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Never Just One Thing, Pt. XII: A True Song - Dylan's "I Threw It All Away"

A few weeks ago I got the idea that it would be fun to do a series called Songs That Are True. I was listening to Etta Jones sing "Don't Go to Strangers" and it struck me that this song presents a very real thing indeed, a thing that happens that is very painful for the person whose point of view is being presented. "Play with fire till your fingers burn / And when there's no place for you to turn / Don't go to strangers, darling / Come on to me." You could get a whole movie out of those four lines. That's because you know that the beloved does in fact turn more often than not to the ones that don't even care at all. I suppose there's lots of ways for songs to be true, but I'm talking about the truth that matters most of all, the truth of emotion, and there's nothing truer than the pain of a broken heart. The truth of the law gravity is nothing compared to that. 

Dylan's "I Threw It All" is another true song that I love. Unlike "Strangers'" however, this one is sung not from the perspective of the one who's taken for granted but from the one who's become too comfortable playing with fire. In the process of breaking someone else's heart, or at least ignoring someone else's heart, he breaks his own. Did you ever throw it all away? I didn't, but I came damn close once. I started it in motion, but came to my senses and started holding on tight with my fingertips. I remember sitting with my musician buddy Bill out on the front porch of my place in Denver, a really long time ago now, though it doesn't seem that way, and I said, "Bill, I'm scared that I've lost her." And Bill said, "Don't worry, I don't think you have." Understand, Bill was a crazy optimist, always predicting the best even when it wasn't warranted, but this time he was right. 

So let's dig into the song a bit, a song, by the way, that the estimable Nick Cave identified as his favorite Dylan song in a Mojo Magazine feature quizzing musicians on that perennial question, calling it an audaciously simple song he wishes he had written. "Threw" was written at the time when Dylan retreated to Woodstock after his whirlwind, speed- and myth-driven rise to imponderable fame and influence, not least because of the lyrical complexity he brought to popular song. At this point it does appear that he dared himself to buck expectations and write the simplest music possible for a while, serving as a part of an overall cleansing and transfiguration. In many ways "Threw" is the apotheosis of this period. Let's look at how it works. The lyrics:

I once held her in my arms
She said she would always stay
But I was cruel
I treated her like a fool
I threw it all away

Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand
And rivers that ran through ev’ry day
I must have been mad
I never knew what I had
Until I threw it all away

Love is all there is, it makes the world go ’round
Love and only love, it can’t be denied
No matter what you think about it
You just won’t be able to do without it
Take a tip from one who’s tried

So if you find someone that gives you all of her love
Take it to your heart, don’t let it stray
For one thing that’s certain
You will surely be a-hurtin’
If you throw it all away

I love how it opens with a direct statement of fact, of good fortune, followed immediately by a hyper-condensed reporting of his atrocious and inexplicable behavior. A "good" song would probably "show and not tell," but not here, in this great song. Considering that what we have here is an utterly universal truth, it's arguably best this way, since it invites each of us to fill in the blanks with personal examples of how we ourselves have enacted the scenario. Then, just as you are thinking that over, Dylan slams the verse shut with the unadorned, non-rationalized conclusion: I threw it all away. "It's my own damn fault," is how Jimmy Buffet put it. I think I love the second verse the best because of the opening couplet. This is the only vivid imagery of the song, and we understand that the narrator was godlike in his prelapsarian state. Once I had mountains in the palm of my hands.*

Before we move to the bridge, we should make note of the simplest aspect of this simple song, namely the rhymes. Not only are they basic, but almost comically so. In fact, it is in another song from this era, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," that Dylan makes the farcical nature explicit. It long has been the standard description of unsophisticated rhyming as utilizing a "moon-June-spoon" approach. So what does Dylan do in I'll Be Your Baby"? He tells us "that big old moon's gonna shine like a spoon." No "Desolation Row," that! I think what we have here is a classic case of "never just one thing." In "Threw" we have the simplest rhymes, which transmit a humorous effect even as the song is heartbreaking and profound. Who knows? Maybe he originally composed it as an ironic song meant to be performed with a wink. But then he tried singing it straight instead and it landed like that. The creative process is always a search for "what works."

The bridge or B section of a song usually shifts to a different perspective, a stepping back from the situation. Here, Dylan pronounces that "Love is all there is, it makes the world go 'round." Again, tipping into cliche territory, but given the overall message of the song I believe we're meant to take it seriously. I do. Here's a question I've posed before on this site. If all it took for your preferred candidate to take the White House, or for Russia to leave Ukraine, was to leave your spouse or significant other and never see them again, would you take that offer? I wouldn't. There's a reason love songs and movies are the most popular. We all desire it. As another song of the time put it: "Don't you want somebody to love? You better find somebody to love." This doesn't mean that everyone will be in a romantic relationship or even desire one, but each us does have the need to connect with others on a soul level. At the end of the bridge he offers some brotherly advice, and then carries that through into the last verse -- where, just to be thorough about it, he offers another borderline silly rhyme in the form of "certain" and "a-hurtin."

Ultimately, the thing about Dylan as a songwriter is that he writes every kind of song; more so than any other songwriter out there. His range is incredible, from straight twelve-bar blues to surreal epics like "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Desolation Road" to existential anthems like "Like A Rolling Stone" to jump-cutting cinematic sagas like "Tangled Up in Blue" or "Mississippi" to prophetic plaints like "The Times They Are a-changin'" to benedictions like "Forever Young" to theological investigations like "Every Grain of Sand" tp plainspoken country songs like "If Not For You" and this one. When you are a writer you write. And you don't insist that every song be a pearl. But if you keep at it you will get a bunch of those. In Dylan's case, way more than a bunch, a body of work that enriches all of us who have ears to hear.


* Here, we might detect echoes of Blake: "To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand."



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