John Martyn / London Conversation / 1967
Don't Think Twice It's Alright
wistful resignation shading into quiet bitterness
This is Dylan's 1963 breakup song rendered as a cover on Martyn's debut, where the point of interest is less the words than the delivery -- a young folk guitarist using someone else's text to showcase touch, phrasing, and a looser, more aching vocal than the original's wry detachment.
departure and self-justification emotional withholding romantic disillusionment the road as escape
Who's speaking
a narrator addressing a former lover directly, explaining his departure in a tone that claims indifference but keeps circling back to hurt -- his reliability is the whole question of the song
What happens
The speaker announces he is leaving at dawn, rejects any further explanation from the woman he's leaving, refuses her attempts to call him back or light his way, and finally sets off down an open road, reflecting on the relationship's imbalance before repeating the dismissive refrain one last time.
How it's built
Four verses built on a near-identical template -- two lines of complaint or refusal, a short justification, then the title phrase as a refrain -- with the pattern breaking slightly in the final verse where the rhyme scheme loosens and the refrain itself fragments into repeated fragments rather than a full line, signaling the song running out of things to say as the speaker walks away.
Section by section
Opening verse
The rooster-crow image sets a folk-ballad departure scene, with the narrator already positioning himself as gone before the song properly begins, framing the whole piece as a goodbye delivered mid-exit rather than in anticipation.
Second verse
“I just can't hear you anymore”
The claim of not hearing her contradicts itself by immediately wishing she'd say something to change his mind, exposing the gap between the performed indifference and an unresolved wish to be persuaded otherwise.
Third verse
“the dark side of the road”
The narrator casts himself as already belonging to shadow, which lets him reject her gesture of light as simply irrelevant rather than confronting what it might mean to accept it.
Final verse
The closing verse shifts from direct address to introspection, admitting confusion about his own destination and recasting the breakup in terms of an imbalance between heart and soul, before the refrain dissolves into fragments, as if the explaining has worn itself out.
Craft
- anaphora
- Each verse opens with the same dismissive formula insisting that something is useless, which builds a wall of self-protective logic before any real feeling leaks through.
- repetition as emotional armor
- The title refrain repeats at the end of every verse like a mantra the narrator needs to convince himself of, not just the listener.
- light and dark imagery
- The woman's lamp against the narrator's claimed residence on the dark side of the road sets up a simple visual opposition between her offered clarity and his chosen isolation.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats this as a portrait of someone using cool detachment to survive a loss he hasn't fully processed -- the repeated insistence that explanation is pointless reads as defense rather than truth. An alternative, harder reading takes the narrator at face value: a drifter genuinely unsentimental about leaving, for whom the final image of being asked for more than he could give is simple, matter-of-fact justification rather than buried grief. Because this is a cover, Martyn's performance choices -- vocal softness, guitar phrasing -- lean the track toward the former, sadder reading even though the words alone support either.
Context
The song is Bob Dylan's, originally released on 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' in 1963; Martyn's version appears on his 1967 debut album London Conversation, recorded while he was a teenager just entering the British folk scene. I don't have reliable detail on the specific session or Martyn's stated intentions in choosing this cover, so any claim about his personal connection to the lyric would be speculative.
Listen for
- how Martyn's guitar fingerpicking shapes the pacing differently from Dylan's more clipped delivery
- whether the vocal tone sounds more vulnerable than dismissive against the words themselves
- the way the final verse's rhyme and refrain structure loosens compared to the tighter earlier verses
- any phrasing choices that linger on the light/dark imagery in the third verse
About John Martyn
Iain David McGeachy, known professionally as John Martyn, was a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. Over a 40-year career, he released 23 studio albums and received frequent critical acclaim.
1948 - 2009 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue