I bought "Highway 61 Revisited" the day it was released and every song on the album is incredible and the last song "Desolation Row" completely knocked me out!! I was sooo lucky to be a teenager in the 60's and grow up with Bob and The Beatles!!
The Bob's surrealist masterpiece. Probably my all time favourite Dylan song. The scope and depth of his lyrics are just breathtaking. Another example of why the great man sits above all of his contemporaries. He is without equal. And it's also my favourite harmonica solo by Bob on this song. His acoustic rhythm strumming is also brilliant and in perfect tandem with the lead guitar in the opposite channel.
@splash13261 No, it wasn't. Where did you get that information from? The lead guitar is played by session musician Charlie McCoy. It would be years later before Clapton recorded anything with Dylan.
Thanks for the correction. I thought I read it on an album cover a very long time ago. I've been believing that for almost 50 years, apologies to Charlie McCoy.@@davescurry69
@splash13261 All good. Clapton did play on one song on Dylan's DESIRE album, in 1976 ("Romance In Durango") so maybe that's the one you're thinking of?
The first line "they're selling postcards of the hanging" probably refers to the public lynching in Duluth on June 15, 1920 of three black men, and yes, they made postcards of it. The moral desolation portrayed in that first phrase sets the stage for the seeming non-sense of much of the rest. In a culture where that can happen, what really makes any sense?
This and ITS ALRIGHT MA and VISIONS OF JOHANNA are masterpieces of whimsy with flashes of anger and lots of other stuff . Tell us about it , Uncle Bob .
You would not think of him but he was famous long ago, for playing electric violin on Desolation row. I was 14-15 at that time had never heard of anyone playing electric violin! Just groundbreaking folk rock madness.
Of course Dylan is letting the listener feel the power of the images and draw their own conclusions. This comes from an album and period in Dylan's life where he is becoming overwhelmed by the demands of his career, his fans and critics. He is becoming more disillusioned about society and the expectations of him being looked at as some kind of messiah. He is becoming more isolated and critical of the motives and people around him. He is more than likely addressing some real people in his life at the time. Possibly Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol and others around "The Factory". As he states in the last verse "All these people that you mentioned , yes I know them they're quite lame. I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name".
Robert "Bob Dylan" Zimmerman is an American treasure. He, along with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, really started the folk rock genre, there were others but these three were the genesis. Dylan was great at collaborating with other artists, especially Joan Baez, The Band and the Grateful Dead. Hate to keep referring back to The Dead, but I did see them a lot, about 50 times, and Mr. Dylan about 10 times, including a show with The Dead at JFK Stadium in Philly in 1987. Since they played with him a lot and knew his songs The Dead covered a bunch of Dylan's songs, including "Desolation Row". When Bob Weir sang the line "The circus is in town" it always got a massive reaction from the crowd, because, well... it was. LOL.
Bob Dylan amazes me in that I wonder how a kid (and he got into folk composing very young) could pick up all the experiences and imagery that he put into his songs from 1958 onward. Makes me think of Bobby Fischer who was a kick-ass chessplayer since he was a little kid.
Great reaction. You seem to really appreciate the poetry, so here's a couple more suggestions for you, both from the amazing Blond On Blond album: "Visions of Johanna," and "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again." Blond on Blond is worth a listen from start to finish -- it changed 'pop' music forever, marking the complete transition of Dylan from folk singer to rock star. And, after Blond on Blond was released he suffered a motorcycle accident and "missed" the rest of the 60s, and was a very different (but still amazing) artist when he came back.
You are so right! Our version of Shakespeare. More modern geniuses can be added such as Victor Hugo, Dostoyevski and more. Dylan has a rare ability to read a classic and memorize it enough to put it into a poem and put the poem to music.
I think it perfectly captures the America of the early 60s. It's easily his funniest song, along with Clothes Line Saga and LeopardSkin Pillbox Hat. Maybe a few more lol
For my money, Highway 61 Revisited is peak Dylan for that era. The quality of his voice on that album is perfect. It Takes A Lot To Laugh is some of his best singing.
Shawn, You bring joy to me showing that the younger gen is becoming aware of the Greatest poet and Artist of all time. Bob Dylan is a true Nobel Laureate Long Live Bob Dylan.!
