Song Information
"All I Really Want to Do" was first released on Dylan's 1964 album Another Side of Bob Dylan, and was also included on the Dylan compilations Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II in 1971 and the 3-disc edition of Dylan in 2007. Two different live versions of the song have been released: the first on Bob Dylan at Budokan in 1979 and the second on The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall in 2004.
Dylan wrote the song in 1964 and recorded it in one take on June 9, 1964. Like other songs on Another Side of Bob Dylan, "All I Really Want to Do" was inspired by Dylan's breakup with Suze Rotolo. "All I Really Want to Do" opens the album on a with a different attitude than Dylan's previous album, The Times They Are a-Changin'; a playful song about a relationship rather than a finger-pointing political song. Musically simple, though playful, "All I Really Want to Do" is essentially a list of things, physical and psychological, that Dylan does not want to do or be to the listener (perhaps a woman, but just as likely his audience as a whole). Dylan laughs at some of his own jokes in the song, as he parodies typical "boy meets girl" love songs. One interpretation of the song is that it is a parody of male responses to early feminist conversations. Along with another Another Side of Bob Dylan song, "It Ain't Me, Babe," "All I Really Want to Do" questioned the usual assumptions of relationships between men and women, rejecting possessiveness and machismo. The song's chorus features Dylan singing in a high, keening yodel, likely inspired by Hank Williams or Ramblin' Jack Elliott, while disingenuously claiming that all he wants to do is to be friends. "All I Really Want to Do" sees Dylan experimenting with the conventions of the romantic pop song by constructing rhymes within lines and also rhyming the end of every line with the end of the following line.
The first known live concert performance of "All I Really Want to Do" was at the Newport Folk Festival on July 26, 1964. It remained part of Dylan's concert set list for his all acoustic shows in 1965. It returned to Dylan's concert sets in 1978, when Dylan sang it at the end of most shows to the melody of Simon and Garfunkel's "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)". For those shows, he often revised the lyrics, incorporating mischievous verses such as:
- I ain't lookin' to make you fry
- See you fly or watch you die
- And I don't want to drag you down
- Chain you down or be your clown
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