…until the late spring of ’65, which is when the Great Transcendence happened.

To this day I’ve never felt great affection, much less enthusiasm, for Bob Dylan‘s “All I Really Want To Do“. Simply because of Dylan’s underwhelming performance of the tune. Even now I despise the Woody Guthrie way he sings the chorus…”all I really want to dooo-hooooo!”…like some yee-haw hillbilly.

But I adore The_Byrds’_version, which was released on 6.14.65, or only five days after Dylan recorded his version on 6.9.64, or seven weeks before his version was even purchasable on Another Side of Bob Dylan (8.8.64).

Cher’s version, which isn’t as good as the Byrds cover but is still more tolerable than Dylan’s, was released sometime in late May of ’65, or before Dylan recorded his own.

Cashbox-wise, Cher’s version outsold the Byrds. The listening public had no taste then and they still don’t.

“All I Really Want To Do” is basically a breaking-up-with-Suzie Rotolo song. “I’m just not into you sexually like I was before but I don’t want to hurt you either or, you know, cause you any grief” roughly translates into “I’m boning someone else now but let’s not go crazy about this…I’ll always care for you but maybe you should think about ‘seeing’ someone else yourself.”

Dylan’s mid ’60s recordings didn’t really sound all that wonderful…they lacked ripeness, fullness, polish and pizazz, technical edge…until Bringing It All Back Home, which came out in April ’65. From that point on he was truly the performing master of his own domain.

Nor do I like Dylan’s strained and less than commanding recording of “My Back Pages” (another track from Another Side of Bob Dylan) as much as the Byrds version. But the version of this song that was performed by the Dylan all-stars in 1995 at Madison Square Garden was wonderful.