The song was written in 1965 when the prospect of nuclear Armageddon was very real. This is what the song is about and it details the forces, the events and the players that brought this about. The song is not surrealistic but allegorical and Dylan spells this out in the last verse when he says that he had rearranged the faces of the people mentioned and given them another name. So, for Cain, Abel and the Hunchback of Notre Dame read Johnson, Khruschev and Mao and for 21-yr Ophelia read the atomic bomb; the jealous monk is Oppenheimer; Cinderella and Romeo are Hitler and Stalin. The first verse is more literal and refers to an actual lynching that Dylan’s father witnessed in Duluth in the 1920’s. Racial tensions had been exacerbated because local servicemen returning from fighting in WW1 had found their jobs supplanted by black men from the southern states looking for a better life; the ‘blind’ commissioner did nothing to prevent the lynchings.
This has always struck me as Dylan's surrealistic stream of consciousness attempt to describe the absurdity of the world. Kinda like a dream in which some of it makes sense (sort of) and some of it makes no sense at all and yet, at the same time, there seems to be an undercurrent of logic but the logic is so tentative that it vanishes like a wisp of smoke in a breeze before you can actually grasp it. It's there but it isn't. If you know what i mean.
"...And the only sound that's left after the ambulances go, is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row." Not a story, jus' a collection of down characters in a down place, with other down people, in a down mood, with nowhere to go but down. Highway 61 runs right thru it. One o' my favorite Dylan songs.
I remember reading one time about a party that someone gave where all the guests were asked to come dressed as a character from a Bob Dylan song. Sounds like a good idea for a party. This song would have given them plenty of ideas. Nice reaction.
I was at that party! Or one the same theme. Winner was a pretty girl in simple white dress with mud and dirt all down the front. She came as Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground..
Bob Dylan's father told him of the 1920 lynching that took place in the town he grew up in, Duluth, Minnesota as well as the post cards of the hanging that he sold when he was 8 years old and the sailors in the shop. The song is about this event and the individuals that took part in allowing it to happen and then covering it up. Wikipedia: Duluth Lynching has a good write up on the event details. The song is about the lynching of three Black circus workers in Duluth, Minnesota on June 15th, 1920. The three men were accused by James "Jimmie" Sullivan, 18 of assaulting and robbing James and his girlfriend Irene Tusken, age 19, and raping Irene. Sullivan's claim that Tusken was raped has been questioned. When she was examined by her physician, Dr. David Graham, on the morning of June 15, he found no physical evidence of rape or assault. After reading the details on Wikipedia and listening to the song, I believe that Desolation Row may be Highway 61 or Duluth, Minnesota.
This is surrealist lyrical imagery, dipping deep into Western Culture. Release any expectations of a narrative, pay attention to the couplets (where the genius lies) A perfect American song about America
He was 24 when this album was released. As you mentioned, the meaning of some lines are clear, others not so much. I suppose that's a beauty of poetry. Joan Baez, in her great ''letter'' to Dylan, "Diamonds And Rust" (check that out), perfectly pegged him with her line "You who are so good with words and at keeping things vague."
Great great great reaction. Glad you caught the lines about Ophelia, and the one every reaction has missed so far about the insurance men with kerosene.
Getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is, in my opinion, is not enough. His statue should be in every town square and city center for demonstrating how a creative human mind can grow.
I've always thought of this as the name droppers song. Who doesn't he mention in it. Never tried to figure it out. Just love the words and music. It's a vibe
great reaction, you could check out Visions Of Johanna from the Blonde On Blond Album, every song is a gem, no-one before or since can write like Dylan, from New Zealand.
One of my favourite BD tracks. There is so much in it, and the guitar/ harmonica is gorgeous. Plenty of imagery to savour. I think the whole thing paints a picture of manic, tortured society, Desolation Row is the place where you can step away from the mayhem, and find your own stress free corner. You can dodge the pressures to conform there, watch the rest of the world tie itself in knots. How about tackling the title track of the album next? It's fun, little more upbeat than this one with it relaxed strumming, great lyrics though.
It's a break up love letter (all those people that you mentioned ...; I had to rearrange their faces and give them another name) - The heart attach machine is the industrial revolution combined with lassaize faire capitalism .. it is the monotonous daily grind so one can survive while others profit. - "... 20 years of schoolin' and they put ya on the day shift .."
