It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Could it be that Dylan is Baby Blue? He has to stop listening to everyone's expectations as to where he should go. He must leave those stepping stones and go his own way even though there may be a price to pay.

I've enjoyed singing and playing this song for years but have never looked at from the point of view that Dylan is Baby Blue. It seems more interesting from that perspective.

i think this song is about accepting changes in life. this was the last song dylan played at the infamous newport concert (where he was booed for going electric) and the last song on Bringing It All Back Home (his last album that was mostly acoustic) i think he is just saying it is time for him to move on creatively(sp?)

The obvious major theme of this song is Dylans moving on out of the folk scene, and giving a kind of warning to others than you can't stop change. But as is so typical of him, the images don't all make perfect sense, at least not to me. But they are so vivid... oh my, they must mean something. The one line I especially like is ..... "The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense. Take what you have gathered from coincidence." I could go off for a while on what I think it means... it's obviously more warning to those who want to stay put but are forced, as we all are, to move on and start anew. About 30 years ago I read a whole essay in some magazine about the "take what you have gathered from coincidence" line. The author felt it was very metaphysical..... kind of like..."Life is very mysterious and uncertain and we're not going to figure it out really well, but hey..... those seeming coincidences may just give us a clue. So gather them up and make the best sense out of things that you can. There's a wonderful line in a Jackson Browne song about death...."It's like a song I can hear right in my ear. I can't sing it. I can't help listening." For me, Dylan's lyrics are often like that. They are just beyond my total grasp. I can't put them in a box and wrap them up with a bow. There. Done. They just keep ringing in my ear... over and over. They must mean something very important. What?

I think there is one line here that is misunderstood, and it is pretty nifty.

When Dylan is wrapping up the song, and he's telling the woman to leave the dead and to start over, he says the line "strike another match girl, start anew" I really think it's "girl" and not "go"-- if you listen to the song it could go either way, but just here me out.

I think this line reference to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," in which a vagabond child selling matches sees visions of warm, safe places she will never be a part of, and each time she lights a match she sees a new scene, a new life. At the end of the fairy-tale, she lights her final match and dies... but in Dylan's case, when he says to "light another match, girl" he's not talking about a REAL death, he's talking about a change. Like the girl in the story, the subject of this song is down-and-out, she thought she was in a safe place, but she's not-- the carpet's being pulled right out from under her. She needs to figuratively "light a match" and see the possibilities for a new life, and she needs to accept, even embrace this change and join the vagabond outside to start a new journey.

Great song.

I just had to respond to karmacat: ("Crying like a fire in the sun." Cry like a fire, son, the enormity of burning pain cannot even be comprehended, like if you think a fire burns, imagine how hot the sun is )

As a sometime writer of poetry I love hearing how people can misinterpret some of my words - but then words can be deliberately ambiguous and misleading. However with the lyric above I see a simple metaphor for pointless tears. Of course I could be totally wrong. Imagine the sun - a giant infernal ball of nuclear fusion. Now drop a fire into it. Pretty insignificant. Like "a drop in the ocean" a "fire in the sun" is a lost and meaningless thing. Just as Rutger Hauer at the end of "Blade Runner" says - "...like tears lost in rain." That is to say that they are un-noticed, un-heeded, pointless, lost. How about this - Shakespeare's Portia says "How far that little candle throws his beams. So shines a good deed in a naughty world." I see there a double meaning; on the one hand the comparison of the luminosity of candle light piercing the gloom to the shining beacon of goodness amongst evil; but on the other hand (especially if spoken with sarcasm) how the light from one small candle is so insignificant in such a dark place and such is the good deed lost in an ostensibly evil world. Sorry to ramble.

I think it's about a girl/woman who used to be able to get whatever man she wanted; but now the narrator (Bob?) has realised this and won't be strung along any more. Or maybe the world has sussed the woman out. Either way, same message, you won't fool us no more baby blue!

I think this song is about a woman who was once well off and is now poor and off on her own . . . similar to like a rolling stone . . . or maybe i have it backwards. Either way these lyrics left out half the song.

uhhhh those arent the real lyrics:

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last. But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast. Yonder stands your orphan with his gun, Crying like a fire in the sun. Look out the saints are comin' through And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense. Take what you have gathered from coincidence. The empty-handed painter from your streets Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets. This sky, too, is folding under you And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home. All your reindeer armies, are all going home. The lover who just walked out your door Has taken all his blankets from the floor. The carpet, too, is moving under you And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you. Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you. The vagabond who's rapping at your door Is standing in the clothes that you once wore. Strike another match, go start anew And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

those are from: bobdylan.com/songs/babyblue.html

it's about him moving on to new styles, and a lot of people were very upset.

Beck uses a sample from this song in "Jackass" which is a pretty sweet song.

one of my favorites.. in DA pennebaker's Don't Look Back, dylan plays an acoustic version of this song in a hotel room with donovan and some other people on tour with him. it's cool.