| Bob Dylan – As I Went Out One Morning Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Well the south is the deeply religious part of the USA, so maybe that what the reference is to. A place where his Christian convictions will be safe from "Tom Paine" maybe. | |
| Bob Dylan – She Belongs to Me Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I saw the song as been about wait for this..... Bob Dylan, the Bob dylan persona that Bob was composing at that time, my view was reinforced by Cate Blanchett playing a female Dylan in I'm Not There. His Dylan alter ego is quite feminin. Especially the lines "she's the hypnotist collector you are the walking antique". At that time dylan's art was full of very hypnotic references and abstract stream of conciousness lyrics, and him seeing the folk singer as old and outdated and antique. | |
| James Blunt – You're Beautiful Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| first of all i have to congratulate everybody who commented on this complete melodramitc, mindless dribble puesdo poetry of nursery ryhme. James Blunt has no talent whats so ever, there is no artistc merit to this song and there are million seriuos songwriters out there that desrve the credit. Everybody commenting on the depth and beauty of this "song" just leads me to believe how stupid and shallow our generation is, and its little wonder we have produced no good artists in the last 10 years. Do your self a favour, Go put on some Dylan and listen to a real songwriter | |
| James Blunt – I Want You [Bob Dylan cover] Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| didn't he miss the verse abou the chinese dancing boy? Plus if you like james blunt you cannot possibly like this song, | |
| Bob Dylan – High Water (For Charley Patton) Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
I think this song is a political song on modern day culture i think the whole album relates to modern culture "love and Theft" a kinda of oxymoran sayin societys gone mad and were gonna pay the piper soon, "Things have changed was written bout the same time too and that states that people are crazy and times are strange. this song was wrote just before 9/11 in a worldwide state of wariness every one was walkin on egg shells a risk of terrorism was high and obviously inevitable the worlds was just so close to disaster it was looming on us and something was about to happed disaster will strike due to our ignorance and then what happened? 9/11 hurrican Katrina, a shit load of problems due to iraq and terrorism, 7/11,the recent terrorist attack on heathrow, and whatevers to come theres high water and its gettin higher by the day "High water risin', six inches 'bove my head" |
|
| Bob Dylan – Sara Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
This song is about Bobs wife divorcing him because of whatever reasons i think drugs came into it, but she comes back "Sara, Sara Whatever made you want to change you mind" hence the changed your mind and this song is a tribute to her basicly the thing i love about this song is you can hear the expression and soul in his voice as he sings it as some guy posted earlier you can hear the blood comin out of his voice especially on this verse I can still hear the sounds Of those Methodist bells I'd taken the cure And had just gotten through Stayin' up for days In the Chelsea Hotel Writin' "Sad-Eyed Lady Of the Lowlands" for you this is one of the songs that make you Know James Blunt sucks adn pretty much all of pop |
|
| Bob Dylan – Love Sick Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
THis song is a great one, weve all been there at some level or another, i think its about been in denile about your love for a girl, basicly your so in love with her it hurts that you cant get her, hes lonley "I'm sick of love; I wish I'd never met you I'm sick of love; I'm trying to forget you" hes trying to forget her he wish he wasnt in love it would just make live easier and set him free he heres the clock tick time just runs slow , he cant fight it so eventuall at the end of the song he says Just don't know what to do I'd give anything to Be with you |
|
| Bob Dylan – Don't Think Twice, It's All Right Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I thing the song is just about a relationship where nothing reaaly clicked it had no point they neither of them were really putting any effort into it hence dont think twice its alright hes sayin it doesnt matter dont think twice about the relationship its not the big a deal | |
| Bob Dylan – Highlands Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
I think that the song is about Bob reminissing about a past love which is put him a day dream "high" state. "Then she says, "I know you're an artist, draw a picture of me!" I say, "I would if I could, but, I don't do sketches from memory." and "There's a way to get there, and I'll figure it out somehow But I'm already there in my mind And that's good enough for now" |
|
| Bob Dylan – Highlands Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| only 2 comments?! this is one of bob's cleverest songs | |
| Bob Dylan – Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| The Jack of hearts bears a resemblence to the "man with no name" i almost see this song as a symbolic romanticised clint eastwood western. | |
| Bob Dylan – Lenny Bruce Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| About contraversal comdian Lenny Bruce, who was bannd from Britian | |
| Bob Dylan – You Ain't Goin' Nowhere Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| is it me or are the lyrics wrong? | |
| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
