One Of The Most Beautiful Ballads In Country Music
Written by Townes Van Zandt, “If I Needed You” is a beautiful ballad that shows the depths of a lover’s compassion. “If I needed you, would you come to me? Would you come to me for to ease my pain? If you needed me, I would come to you. I would swim the sea for to ease your pain,” the song goes.
It is said to be written about Van Zandt’s business partner and producer’s wife Anne Mittendorf Eggers, but he once revealed at a private concert that the song came to him in his sleep – in a flu-driven fever dream.
“I was living in Tennessee with Guy and Susanna Clark, and I was asleep, and I had a notepad by my mattress – I had a mattress on the floor,” Van Zandt recalled. “I was dreaming that I was a folk singer, and this was the song I played, and I happened to wake up, write it down, and went right back to sleep. The next morning, I woke up, went to the room with all the guitars, picked up a guitar, and played it through. It never has changed.”
The Texas songwriter believed that the sky was full of songs just waiting to be pulled in. In fact, he said that “Pancho and Lefty” – another song he wrote that was first covered by Harris and then later popularized by Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson – came through the window of a seedy hotel room.
Nonetheless, “If I Needed You” is one of the most romantic songs Van Zandt has ever written.
