From what I heard, the lyrics of "Joker & the Thief" was influenced by "All Along the Watchtower", the famous folk song by Bob Dylan. Anyway, I do believe the song is about a man - The Joker - who is traveling through the world in search for only one thing - Pure love. The opening line where it describes him as "a wanted man" is due to that the women who have met him during his life has flocked around him like crazy, but only exploited him for their own desires, and not expressed any feelings for him. However, The Joker hasn't either showed any feelings for the women he has found, and only used them as slaves that he choose to control ("Always laughing in the midst of power"). However, he finally understood that this was a mindless, stupid way to live (The "sweet" in his heart overcame the "sour"), and so he decided to search for his eternal love, not going home until he has found her ("We are not goin' home", sung from the perspective of the band, who follows him on his travel). And I believe in SirNirian's theory about "The Thief" being the woman The Joker one day will meet, and thus, as you often say when it comes to love, steal his heart. In other words, Andrew Stockdale wrote a story about the search for true love.
From what I heard, the lyrics of "Joker & the Thief" was influenced by "All Along the Watchtower", the famous folk song by Bob Dylan. Anyway, I do believe the song is about a man - The Joker - who is traveling through the world in search for only one thing - Pure love. The opening line where it describes him as "a wanted man" is due to that the women who have met him during his life has flocked around him like crazy, but only exploited him for their own desires, and not expressed any feelings for him. However, The Joker hasn't either showed any feelings for the women he has found, and only used them as slaves that he choose to control ("Always laughing in the midst of power"). However, he finally understood that this was a mindless, stupid way to live (The "sweet" in his heart overcame the "sour"), and so he decided to search for his eternal love, not going home until he has found her ("We are not goin' home", sung from the perspective of the band, who follows him on his travel). And I believe in SirNirian's theory about "The Thief" being the woman The Joker one day will meet, and thus, as you often say when it comes to love, steal his heart. In other words, Andrew Stockdale wrote a story about the search for true love.