Shawn, love this pick. Suggest:...."Darling be home soon" "You didn't have to be so nice" "Do you believe in magic" by Loving Spoonful......"Come on Let's go" by Los Lobos
I love people on RU-vid are being exposed to music they might not otherwise hear. It wasn’t so long ago that people would go to bars/pubs/pool halls/etc because that’s where they wanted to hang/shoot pool and the jukebox ruled. It was the local society’s shuffle & reaction - only the bar had veto power. Anywell, Dylan wasn’t on the jukebox when I was a young man
The subtitles are confusing. They aren't synced to the music and also seem to be made by word recognition software that doesn't work very well. Dylan puts a lot of words out here that evoke images, but to figure out what it means takes a couple more levels of understanding to figure it out. Another Dylan song, Mr. Tambourine Man, is said to refer to a musician Dylan performed with early on, but there's also a tambourine man in Siberian mythology, as I found in a book titled Siberia: Land of Conquerors.
It is auto generated unless the author provides subtitles. There used to be typing of subtitles as a job, but a very hard job not many can do. It seems to me to be too hard to get thar right with audio recognition software. If you produce a video you can have subtitles in its own track.
You get some things a little but not nearly as much as you could. For two reasons. 1) The song cannot be grasped in one listening, it is too vast and the meaning is not in the details (although some details matter-it starts with a real life lynching of black men in Minn where postcards were made of the event.) Very few can get the song fron one listening. 2) Desolation Row has to be understood in the context of a zenith of all the fury he has pent up for years culminating is a savage assault on American society and mores, reaching its height in Bringing it All back Home and even more intensely on this, Highway 61 Revisited, considered by many his greatest LP. Without that context of what he was writing about, the material as a whole, fully understanding this epic song is extremely difficult Desolation Row ends the absolute peak of that assault where Dylan pulls no punches, and begins a wkthdrawal from the fight which continued with an album of a lot of despair, Blonde on Blonde. So what is Desolation Row? For years Dylan had tried to get people to see the stark truth of the perversion that has become the American way of life, especially by the mid 60's as Vietnam began to ramp up. "Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for their mark Make everything from toy guns that spark To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It’s easy to see without looking too far That not much is really sacred" It's All Right Ma" (from BIABH) But on Highway 61 it's WORSE "Rovin' gambler, he was very bored Tryin' to create a next world war He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor "I never did engage in this kind of thing before But yeah, I think it can be very easily done" "We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun Have it on Highway 61" (song Highway 61 Revisited) And "The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits To Jezebel the nun, she violently knits A bald wig for Jack the Ripper, who **sits At the head of the Chamber of Commerce** (Tombstone Blues) When the greatest serial killer of all time heads your city council, you are beyond in trouble (alludes to Johnson, could be said about Trump, but shows the dark ethos of the civilization) But it's more than government. It's the way of life. (Listen to "It's All Right "Ma) Desolation Row is a sanctuary from all of this where Dylan can watch and comment upon the phantasmagoria of famous, archetypal literary, cultural, religious and historical figures meld into a flow of dysfunction created by that society. Everything is off. The images are striking because they are so surrealistic but what gives them coherence is one thing, either proximity to or opposition against Desolation Row, the sanctuary of sanity that sees clearly into all of this. Thus one is "punished for gong there", "peeks into it" (but does not go in), sweeps up after the chaos.make sure no one goes there, doesn 't think about it. The only ones there are authentic outsiders, Cinderella, Einstein, The Good Samaritan and, Fortune Telling Lady, and of coure the singer and his lady. The last verse says it all, everything Dylan wanted to tell all the squares who peppered him with inane questions for years and what he has been trying to tell them in his music, especially on this album. This last verse is a direct response to Irwin Silbur who published a caustic note in the magazine 'Sing Out", castigating Dylan for leaving the folk protest scene and going electric. "Right now I can't read too good Don't send me no more letters no Not unless you mail them **From*** Desolation Row Unless you get it, (All of you), unless as Kesey said you are either "on the bus or off the bus", don't bother me, I am not interested, I am not interested in engaging you. That's how many of us felt at the time. One of the most ambitious and succesful popular art songs (beyond popular art) ever created. One of my all time top three Desolatiion Row It's All Right Ma Visions ofJohanna Here is a link to the Sing Out letter www.edlis.org/twice/threads/open_letter_to_bob_dylan.html
Never try to read too much into bobs words. He just likes words that go together. There is no deep Meaning to them. That's what people don't get about bob.
