‘It Ain’t Me Babe’: Bob Dylan and Joan Baez’s argument in song
At the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez couldn’t stop themselves from laughing during their performance of ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’. Both grinning to themselves cheekily as if talking to one another, knowing something the audience doesn’t know. But in 1965, when Joan Baez sang the song solo in concert for the BBC, the fun seemed to have faded as she turned it into a slow, sad ballad. But in both, the song seems to hold some secret message being thrown between them, like an inside joke in the good years and an argument in the bad ones.
As with most Bob Dylan songs, there’s no way to know, without a doubt, who they’re about. The musician has evaded the press for most of his career, especially the press about his personal life. During his lifetime of denying relationships, refusing to answer questions and burying the truth of his music amidst his poetry, it’s meant that his discography remains a mystery when it comes to its muses.
In the case of ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’, released in 1964, and with what is known about the context of that moment in his life, Dylan’s avoidant anthem could be about several people. Refusing to be a “lover for your life,” Dylan is saying in the song that he can not, and will not, be the partner someone wants. It could be his girlfriend Suze Rotolo on the receiving end as Dylan’s blossoming fame tore him away from the partner he met when he was still a complete unknown, now telling her that he’s “not the one you want” and “not the one you need.”
However, as Dylan and Baez react to the song in real-time, drawing attention to certain lyrics, it begins to feel representative of their own messy connection.
Meeting first as two free-wheelers, Dylan and Baez were enamoured with each other. “She had that heart-stopping soprano voice, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” Dylan said of the singer as they began dueting together and launching into an affair powered by their mutual love for music, their shared passion for protest and their fascination with one another’s talents. But as Dylan’s fame tore him away from Baez as well, she became another romantic tragedy to his career as, similar to Rotolo, he couldn’t be the partner she needed or wanted.
“You say you’re lookin’ for someone / To pick you up each time you fall / To gather flowers constantly / And to come each time you call / And will love you for your life / And nothin’ more,” Dylan sings, at the exact moment when he starts to smile at Baez during that live performance. She blushes and looks away as if it makes her shy or as if it’s too personal.
As Dylan depicts his image of a love he doesn’t want, as if he would have to be subservient or be at the beck and call of his lover, it harks back to his tour manager’s explanation as to why he didn’t marry Baez, but instead married Sara Lowndes behind her back in 1965, stating, “I asked him about it. ‘Why Sara?! Why not Joan Baez?’ He responded with, ‘Because Sara will be home when I want her to be home, she’ll be there when I want her to be there, she’ll do it when I want her to do it. Joan won’t be there when I want her. She won’t do it when I want to do it.’” It’s clear that Dylan didn’t want to chase or serve; he wanted to be chased and be served by a partner who was willing to dedicate her life to him.
That would never have been Baez, who had her own incredible career to be focussing on. Amidst their complex on-and-off affair that spanned over a decade, that’s likely a fight they’d had before, now bringing it on stage as they crack up at these lyrics that perhaps felt overly personal and now awkward in front of a crowd.
But then you get Baez’ take: slower, sadder, more emotional. Similar to her rendition of ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’, there’s the sense that she’s taking these tracks and making them her own as if to reclaim them, to turn Dylan’s words that maybe well be about her back against him. Singing “It ain’t me babe” herself, seizing power back to be able to reject him in return, she merely has to sing his own words at him to get in her retort in their messy on-stage argument about their messy on and off-stage connection.
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