Desolation Row
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"Desolation Row" is the final song of Bob Dylan's sixth album, Highway 61 Revisited. The eleven minute song is a favorite of Dylan's fans; the lyrics especially are often cited as among his best, full of evocative imagery and poetry. Along with Visions of Johanna from 1966, it represents the apotheosis of Dylan's unique lyrical vision from the 1960s. It is the album's only purely acoustic track, in contrast to the thunderous electric rock and roll sound that Dylan was completely embracing for the first time with the album. It was recorded in New York City, New York on August 2, 1965; the take on the album was the second time Dylan had sung the song.
The songs of this period received wide critical acclaim; thus Gammond in the New Oxford Companion to Music, wrote of Dylan's work of the mid-60s as achieving 'high level of poetical lyricism... as heard in Like a Rolling Stone and Desolation Row.
Al Kooper, who played organ and piano on the album, claimed in his autobiography that Desolation Row was Eighth Avenue in New York City. At the time, this was a very dangerous part of town. Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck, is also a possible source for the song, as is The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (the poem is alluded to; the poet is directly referenced) and "Desolation Angels" by Jack Kerouac.
The song describes a town of some sort, full of lowlifes and losers. The various characters receive only a line or two each, yet Dylan still manages to be evocative and bring forth images of crazy, nonsensical townspeople. Desolation Row would seem to lie on Highway 61, perhaps at the end of the line in Dylan's native Duluth, Minnesota, where the horde of freaks congregate after being rejected from elsewhere. Dylan's feelings about this place seem contrary; it is clearly a town full of mean, stupid and insane people, yet he seems nearly jubilant about being there. On the other hand, it is also a land of counter-cultural rebellion. At the time, political dissidents such as socialists and pacifists were shunned; these rejects are the inhabitants of Desolation Row, described in the song. Indeed, most of the characters mentioned were rejected from their society for being some sort of freak, from the Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, shunned because of their appearance to Cinderella, who forces her way out of her assigned role in society through sheer will power.
The song's verse "Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do." is quoted at the end of the first chapter of the graphic novel Watchmen.
[edit] Possible significance of the first verse
On June 15, 1920, a mob of 10,000 lynched three men, Isaac McGhie, Elias Clayton and Elmer Jackson at the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East in Duluth, Minnesota. The men were in town with a traveling circus and were dubiously accused of raping a local girl. (On June 15, 1920, Dylan’s then ten-year-old father lived in a third floor apartment at 221 North Lake Avenue.) The Police Commissioner instructed the guards not to use their guns to defend the young men who were broken out of jail by the mob. Postcards with a photo of the incident were sold as souvenirs. It seems likely that the opening lines of Desolation Row, if not the entire song refer to this incident and the players involved, or to Duluth in general.The song and Duluth lynching
See also: Lynchings in Duluth by Michael Fedo
[edit] Cultural references
- Bette Davis
- Cinderella
- Romeo and Juliet
- Cain and Abel
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Good Samaritan
- Ophelia
- Albert Einstein
- Robin Hood
- Little John
- The Phantom of the Opera
- Casanova
- Noah
- Nero
- Neptune
- Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot
- Titanic
- Calypso music
- T.S Eliot
