"I'd Have You Anytime" is a song written by George Harrison and Bob Dylan, released in 1970 as the opening track of Harrison's first post-Beatles solo album, All Things Must Pass. The pair wrote the song at Dylan's home in Bearsville, near Woodstock in upstate New York, in November 1968. Its creation occurred during a period when Harrison had outgrown his role in the Beatles and Dylan had withdrawn from the pressures of fame to raise a family. "I'd Have You Anytime" is recognised as a statement of friendship between the two musicians, whose meetings from 1964 onwards resulted in changes in musical direction for both Dylan and the Beatles. The song reflects the environment in which it was written, as Harrison's verses urge the shy and elusive Dylan to let down his guard, and the Dylan-composed choruses respond with a message of welcome.
As a gentle ballad, "I'd Have You Anytime" went against pop-music convention of the time for an album opener. The recording was co-produced by Phil Spector in London and features a lead guitar part by Eric Clapton. With the strong public association that existed between Harrison and Dylan by 1970, some music critics remarked on the American singer's presence on All Things Must Pass, even though he did not contribute to the album as a performer. Harrison and Dylan went on to enjoy further collaborations after writing the song, culminating in their recording together as members of the Traveling Wilburys in 1988–90.
An alternate take of "I'd Have You Anytime", recorded during the All Things Must Pass sessions, appears on the 2012 Harrison compilation Early Takes: Volume 1. Harrison and Dylan's demo of the song circulates on bootleg compilations, but it has never received an official release. Ralfi Pagán and Evan Rachel Wood are among the artists who have covered "I'd Have You Anytime".
Background
Bob Dylan first met the Beatles in New York City in August 1964, at the height of the band's fame.Miles, p. 165. The meeting was arranged by New York journalist Al Aronowitz,Ben Sisario, "Al Aronowitz, 77, a Pioneer of Rock 'n' Roll Journalism", The New York Times, 4 August 2005 (retrieved 15 February 2013).Tillery, p. 137. who later remarked on the significance of this introduction: "Hasn't the whole world benefited? ... The Beatles' magic was in their sound. Bob's magic was in his words. After they met, the Beatles' words got grittier, and Bob invented folk-rock."Greene, p. 113. Author Gary Tillery has written of the connection established between Dylan and George Harrison: "Dylan was particularly keen on meeting [John] Lennon, the writer-artist-intellectual of the group, but the deepest and longest-lasting bond begun that night was with George Harrison. Their two reclusive personalities meshed ..."Tillery, p. 31.
The connection developed in May 1966, when Harrison, Lennon and Paul McCartney visited Dylan in his London hotel, midway through his controversial world tour with backing band the Hawks.Sounes, pp. 161–62, 212. According to musicologist Ian MacDonald, Dylan's relationship with Lennon was a testy, competitive one at times, and Dylan was "cooler" towards McCartney, whose best-known songs he regarded as "sell-outs to soft pop";MacDonald, pp. 145, 274. but in producer Bob Johnston's estimation, Lennon, Harrison and McCartney entered the hotel suite as members of the Beatles and departed as three distinct individuals,Sounes, pp. 177, 180, 212. such was Dylan's philosophical influence on fellow songwriters at the time.Leng, pp. 16, 274. Following his creative peak in mid 1966 with the Blonde on Blonde double album, Dylan retired to Bearsville, New York, accompanied by the Hawks (soon to become the Band),Romanowski & George-Warren, pp. 49, 291. in order to recuperate from a motorcycle crash and raise a family with his wife, Sara Lownds.MacDonald, p. 190. Little was heard from him throughout 1967–68, a situation that added to his mystique as music critics and fans awaited his return.Clayson, pp. 242–43.Schaffner, pp. 85, 89. Commenting on "I'd Have You Anytime" in 1976, Harrison said that two statements in Dylan's Blonde on Blonde track "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" had especially resonated with him: "what price you have to pay to get out of / Going through all these things twice" and "Oh mama, can this really be the end".
While Dylan was dismissive of the Beatles' landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967),Sounes, p. 226.MacDonald, p. xviii. Harrison remained an avowed fan of Dylan's work – Blonde on Blonde being the only Western music that Harrison took with him to India in February 1968.Leng, p. 274. Following the sessions for the Beatles' White Album, Harrison worked in Los Angeles for much of October and November 1968,Miles, p. 313. producing the debut solo album by Jackie Lomax,Leng, p. 55. one of the first signings to the Beatles' Apple record label.Liner notes by Andy Davis, Is This What You Want? CD booklet (Apple/EMI, 2010; produced by George Harrison, Jackie Lomax, Mal Evans & Paul McCartney). Harrison and his wife, Pattie Boyd, then spent Thanksgiving with the DylansHarrison, p. 164. while staying in the Catskills as guests of manager Albert Grossman.Clayson, p. 243.Spizer, p. 222. Despite Dylan's excitement at their arrival,Sounes, p. 236. Harrison found him withdrawn and seemingly lacking in confidence.Heylin, p. 295.Kahn, p. 227. Music journalist John Harris comments that, unlike in their previous meetings, "there were no hangers-on [this time], Dylan's head was clear, and the protective barriers of cool could come down – which, eventually, they did."Harris, p. 68. On the third day, Harrison recalls in his 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, "we got the guitars out and then things loosened up".
