Bob Dylan dug a little more deeply into his catalog over the weekend in Prague, performing both “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “Dignity” for the first time in five years. Listen below.
He’s playing a string of European dates after a summer spent on tour with Willie Nelson and the Outlaw Music Festival Tour. Sunday night’s concert was the last of a three-date stand at the O2 Universum.
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” is originally from 1965’s platinum-selling international Top 5 hit Bringing It All Back Home and became one of Dylan’s most-covered songs. Memorable updates followed from Them (an early garage-band classic), Joan Baez (1965’s Farewell, Angelina), the Byrds (1969’s Ballad of Easy Rider), the Animals (1977’s Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted) and Marianne Faithfull (1985’s Rich Kid Blues).
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Dylan tirelessly worked on “Dignity” with producer Daniel Lanois during sessions for 1989’s Oh Mercy, but they never finished. “Whatever promise Dan had seen in the song was beaten into a bloody mess,” Dylan later admitted in Chronicles: Volume One. “Where we had started from, we’d never gotten back to, a fishing expedition gone nowhere. In no take did we ever turn back the clock. We just kept winding it. Every take another ball of confusion.”
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Dylan later reworked “Dignity” for 1994’s Greatest Hits Volume 3, but hadn’t returned to the song in concert since May 4, 2019, in Fuengirola, Spain. He last played “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” on Oct. 23, 2019, at Ames, Iowa.
The set lists in Prague also included “All Along the Watchtower,” “Desolation Row,” “Every Grain of Sand,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece” and two songs (“I Contain Multitudes” and “False Prophet”) from the tour’s title album, 2020’s Rough and Rowdy Ways.
Dylan is now headed to Germany.
Listen to Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’
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Gallery Credit: Michael Gallucci
Listen to Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’
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