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"Desolation Row" is the ninth and final song of Bob Dylan's sixth album, Highway 61 Revisited. This eleven minute song contains lyrics full of evocative imagery, poetry, and cultural references. 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. In the New Oxford Companion to Music, Gammond used Desolation as an example of Dylan's work of the mid-60s that achieved a "high level of poetical lyricism."^[1]

Contents 1 Lyrical description 2 Cultural references 3 References in popular culture 4 External links

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While exactly what Dylan was referring to as Desolation Row is unknown, 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. where the horde of freaks congregate after being rejected from elsewhere. 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 outcasts may form the basis of some characters described in the song. A common thread uniting most of the characters mentioned is their rejection from their society for being some sort of freak, such as the Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Desolation Row has been conjectured to be Dylan's native Duluth, Minnesota, at the end of Highway 61. The first verse may contain a reference to a hanging that took place there. 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

• 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
• Joaquín Sabina in "Pongamos que hablo de Madrid".

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 classic graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore, illustrated by David Gibbons.

• "Desolation Row" Complete Song Lyrics
• Rolling Stone's article about "Desolation Row" being the 185th Greatest Song of All Time