Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?

"Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?"
Single by Bob Dylan
B-side "Highway 61 Revisited"
Released December 21, 1965
Format 7"
Recorded October 5 and 6 , 1965
Genre Folk rock
Length 3:32
Label Columbia Records
Writer(s) Bob Dylan
Producer(s) Bob Johnston
Bob Dylan singles chronology
"Positively 4th Street"
(1965)
"Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?"
(1965)
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
(1966)
Biograph track listing
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" (live)
(13 of disc 2)
"Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?"
(14 of disc 2)
"Positively 4th Street"
(15 of disc 2)

"Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" was a 1965 single by American rock artist Bob Dylan. The single, recorded in October 1965[1] and released that December, reached #58 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and #17 on the UK chart in January 1966. Dylan is accompanied on the song by the musical group then known as The Hawks, who had backed the singer on his 1966 world tour and would subsequently go on to fame in their own right as The Band: Robbie Robertson (guitar), Rick Danko (bass), Richard Manuel (piano), Garth Hudson (organ), and Levon Helm (drums).

Originally available as a single only, the song was eventually included on Dylan's compilations Masterpieces (1978) and Biograph (1985), and on the Band's box set A Musical History (2005). The song has only ever been released as a mono recording, although a stereo mix is known to exist.

Dylan played the song to Phil Ochs as the two were riding in a limousine. When Ochs expressed a lukewarm feeling about the piece, Dylan ejected him from his limousine, yelling "You're not a folk singer. You're a journalist."[2]

Two earlier versions had been recorded in July 1965 during the sessions for the album Highway 61 Revisited with a band including Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper; one was mistakenly issued on a mispress of the single Positively 4th Street that autumn. Neither has been officially released.

This song was included in the list of songs in Nick Hornby's book 31 Songs, that was published in the U.S. as Songbook.

Covers

English pub rock mainstay Wilko Johnson recorded a version for his 1981 album "Ice on the Motorway"

The Vacels, a New York group, recorded the song in 1965, releasing it on Kama Sutra in the US and on Pye International in the UK. It is believed that their version pre-dates Dylan's own version.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience covered the song for BBC Radio. This version was later released on the BBC Sessions album.

The Hold Steady covered the song for the soundtrack to the Dylan quasi-biopic I'm Not There.

Transvision Vamp covered the song on their third album, Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble.

Les Fradkin covers it in his 2006 Dylan cover album If Your Memory Serves You Well.

Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey covered it for their album Going Back Home

Notes

  1. Heylin, Clinton, Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973. Chicago; Chicago Review Press, 2009, pp. 252, 254
  2. Schumacher, Michael, There But for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs. New York; Hyperion, 1996, p. 106

References