Love & Theft

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Click on the ‘Play’ button above to the hear the song as you read the lyrics below.
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Love & Theft is from the album Going Down Fighting with music composed & performed by Paul Walker and with lyrics by Paul Robert Thomas.
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You can download Love & Theft on Bandcamp HERE
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Join Going Down Fighting’s Facebook page Here.
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Love & Theft Lyrics
I’m just sitting watching the sun go down
From a distant shore
Wond’ring if I’ll make it home
What it was I came here for

You could have loved me just a little bit more
But that’s, that’s how it goes
There’s no point to complain
About the way the wind blows

You could have loved me just a little bit more
But that’s, that’s how it goes
There’s no point to complain
About the way the wind blows

So if I never get to see you again
Just you fare le well
I always wished the best for you
But sometimes it got hard to tell

There’s a train steaming off up in to those hills
And I, I ain’t going there
I’ll Stay with you on this flat earth
That shows you how much I care

There’s a train steaming off up in to those hills
I ain’t going there
Stay with you on this flat earth
That shows you how much I care

Maybe I’ve done things I shouldn’t have done
But I can’t look back
Anyways the scenes have changed
Snow is blocking all the tracks

I gone and done what they say I’m famous for
So what is there left?
I’m just seeing out my days
And thinking about love and theft

I gone and done what they say I’m famous for
So what is there left?
I’m just seeing out my days
And thinking about love and theft
I’m just seeing out my days
And thinking about love and theft

Music composed and performed by Paul Reginald Walker PRS PRS 588341318
Lyrics Paul Robert Thomas PRS 497904008
PRS Tunecode 174361AT
ISWC T-925.163.066-7

Love & Theft – Meaning

Music – Paul Walker (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=747369147), Lyrics – Paul Robert Thomas (https://www.facebook.com/Paul-Robert-Thomas-Song-Lyricist-108996442492089),
From the album ‘Going Down Fighting’ (https://www.facebook.com/PaulRobertThomasandPaulWalker).

The musical style of ‘Love & Theft’ leans towards Country and Western although with the songs rhythm and particularly when the percussions come in the song remind me of Don Partridge’s one-man-band 1960’s song ‘Rosie’ (if you’ve heard the song then you’ll know what I mean) and the sentiment of ‘Love and Theft’ mirrors that of the traditional song ‘Fare Le Well’, better known as ‘Dinks Song’ (trad. John Lomax).

Verse 1
The scene opens with the protagonist watching the same sun that his lover is watching from wherever she/he may be, going down (Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, Elton John) as he sits on a foreign shore a long way from his lover wondering if he’ll ever make it back home and asking himself why did he ever come to this place?

Verse 2
He reflects that he feels that he wasn’t loved enough by his lover and that he/she could have loved him more but he realizes that it’s pointless to complain about it now as that is what the hand of fate dealt him.

Verse 3
He doesn’t know if he ever will make it back home again or if he’ll ever see his lover again but he wishes him/her well and all the best (‘Fare Le Well’ he tells her and, as is mentioned above, is the original title of ‘Dinks Song’), and he reassures her and himself that he always wanted the best for her although he admits that maybe sometimes he didn’t show it enough.

Verse 4
He tells her that, even though he could do as they are now apart, he is not going on the train up into the hills i.e. he won’t indulge and get high on drink or drugs or have sex with another (‘riding a train’) but will stay ‘down to earth’ and true as he respects and cares too much for her/him (Doc Watson’s song ‘Riding The Midnight Train’ – ‘No matter what I do or say, you’re never satisfied’, Dylan quotes Doc Watson’s song in his song ‘Standing in the Doorway’).

Verse 5
He admits to having done wrong or bad things in the past that he maybe shouldn’t have done but he won’t look back (‘Don’t Look Back’) and he won’t try to remember them all as ‘things have changed’ and anyway he can’t recall them all from the twisted tracks of his past.

Verse 6
He has done something that he became famous for (what exactly he did, whether good or bad is not revealed), but he asks what else can life show him that’s new and he is now seeing out the last of his days thinking about ‘Love and Theft’ as we all know that ‘Love Steals Your Heart’, although ‘Love and Theft’ is also the title of Dylan’s album that, as Larry Ratso Sloman writes, ‘is rife with loving theft, right down to the album’s title, an appropriation from the academic book about 19th century blackface Minstrel shows’ by Eric Lott which is really about racism and class differences that reflects the ‘distorted mirror’ of society (in the album ‘Love and Theft’ Dylan himself engages in a bit of ‘Theft’ in borrowing lines directly from Dr. Saga’s book ‘Confession of a Yakuza’).

So ‘Love & Theft’ could be said to be a song about missing a loved one, of reflection and of regret.

Paul Robert Thomas 30 July 2016