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 (who is referenced in the song). 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. 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 MN. 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. "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" "(I)n 'Desolation Row' the listener's eye is directed toward a circus of grotesques: a beauty parlor filled with sailors, a commissioner masturbating as he caresses a tightrope walker, a whole city in disguise. But whoever they are, nearly all of the characters in the song share one attribute: they're not free. They are prisoners of judges, doctors, torturers, an entire secret police, and the worst part is they may have recruited its troops from their own hearts. If they are not free it is because they are prisoners of their own ignorance, their own vanity, their own compromises, their own cowardice. By the way they are sung, the saddest lines in the song echo with all that one man used to be, could have been, will never be again: 'You would not think, to look at him, but he was famous, lonnnnnnng ago,' the word long stretched out just as long as it will go, all the way back to the time when the Einstein the man was then wouldn't even recognize the Einstein he is now." Dylan seems to believe that if the people of Desolation Row continue to grow, the world will become entirely the same, full of sad, lonely losers. This is Dylan's pessimistic vision of the future; where everyone, even Bette Davis, Cinderella, Casanova, and Albert Einstein, is tragic and pained, living in a scrap of a town. The lyrics to "Desolation Row" are delivered in a laconic tone and sound like a description of a surrealist or symbolist painting or a film by Federico Fellini. The place described is having abnormal morality, where they sell "postcards of the hanging", and the social status quo is not followed: "beauty parlor (is) filled with sailors" and the "blind commissioner", who has "one hand tied to the tight-rope walker" while he masturbates with "the other (hand) in his pants". All these strange characters "need somewhere to go" and the place turns out to be Desolation Row. The second verse concerns Cinderella and Romeo, who has apparently come to woo Cinderella; she "seems so easy". He is rebuffed, however, as someone says "you're in the wrong place, my friend/You better leave." After this disagreement between "someone" and "Romeo," Cinderella is left "sweeping up/on Desolation Row" after the ambulances leave. Most reviewers agree that Romeo and Cinderella are in Desolation Row because they do not fit into their assigned roles. Cinderella is supposed to fall in love with a prince, and Romeo is meant to love Juliet--their refusal to heed these roles and rules sends them in exile to Desolation Row. The next verse mentions Cain, Abel, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Good Samaritan as being inhabitants of Desolation Row. At night, the sky is becoming cloudy and threatening a storm ("the moon is almost hidden/the stars are beginning to hide") and everybody, except for Cain, Abel and the Hunchback, have gone inside (even the "fortunetelling lady"). Those who are not making love are "expecting rain" (note: "Everybody is making love/Or else expecting rain" is a popular, oft-quoted line from this song), all except for the Good Samaritan, who is obliviously getting ready for a show at a carnival. That he is a carnie is perhaps notable, implying that possessing the quality of goodness (as the Good Samaritan does) makes one a carnival freak; he is, like the other inhabitants of Desolation Row, dissimilar from his neighbors because he is neither making love, nor expecting rain. The fourth verse is about "Ophelia" (see Hamlet), who does not live on Desolation Row, though she does spend "her time peeking" into it. She does not live there because she has bought into the dominant status quo. As a result of conforming, Ophelia is already an "old maid" "on her twenty-second birthday." Her life is meaningless, as she spends all day trudging through a boring, irrelevant life which she takes seriously to the detriment of her real emotional and mental existence--"her profession's her religion/her sin is her lifelessness." Thus, her boring acceptance of mediocrity and banality is what keeps her from moving to Desolation Row. It is worth noting that Ophelia, in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, commits suicide. The next verse describes a washed-up Albert Einstein (who is "disguised as Robin Hood"). Einstein was not always taken seriously in his time, and he was a noted iconoclast, so his presence on Desolation Row is not surprising. He is not an illustrious physicist, though, but a bum who sniffs drainpipes and bums cigarettes off strangers. Things used to be different for Einstein, though, as he used to be famous "for playing the electric violin/on Desolation Row". (This evokes the famous black and white picture of the middle-aged Einstein playing his violin). Another interpretation has this as Dylan himself, a Jewish intellectual in the costume of an outlaw ("Einstein disguised as Robin Hood") playing the "electric violin" at Newport. Though much of the song is difficult to quantify to any real-word referent, many reviewers claim the eighth verse has a definite interpretation. To them, this verse refers to the actions of the federal government of the United States. Specifically, programs such as COINTELPRO, run by the FBI to discredit, sabotage and perhaps assassinate counter-cultural leaders. "... all the agents/and the superhuman crew" (i.e. FBI and law enforcement agents, enforcers of the status quo) "round up everyone/that knows more than they do" (isolate all freaks and people who don't fit into mainstream society). These iconoclasts are then brought to "the factory/where the heart-attack machine/is strapped across their shoulders" (perhaps referring to mind-and-heart-numbing suburban existence, represented by the "heart-attack", being tied to former idealists by the crushing banality of modern life). Finally, "insurance men" go to "check to see that nobody is escaping/to Desolation Row," lending credence to the idea that Desolation Row refers to a place where society's freaks and rejects can escape to and find solace in. This interpretation is impossible to square with the song's other lyrics, and ignores the verse's use of terms and phrases associated with Andy Warhol and his coterie. The final verse is separated by a harmonica solo, thematically dividing it from the rest of the song. Noting this, a number of people have suggested an alternate explanation for the surrealist characters of the preceding verses. Much like Fellini's 8½, Dylan has populated the song with doppelgangers representing real people in his life. The narrator has received a letter from an old acquaintance, one who in the past hurt him very much, discussing the exploits of once shared associates. Dylan, unable to escape the past ("the doorknob broke") instead writes about these same people in grotesque exaggeration and has them populate a circus of freaks of his own devising ("All these people that you mention... I had to rearrange their faces/And give them all another name.") The narrator reaches the conclusion that even with this manipulation, he still finds himself unable to confront the memory of this person and asks "don't send me no more letters, no." |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.