It Ain't Me Babe: A Romantic Tragedy

Before I knew “It Ain’t Me Babe” was a Bob Dylan song, I knew it as a Joan Baez song. Everyday, I’d sit under my poster of Picasso’s The Old Guitarist—which I had mistakenly hung upside down with command strips, totally unaware of what the actual painting looked like—and I’d pluck out the song with the only pattern I knew.

On a dreary day, under the grey Boston sky, a friend of mine was caught in the crossfire of my sacred ritual. Her back was turned to me and her silhouette was backlit by the strangely beautiful view of the Boston Common perfectly parallel to my window. 

The silence was heavy when I finished singing. My heartbeat began to tread through sludge as she started to cry beautiful tears. Without a word, she walked out of my dorm, leaving me with only a look, so vulnerable and raw she had to break the tension with a desperate giggle that sounded more like a cry. 

That was when I understood why I liked the song so much. It was guttural and drenched in context so vivid, it brought those who heard it to tears. 

The song fell out of my rotation for a while, until the buzz of the new Timothee Chalamet lead film, A Complete Unknown. In the last couple months, “It Ain’t Me Babe” has become a new phenomenon for appreciators of the song “Silver Springs” by Fleetwood Mac and Alex Turner’s love letter to Alexa Chung. Audiences love a song with a messy, devastating backstory, especially when it is between two artists, and I am not exempt. 

Baez and Dylan’s tumultuous history has been the subject of public interest for decades. Their partnership is compelling because it showcases the rare dynamic of two generation-defining young artists discovering themselves besides each other, made even more tragic by the fact they found out they were incompatible, with Dylan brutally putting the final nail into the coffin with his marriage to Sara Lownds after his 1965 tour. 

Joan Baez lifting Bob Dylan at an after-party in New York, 1964.

Dylan released “It Ain’t Me Babe” in 1964 as a closer for his fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. At this time, Dylan was experiencing a quick ascent to music stardom through his association with the exploding folk music scene, a movement that, until his arrival, had been spearheaded by Baez. As folk’s golden child, Baez’s activism and poetic truth set her apart as both a musician and a voice for her generation. Though our instincts today would associate that title more with Dylan, Baez’s work and ethereal beauty greatly influenced him in the early sixties, metamorphosing him from “A Complete Unknown” into an orphic figure, a prophet, an avid observer of the world and speaker for the people. 

Also included on Another Side of Bob Dylan is the intimate love song, “To Ramona,” which Dylan is suspected to have written about Baez. He writes, “But it grieves my heart, love, to see you trying to be a part of/A world that just don’t exist,” revealing an inside look into the pair’s differing opinions on art, a force that would ultimately lead to the decay of their collaboration as artists and lovers. 

When it came to matters of morality, Baez was never one to back down, and she kept that same attitude when it came to responding to Dylan. In her 1972 track, “To Bobby,” Baez calls her former lover to return to his protest song roots, urging him to use his platform to advocate against injustice. She scathingly replies to Dylan’s pleas for her to see the world the way it is, singing “When all the eyes of starving children/Are wide open/You cast aside the cursed crown/And put your magic into a sound/That made me think your heart was aching/Or even broken.” 

When you look back on Baez and Dylan’s 1963 and 1964 performances at Newport, their love is palpable: In Joan’s young voice calling her friend “Bobby” to the stage, the giggles that cut through their two incredibly distinct voices, and Baez’s incessant teasing of Dylan to the crowd. The dissonance of their contrasting personalities, as the blessed virgin Mary of folk and the rag tag, tinny, vagabond of pop, is incredibly charming to watch. The performances of the young Baez and Dylan feed the impossibility that their puppy love could ever die, making the eventuality of their demise even more unfortunate and crushing. 

I wonder how crushing the grief must’ve been for a 23-year-old Baez as she listened to "It Ain't Me Babe” for the first time. I wonder if she listened to Bobby’s song over and over. If she memorized every pause, every peculiar creak of his voice because that was the only way to remember him the way she knew him, as her humble love, a child to the world so new and fragile. If she remembers the warmth she felt as he slept under her wing, their bodies entwined and relaxed into each other. Maybe in moments when she longs for it now, even with the memory tainted with grief, she turns on the song and relives it all. 

The differences between their respective versions reflect each of them perfectly. Dylan’s rendition is lonely, just cold vocals and a guitar. He wears an emotionally detached facade to deliver the line, “anyways I’m not alone,” a denial of the bitter loss he feels leaving this relationship. In his rendition, Dylan’s harmonica adds a much needed warmth to his indignant farewell. 

Baez and Dylan backstage at Newport Folk Festival, 1964.

As a Baez fanatic, I am incredibly biased, but as a woman, I am completely right when I say that his version sounds incredibly juvenile compared to hers. Baez’s fingerpicking far exceeds Dylan’s in her ability to be both gentle and violent. Her phrasing and tenor changes the delivery of the song, morphing it from a withdrawn deflection, aiming for self preservation, to a vulnerable and brave declaration of weakness where Baez puts her entire self out there. 

Aptly named, the girl of constant sorrow has mastered how to reflect, resent, and be raw with her instruments, allowing the listener to discover new layers of the grief. Her performance is spiteful, through gritted teeth and glossy tears, masterfully showcasing her signature ability to be both strong and sensitive. Baez’s version of “It Ain’t Me Babe” is so truthful and authentic, you can see her singing it in her bedroom, below her own upside down painting. 

With the plethora of songs the two have written to each other, their relationship has become a modern romantic tragedy; Something us lonely, lovesick individuals can examine a million different ways from watching countless live performances to see the emotions flickering on their faces to the hidden messages left to each other in their music. 

Baez and Dylan’s relationship has lasted in our consciousness so long because of its encapsulation of the universal griefs we all face: loss of innocence, loss of yourself, self-sabotage, heartbreak, and the realization that you have outgrown someone who was once dear to you. While the parasocial examination of a relationship that existed and ended far before you were even born may not be the healthiest, indulging in someone else’s sorrow to accompany your own is a part of human nature, and Baez and Dylan’s is a fine place to start.  

Happy Valentines Day xo

Sound as Ever,

Grace Abdayem