It Ain't Me Babe composer Bob Dylan
Influences
Dylan's biographers generally agree that the song owes its inspiration to his former girlfriend Suze Rotolo. He reportedly began writing the song during his visit to Italy in 1963 while searching for Rotolo, who was studying there.Clinton Heylin reports that a Times reporter at a May 1964 Royal Festival Hall concert where Dylan first played "It Ain't Me" took the chorus "no, no, no" as a parody of the Beatles' "yeah, yeah, yeah" in "She Loves You".Nat Hentoff's late October 1964 New Yorker article on Dylan includes an account of Hentoff's presence on the evening in June 1964 in the CBS recording studio when Dylan recorded this and a dozen or so other songs. After some description of the recording studio and booth exchanges among Dylan, his friends, and the session's producers, Hentoff describes the moment. "Dylan," Hentoff writes, "went on to record a song about a man leaving a girl because he was not prepared to be the kind of invincible hero and all-encompassing provider she wanted."  "'It ain't me you're looking for babe,' he [Dylan] sang, with finality," Hentoff writes in his piece.
The melody in both phrases uses a scale descending through a minor third. (Dylan played at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday, May 17, 1964. The Times reviewed the performance in the following day's edition under the heading of "A Minnesota Minstrel." However, the review makes no mention of "It Ain't Me, Babe.")
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