was issued as a single in June 1966, shortly before the release of its accompanying album, Blonde on Blonde. A live version of "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" was included as a B-side. Dylan revisited the song in 1987 on a tour that was a collaboration with the Grateful Dead; that live version was released in 1989 on the Dylan and the Dead album.

Contents

Lyrics

Analyzing the evolving drafts of the lyrics, Sean Wilentz writes that there are numerous failures, "about deputies asking him his name... lines about fathers going down hugging one another and about their daughters putting him down because he isn't their brother".[1] Finally Dylan arrives at the right formula. Heylin points out that the gorgeous tune illustrates what Dylan explained to a reporter in 1966: "It's not just pretty words to a tune or putting tunes to words... (It's) the words and the music (together)—I can hear the sound of what I want to say."[2]

Andy Gill notes that the song displays a tension between "the most direct address" of the chorus, the repeated phrase "I want you", and a weird cast of characters, "too numerous to inhabit the song's three minutes comfortably", including a guilty undertaker, a lonesome organ grinder, weeping fathers, mothers, sleeping saviors, the Queen of Spades, and "a dancing child with his Chinese suit".[3] Gill reports that "the dancing child" has been interpreted as a reference to Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones.[4] Clinton Heylin agrees there may be substance to this because the dancing child claims that "time was on his side", perhaps a reference to "Time Is On My Side", the Stones' first U.S. hit.[5]

Chart performance

Billboard magazine noted the release of "I Want You" in its June 25 issue, and predicted it would reach the Top 20.[6] "I Want You" entered the Billboard Hot 100 charts on July 2, 1966 at #90, and Billboard tapped the single as a "star performer"—a side "registering greatest proportionate upward progress this week".[7] It peaked at #20 on July 30.[8]

"I Want You" was also successful on other charts. It entered the Cash Box charts at #59 on July 2, and was also tapped for strong upward movement.[9] It rose slowly, and peaked at #25 on August 6.[10] It was also a major hit in the UK, where it peaked at #16.

Covers

Footnotes

  1. ^ Wilentz 2009, p. 124
  2. ^ Heylin 2009, pp. 312–313.
  3. ^ Gill 1998, pp. 99–100
  4. ^ Gill 1998, p. 100
  5. ^ Heylin 2009, p. 312
  6. ^ Billboard magazine, June 25, 1966; p. 16
  7. ^ Billboard magazine, July 22, 1966; p. 19
  8. ^ Billboard magazine, July 30, 1966
  9. ^ "Cash Box Magazine Charts (July 2, 1966)". Cash Box Magazine (charts)/cashboxmagazine.com (website). http://cashboxmagazine.com/archives/60s_files/19660702.html. Retrieved March 27, 2011. 
  10. ^ "Cash Box Magazine Charts (August 6, 1966)". Cash Box Magazine (charts)/cashboxmagazine.com (website). http://cashboxmagazine.com/archives/60s_files/19660806.html. Retrieved March 27, 2011. 

References