Songfacts®:

• "If Not For You" is one of the most sincere Bob Dylan songs, free from any of the irony, double-meaning or mystery so often imbued in his lyrics. He wrote it as a love song to his first wife, Sara, letting her known that he couldn't find the door or see the floor without her. They were married from 1965-1977. Other Dylan odes to Sara include "Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands" and "Love Minus Zero / No Limit."
• Dylan released this song in 1970 on his New Morning album. Ron Cornelius, a producer, songwriter and publisher who played on albums by Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Loudon Wainwright III and many others, told Songfacts about the Nashville sessions that produced the album: "I always wanted to cut an album with him not as an ongoing thing, just saddle up with five or six guys, go for what you know right on the spot, and it was a series of sessions known as The New Morning Sessions that my wish came true.
  
  Dylan played his own acoustic guitar and sang, we had Charlie Daniels on bass and Al Kooper on keys and Russ Kunkel on drums and me playing lead guitar. It was just a handful of guys going for what we know. He did something in those sessions that in all my work I've never seen anybody do - he would say, 'OK, here's the song that we're going to do,' and he would go ahead and sing it down for us. While he's singing it down for you, you need to chart the song so at least you know the lay of the land. He'd say 'Has everybody got it, need me to play it again?' then he'd say, 'Let's cut it once and see what happens.'
  
  Well, as soon as the red lights come on to record, he'd take off playing the song in a completely different tempo than he had just played it. Everybody now is really off base, and you have to just go for what you know. If you'd get three-quarters of the way though it and it fell apart and we had to stop and do it again, we'd go back and red light the song, this time, completely different tempo. I mean way off, drastic changes. Not just fast or slow, he might flip into a reggae type feel or something. If anybody fell off bad enough to stop that one, he'd say, 'Let's try it one more time.' The third time he'd take off in a completely different area. I know he was doing that to keep you off base, so that you had to be able to accommodate what was in front of you right now for the first time. If anybody fell off that time bad enough to stop the song, he'd say, 'next song.'
  
  We cut for 21 days doing that and New Morning came out of those sessions. For a session player that was very weird because you're used to somebody singing their song, and you grasp what they're doing and hopefully everybody in the room does, and you get a magical take of it, and if you don't you try it again until everybody feels 'there it is.' Then you can move on to the next song."
• George Harrison released a cover of "If Not For You" on his first post-Beatles solo album, All Things Must Pass, in November 1970, about two months after Dylan's original appeared on his New Morning album. Harrison and Dylan were good friends and often collaborated. Another track on All Things Must Pass, "I'd Have You Anytime," is one they wrote together. In 1988 they joined forces in The Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup that also included Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty.
• Olivia Newton-John's first hit was a cover of "If Not For You" released in 1971 as the title track to her debut solo album. It was an international hit and set her on a path to becoming one of the top entertainers of the '70s.
• Dylan recorded a version of the song with George Harrison shortly after the Beatles' breakup that remained unreleased until it appeared on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) in 1991. Fans hoping to hear some intricate guitar work were disappointed by Harrison's pedestrian playing (sometimes there's a reason why these songs weren't released!).