This week’s Song Lyric Sunday assignment from Jim is to post a track from the first album you ever bought.

There’s some scope for pedantry here. I’m pretty sure that the first album I was ever given was ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, but it was a gift (probably for Christmas), as I certainly wasn’t in a position to buy it myself at the age of eleven.

The truth is that I simply cannot recall which album – or LP, as we crazy old-timers used to call them – was the first I paid for with my own actual money. If it was cash I’d earned as the fruit of my labours then it could have been as late as 1970. If it was purchased with money (or even a record token) I’d received as a gift, then perhaps two or three years earlier.

Either way, I still don’t recall the specifics. Instead, I’m going with a track from an album which certainly featured among the first few in my nascent collection: ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’., originally released in May 1963.

(NB the video is a live performance from 1965, when Bob still sounded like his records.)

Well, it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If’n you don’t know by now
And it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It’ll never do somehow

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window, and I’ll be gone
You’re the reason I’m a-traveling on
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

And it ain’t no use in turning on your light, babe
The light I never knowed
And it ain’t no use in turning on your light, babe
I’m on the dark side of the road

But I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
But we never did too much talking anyway
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

So it ain’t no use in calling out my name, gal
Like you never done before
And it ain’t no use in calling out my name, gal
I can’t hear you any more

I’m a-thinking and a-wonderin’ walking down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I am told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

So long honey, baby
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
Goodbye’s too good a word, babe
So I’ll just say fare thee well

I ain’t a-saying 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

Written by Bob Dylan

Song Lyric Sunday 25 August 2024