You Angel You – Bob Dylan

It’s nice to hear a straightforward, upbeat love song by Bob Dylan in You Angel You. There’s no cryptic word salads here, just relatively simple lyricism on Bob’s part. The song always puts me in a fine, jolly mood. You can sense the glee and perhaps even the relief that Dylan must have been feeling when he wrote and sang it.

It’s another one of those goodies from that overlooked period of Dylan’s life as a young family man. It’s nice to know Bob had such happy times before things came crumbling down in 1975 with the release of Blood on the Tracks, an album often associated with the breakdown of his marriage.

He would perform You Angel You just twice in concert, on January 14 and February 8, 1990. It’s a shame, since it’s such a perky little love song. You wonder whether it was perhaps a bit too close to home for him to revisit, or left with some regret.

You Angel You was released on Dylan’s fourteenth studio album, Planet Waves, on January 17, 1974. He was backed by his old pals, The Band. The album was followed by a major tour that same year, one of his first large-scale arena tours of its kind, playing to around 650,000 people across 40 concerts in 21 cities over five and a half weeks. Planet Waves also gave Dylan his first-ever No. 1 album in the US.

When one contemplates a joyous love song such as You Angel You, it’s also nice to learn that when his wife Sara watched him perform in Los Angeles, she was rewarded with the tour’s sole rendition of Mr Tambourine Man, her own favourite. It was performed with the full band, featuring Garth Hudson’s accordion.

Overall, on this big tour, Dylan was giving the people the songs they wanted, mostly played the way they wanted to hear them. It was a rare occasion when audience expectations seemed to take precedence over his own instincts.

The final shows at the LA Forum provided almost all the material for Before the Flood, the double live album released four months after the tour ended. The album reflected the three elements that made up the concerts: Dylan with The Band, Dylan performing solo, and The Band on their own. That was my first-ever Bob Dylan record, too.

[Verse 1]
You angel, you
Your essence got me under your wing
The way you walk and the way you talk
I feel I could almost sing

[Verse 2]
You angel, you
You’re as fine as anything’s fine
I just walk and watch you talk
With your memory of my mind

[Chorus]
You know I can’t sleep at night for trying
Yes I never did feel this way before
Never did get up and walk the floor
If this is love then gimme more
And more and more and more and more

[Verse 3]
You angel, you
You’re as fine as can be
The way you walk and the way you talk
Is the way it ought to be

[Chorus]
And oh, I can’t sleep at night for trying
Never did feel this way before
Never did get up and walk the floor
If this is love then gimme more
And more and more and more

[Verse 4]
You angel, you
You got me under your wing
The way you walk and the way you talk
I swear it would make me sing

References:
1. Bob Dylan And The Band – The 1974 Live Recordings – Uncut
2. Once or twice: You Angel You – Untold Dylan