Composition The year 1968 marked the start of what Dylan himself later termed his "amnesia", referring to a form of writer's block he experienced post-John Wesley Harding (1967), when painting had replaced songwriting as his preferred creative outlet.Heylin, pp. 294–96. Well known for his unsophisticated musical approach,MacDonald, p. 260. particularly in comparison to Harrison's broader "harmonic palette", author Simon Leng suggests, Dylan was now eager to learn some more-advanced chords.Leng, pp. 52, 82, 276. Harrison began demonstrating various major seventh, diminished and augmented chord shapes – "all these funny chords people showed me when I was a kid", as he later put it.Huntley, p. 53. While playing a G major 7 chord and taking the shape up the guitar neck to B major 7, Harrison realised, "Ah, this sounds like a tune here ..." Keen to break down the barriers that Dylan had imposed, Harrison came up with the song's opening lines:
At the same time, he was pushing Dylan to come up with some words of his own. Dylan duly supplied a rejoinder,Kahn, p. 228. in the form of the song's bridge-chorus:
"Beautiful! – and that was that", Harrison concludes in I, Me, Mine. He subsequently finished the composition alone.Madinger & Easter, p. 428.
The lyrics reflect an approach regarding demonstrating love for his close friends that Harrison's widow Olivia has described as "very unabashed, quite romantic in a sense",Olivia Harrison interview, in George Harrison: Living in the Material World DVD, 2011 (directed by Martin Scorsese; produced by Olivia Harrison, Nigel Sinclair & Martin Scorsese). as well as a view expressed by Tom Petty, a fellow Traveling Wilbury with Harrison and Dylan in 1988–90, that Harrison was able to probe the notoriously elusive Dylan in a way that few others could.The Editors of Rolling Stone, p. 224. Author Ian Inglis views "I'd Have You Anytime" as working as a straightforward love song, with Harrison's "Let me into your heart" serving as "not a desperate plea but a reassuring conversation", and Dylan's "All I have is yours / All you see is mine" providing the same "element of reciprocity that distinguished the declaration of love" in Harrison's song "Something".Inglis, p. 24.
Aftermath to Thanksgiving 1968 In his Harrison biography, Here Comes the Sun, Joshua Greene notes the effect that this time with Dylan and the Band had on Harrison, with regard to his growing dissatisfaction as a Beatle.Greene, pp. 114–15. "Like Dylan, George was beginning to see that his next step needed to be away from everything he had done up to that moment", Greene writes. "Watching Dylan over Thanksgiving ... showed George how happy someone could be following his own direction and making his own rules."Greene, p. 114. In his essay for Mojo magazine covering Harrison's 1970 solo release, All Things Must Pass, John Harris identifies this time in Woodstock as the beginning of Harrison's "journey" to making the album.Harris, pp. 66, 68.
Harrison and Dylan wrote at least one other song together during Thanksgiving 1968:Helm, p. 178. "When Everybody Comes to Town", subsequently renamed "Nowhere to Go".Leng, p. 52.Madinger & Easter, p. 423. Dylan also showed Harrison "I Don't Want to Do It", which, like "Nowhere to Go", Harrison would later consider for inclusion on All Things Must Pass but discard.Badman, p. 10.Madinger & Easter, p. 426. As for Dylan's future output, songs such as "I Threw It All Away" on Nashville Skyline (1969) showed a more complex musical structure than before, a departure from his usual three-chord compositions.Thomas Ward, "Bob Dylan 'I Threw It All Away'", AllMusic (retrieved 15 February 2013). Harrison recalled hearing "I Threw It All Away" during the 1968 visit and welcoming the vulnerability in Dylan's lyrics, even though he suspected that it would alienate listeners used to the singer's unsentimental image.Kahn, pp. 227–28.
The next meet-up between Harrison and Dylan occurred in August 1969, when the latter was in England to appear at the Isle of Wight Festival with the Band.Sounes, p. 251.Clayson, p. 273. Harrison wrote "Behind That Locked Door" at that timeHarrison, p. 206. – a song that Harris describes as "a sweet acknowledgement of Dylan's shyness".Harris, p. 72. In its review of the Beatles' Abbey Road album (1969), Time magazine highlighted "Something" as the best trackSchaffner, p. 124. and identified Harrison's time with Dylan as having "helped him achieve a new confidence in his own musical personality" beside the traditionally more dominant Lennon and McCartney.Lily Rothman, "Original Abbey Road Review: Record 'Crammed With Musical Delights'" , Time, 26 September 2014 (retrieved 26 February 2015). During the same period, according to engineer and producer Glyn Johns' recollection in his book Sound Man (2014), Dylan expressed an interest in recording an album with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Harrison and Keith Richards were enamoured of the idea, Johns continues, but McCartney and Mick Jagger "both said absolutely not".David Greene, "Bob Dylan Wanted to Make an Album With the Beatles and Rolling Stones" , rollingstone.com, 7 November 2014 (retrieved 9 November 2014).
Recording