Bob Dylan - I want you

First performance: 29/11/1974


Coverinfo

Bruce covered the song 11 times:
 
Always with Suki Lahav on violin
 
 
 
1973-11-11 Kendall Hall, Ewing, NJ 
1974-11-29 War Memorial, Trenton, NJ
1974-12-06 State Theatre, New Brunswick, NJ
1974-12-07 Geneva Theatre, Geneva, NY
1974-12-08 Burlington Memorial Auditorium, Burlington, VT 
1975-02-06 Widener Field House, Chester, PA
1975-03-07 Painters Mill Music Fair, Owings Mills, MD
1975-03-08 DAR Constitution Hall, Washington, DC 
1975-03-09 DAR Constitution Hall, Washington, DC
  

Songinfo

"I Want You" is a song recorded by Bob Dylan in 1966. Recorded for Dylan's double-album Blonde on Blonde. It was issued as a single that June, shortly before the release of the album. There were three complete takes of "I Want You", with the final take and a guitar overdub comprising the master. The recording session was released in its entirety on the 18-disc Collector's Edition of The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 in 2015, with the penultimate take of the song also appearing on the 6-disc and 2-disc versions of that album. Dylan performed "I Want You" as a slow ballad during his 1978 world tour, as heard on Bob Dylan at Budokan, released in 1979. Dylan also revisited the song in 1987 on a co-tour with the Grateful Dead; their version was released in 1989 on the Dylan and the Dead album. 
 
 
  

Bruce on the artist

Induction Bob Dylan Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions 1988
 
1988-01-20 - WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL, NEW YORK CITY
 
"The first time that I heard Bob Dylan I was in the car with my mother, and we were listening to, I think, maybe WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody kicked open the door to your mind, from ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ And my mother, who was – she was no stiff with rock and roll, she liked the music, she listened – she sat there for a minute, she looked at me, and she said, ‘That guy can’t sing.’ But I knew she was wrong. I sat there, I didn’t say nothin’, but I knew that I was listening to the toughest voice that I had ever heard. It was lean, and it sounded somehow simultaneously young and adult, and I ran out and I bought the single. And I came home, I ran home, and I put it on my 45, and they must have made a mistake at the factory, because a Lenny Welch song came on. And the label was wrong, so I ran back, and I got it, and I played it, then I went out and I got Highway 61, and it was all I played for weeks. I looked at the cover, with Bob, with that satin blue jacket and the Triumph Motorcycle shirt. And when I was a kid, Bob’s voice somehow – it thrilled and scared me. It made me feel kind of irresponsibly innocent. And it still does. But it reached down and touched what little worldliness I think a 15-year-old kid, in high school, in New Jersey had in him at the time. Dylan was – he was a revolutionary, man, the way that Elvis freed your body, Bob freed your mind. And he showed us that just because the music was innately physical, it did not mean that it was anti-intellect. He had the vision and the talent to expand a pop song until it contained the whole world. He invented a new way a pop singer could sound. He broke through the limitations of what a recording artist could achieve, and he changed the face of rock and roll forever and ever. Without Bob, the Beatles wouldn’t have made Sergeant Pepper, maybe the Beach Boys wouldn’t have made Pet Sounds, the Sex Pistols wouldn’t have made ‘God Save the Queen,’ U2 wouldn’t have done ‘Pride in the Name of Love,’ Marvin Gaye wouldn’t have done ‘What’s Goin’On,’ Grandmaster Flash might not have done ‘The Message,’ and the Count Five could not have done ‘Psychotic Reaction.’ And there never would have been a group named the Electric Prunes, that’s for sure. But the fact is that, to this day, where great rock music is being made, there is the shadow of Bob Dylan over and over and over again. And Bob’s own modern work has gone unjustly under-appreciated for having to stand in that shadow. If a young songwriter – if there was a young guy out there writing ‘Sweetheart Like Me,’ writing the Empire Burlesque album, writing ‘Every Grain of Sand,’ they’d be calling him the new Bob Dylan. That’s all the nice stuff that I wrote out to say about him. Now it’s about three months ago, I was watching TV, and the Rolling Stones special came on, and Bob came on, and he was in a real cranky mood, it seemed like, and he was kind of bitchin’ and moaning about how his fans don’t know him, and nobody knows him. And they come up to him on the street, and kind of treat him like a long-lost brother or something. And speaking as fan, I guess when I was 15, and I heard ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ I heard a guy that, like I’ve never heard before or since. A guy that had the guts to take on the whole world, and made me feel like I had ’em too. And maybe some people mistook that voice to be saying somehow that you were gonna do the job for ’em. And as we know, as we grow older, that there isn’t anybody out there that can do that job for anybody else. So I’m just here tonight to say thanks, to say that I wouldn’t be here without you, to say that there isn’t a soul in this room who does not owe you their thanks. And to steal a line from one of your songs, whether you like it or not, ‘you was the brother that I never had.’ Congratulations."
 
 
 

Lyrics

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn, but it’s
Not that way, I wasn’t born to lose you
I want you
I want you
I want you, so bad
Honey, I want you
The drunken politician leaps
Upon the street where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep, they wait for you
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin’ from my broken cup
And ask me to open up the gate for you
I want you
I want you
Yes I want you, so bad
Honey, I want you
How all my fathers, they’ve gone down
True love they’ve been without it
But all their daughters put me down
’Cause I don’t think about it
Well, I return to the Queen of Spades
And talk with my chambermaid
She knows that I’m not afraid to look at her
She is good to me and there’s
Nothing she doesn’t see
She knows where I’d like to be but it doesn’t
Matter
I want you
I want you
Yes I want you, so bad
Honey, I want you
Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit he
Spoke to me, I took his flute
No, I wasn’t very cute to him, was I?
But I did it, because he lied and
Because he took you for a ride
And because time was on his side and
Because I
Want you
I want you
Yes I want you, so bad
Honey, I want you