Robby Z and the Saddest Song*

* - It's summer. We're doing re-runs. Deal. :)

Bob Dylan gets accused of being a lot of things: Genius, charlatan, folk-singer, folk-traitor to name a few. My friend Emmy declared his song "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" the saddest song ever last night, pointing out not just the laid-bare soul of the protagonist but also that this was Dylan at 20 years old, not encumbered with his trademark cynicism. The song is, by my ratings definition, a 5-star transcendentally excellent song, one of the many things that makes The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan an undisputed classic, but I've never had that particular take on it before - not to say I disagree, just to say that I've always latched on to that closing line about wasting his precious time, so the thing that stuck in my head most was the bitter parting shot. Here are the lyrics, sung over a beautifully fluid fingerpicked melody, just Bob & guitar:

It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don’t matter, anyhow
An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don’t know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I’ll be gone
You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on
Don’t think twice, it’s all right

It ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An’ it ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe
I’m on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin’ anyway
So don’t think twice, it’s all right

It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
I can’t hear you any more
I’m a-thinkin’ and a-wond’rin’ all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I’m told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

I’m walkin’ down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
But goodbye’s too good a word, gal
So I’ll just say fare thee well
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

Not much for me to muse about here - this is, in one sense, a broken man going down spitting. It still reads as very sarcastic and bitter to me, and I think he loses his übercool and makes it clearer and clearer as the song progresses. I won't go line by line, but verse by verse:

First, the end is here for sure. And he's clearly hurt, and a bit nihilistic about the whole thing, but still spins the blame at her on his way out the door.

Second, he's again accusing her of being the cause of this, maybe never opening herself to him, and even possibly half-lamenting the fact that even now he wants her to make a last-ditch effort at him. But he also says it's too late, he's done with her, and then possibly obliquely calls her a slut (or, on the light side, condemns the entire relationship a subhuman animal attraction, any real connection they felt being secondary to, um, that other connection).

Third, again says it's too late for anything, not that you ever tried anyways. And again claims his well-intentioned love but, you could read it, she turned out to be the devil (or maybe she asked for too much from him, but seeing as they didn't do too much talking, it's probably more a clever "Satan!" name-calling quip.

Fourth, says she isn't worth a goodbye, that she didn't really do anything wrong but she just didn't do anything, i.e. she was vapid, and worse, she ended up being a null to him, a waste of time. That's a pretty damning thing to say in my book.

So - and this may be clear - I don't think this is really a crying song of sentiment from the Zimmermeister. It's trademark bitterness and world-wear wit, and worse, it's juxtaposed against this melodic love song rolling waves of a guitar line behind it. I think, on the other hand, that this is a third level sadness, that the protagonist is really trying to save some kind of face in the wake of rejection, and that his version of baring his soul is to reveal his relative hurt with the viciousness with which he stabs on his way out of town. So in that sense, yeah, this is a crushed man, who's too cool to admit he's crushed so he resorts to his only best friend, cynical bitter sarcasm, only its painfully obvious to the listener that despite his attempt to hide the pain behind a wall of lyrical "F you's," he is really revealing just how much he got to her. He's a guy who pretends to be unaffected by the day to day, but then has a bad tell of his effectedness because he goes through such an elaborate effort to say how much it doesn't matter. He's a lady, and he's doth protesting too much, to steal somebody else's lines.

Bob is nothing if not complicated, and I think his role as "court jester" is unbelievably well played - if he's a charlatan, it's charlatanism as art form. So there's no real telling if the joke is supposed to stop at level one, the "Ha ha, you're a bitch" level, or level two, the "Damn I loved you, and the only thing I can do to not let everyone see my pain is to give off the cool air," or even level three and beyond, the idea that the whole thing is framed to confuse, and Bob is actually only impressed by his own wit and songwriting ability, and this whole situation doesn't even exist on any real level other than to serve as evidence of his genius. He's the step beyond the cool guy who pretends not to care but can't help but reveal it; he's the clown who really doesn't care at all and stops at nothing for his art. In the end, probably impossible to peg down, which is likely part of the intended effect anyways.

I'm really glad Emmy brought this up - because I had always just thought of this song as the bitter reflections of a rejected guy trying to get in the last word. But if you twist it a step further, and it's really his emotional inability to do anything other than go for the romantic pain jugular, then of course, it's immensely sad. What I definitely don't buy is that Bob at 20 was not bitter and cynical: the same album had "Talking World War III Blues" and "Masters of War" on it, so he had at least had something of a grasp of stupid hypocrisy. Of course there's no real answer here - there never is - but I'm sure that Bob probably stands meta to his own work, and was fully aware of all twists and interpretations that such emotional and smart writing invites. Or, of course, he could've been joking - alas, poor Bob.