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Bob Dylan - Desolation Row

Bob Dylan - Desolation Row Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Highway 61 Revisited
Released: 1965

Desolation Row Lyrics

They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight, from Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy, "It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning. "You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend, you'd better leave"
And the only sound that's left after the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden, the stars are beginning to hide
The fortune telling lady has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel and the hunchback of Notre Dame

Everybody is making love or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing, he's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row

Ophelia, she's 'neath the window for her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday she already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic she wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion, her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk
Now he looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette
And he when off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him, but he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin on Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients, they're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser, she's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read, "Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on the penny whistles, you can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough from Desolation Row

Across the street they've nailed the curtains, they're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera in a perfect image of a priest
They are spoon feeding Casanova to get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls, "Get outta here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row"

At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting, "Which side are you on?!"
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday, about the time the doorknob broke
When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke
All these people that you mention, yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name
Right now, I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row

Writer/s: BOB DYLAN
Publisher: BOB DYLAN MUSIC CO
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Desolation Row

The opening lines of this song ("They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown...") refer to three men who were in town with the circus and were accused of raping a girl in Duluth, Minnesota. On June 15, 1920, a mob broke them out of jail and lynched them. Postcards with pictures of the hanging were sold as souvenirs. Dylan's father, Abraham Zimmerman, was 8 years old and living in Duluth at the time of the hangings.

This is the last track on the album. It is eleven minutes long, and was Dylan's longest song up to that point. Dylan rarely plays it at concerts, but when he does, it can stretch out to 45 minutes. (thanks Abram - Los Angeles, California)

When trying to interpret this song, keep in mind that Dylan was experimenting with LSD around the time he recorded it.

This was never released as a single, probably due to its length, but the Highway 61 Revisited album went to #3 US and #4 UK.

Dylan performed this for the first time at the Forest Hills Music Festival in Queens, New York on August 28, 1965, after he electrified the Newport Folk Festival. It was part of the acoustic set Dylan played before bringing on his electric band.

Live versions are included on Dylan's MTV Unplugged, and Live 1966.

This was covered by My Chemical Romance for the end credits of the 2009 superhero movie Watchmen.

This was the first Bob Dylan recording that bassist and guitarist Charlie McCoy played on. He would go on to contribute to every Dylan album from 1965 to 1970. His initial contribution, however, was the result of an apparent accident.

When McCoy was in New York for a visit, his friend, producer Bob Johnston, arranged for him to go and see a Broadway show. Johnston suggested that he drop by the nearby Columbia Studios to pick up the tickets. "He introduced me to Dylan," recalled McCoy to Uncut magazine March 2014, "and he said to me, 'I'm getting ready to record a song, why don't you pick up the other guitar and play?' We had time for one take, one playback and then for another session. And that was 'Desolation Row'."

Bob Dylan - Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

Bob Dylan - Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Highway 61 Revisited
Released: 1965

Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics

When you're lost in the rain in Juarez when it's Easter time, too
And your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs when you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there and they really make a mess outta you

Now, if you see Saint Annie, please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move, my fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength to get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor, won't even say what it is I've got

Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English and she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind and careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon

Up on Housing Project Hill, it's either fortune or fame
You must pick one or the other, though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly, you better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you, and man, they expect the same

Now, all the authorities, they just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms into leaving his post
And picking up Angel, who just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first but left looking just like a ghost

I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me when the game got rough
But the joke was on me, there was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough

Writer/s: BOB DYLAN
Publisher: BOB DYLAN MUSIC CO
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Song Chart

The song contains multiple literary references. Here are a few:

Rue Morgue Avenue hearkens to Edgar Allen Poe.

Tom Thumb was a character from English folklore who would, in 1621, star in the first fairy tale ever published in English.

Housing Project Hill comes from the Jack Kerouac novel Desolation Angels. Dylan would later say that he came to find the lifestyle espoused in Kerouac's books to be pointless, but his first impression was very different. "I read On the Road in maybe 1959," Dylan has stated. "It changed my life like it changed everyone else's."