How did George Harrison end up with a Bob Dylan song?
In November of 1968, George Harrison decided that he was taking a trip to America. It wouldn’t be his first: The Beatles had stormed the US in 1964 and had completed three tours of the country by 1966. Harrison himself even returned to the States in 1967 to experience the Summer of Love, although the experience left him unimpressed. This trip was going to be different. Instead of manic schedules and pressure to feel peace and love, Harrison was going to visit Bob Dylan at his home in Woodstock.
Dylan was still in self-imposed exile after his motorcycle accident in 1966. Having only recently returned to music with the 1967 album John Wesley Harding, Dylan was beginning to angle away from rock and roll and back into his folk roots, with a new emphasis on country music. The previous year, Dylan had recorded over 100 songs with his previous backing group, The Hawks. By that point, The Hawks had recorded their debut album, Music from Big Pink, and had changed their name to The Band.
While Harrison visited Dylan over Thanksgiving, the pair eventually broke out the guitars. While the partnership only lasted for one song, ‘I’d Have You Anytime’, it sparked a new wave of creativity in both songwriters. When the pair met again in May of 1970, Harrison had recently been emancipated from The Beatles and Dylan was looking to restart his recording career in earnest. Dylan decided to show Harrison his new song, ‘If Not For You’.
Harrison liked the track, but despite a full day’s worth of work at Columbia Records’ Studio B in New York, the pair’s take of ‘If Not For You’ was deemed unworthy of release. It wouldn’t take long for both artists to record separate versions of the song, with Dylan tracking it again during the sessions for Morning Sky and Harrison taking it back to England for inclusion in what eventually became All Things Must Pass.
It was during that time that Harrison decided to dust off ‘I’d Have You Anytime’ as well. Throughout the entire 23-song tracklist of All Things Must Pass, only four people are given songwriting credit. Two are Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, the writers of Cliff Richards’ ‘Congratulations’ which was appropriated for the goofy sing-along ‘It’s Johnny’s Birthday’. The other two are Dylan and Harrison.
‘If Not For You’ was later earmarked for potential inclusion in The Concert for Bangladesh, but Dylan’s hesitancy to commit to performing made it difficult to plan for. Dylan and Harrison eventually duetted on the song during the soundcheck a day before the first concert, but ‘If Not For You’ never made it to the actual show.
Harrison did end up singing the song for Dylan’s 30th-anniversary concert in 1992. Check out the footage of that performance down below.
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