Desolation Row

I am appreciative of many of the comments here as they have helped me gain insight into many of the verses. A very literate bunch.

In terms of actual verses, I don't have much to add because of the insights from others, except for this. The song is not about the Holocaust, it is not about Dylan's personal life, there are several real life and historical references (as noted from others) in the song and Desolation Row in the song is NOT a place of degradation, despair or failure but is Dylan's metaphor for sanctuary, clarity and safety.The "letter" referred to in the last verse is the letter to Dylan published in Sing Out magazine in which the editor scathingly attacked Dylan for abandoning and betraying the folk protest movement. In Desolation Row Dylan counters that he is tired of the nonsense and will only take people seriously when they have awakened to the larger truths he understands, that they join him in Desolation Row. It also is ironic that Dylan was attacked for abandoning politics because Highway 61 Revisited (along with Bringing It All Back Home) are two of the most political albums ever created. Just not in a conventional style.

What I have to add to the discussion is this. Desolation Row is the last song on Highway 61 and expresses the beginning of a change in Dylan, a change that is more fully realized in Blonde on Blonde. After a series of all out assaults on conventional thinking and the excesses and shadow of contemporary society, beginning with "Free Wheellin" (Hard Rain, Masters of War) through "Times They Are a Changing" (With God on our side, others), to Bringing it All Back Home (Subterranean Homesick Blues, Ifs All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding", others), Dylan mounts his most scathing all out attack here with an unbridled ferocity that consumes most of the disc. There is a reason Rolling Stine voted this #4 all time. From Highway 61 to Ballad of a Thin Man, Like a Rolling Stone and Tombstone Blues, Dylan's critique, his contempt is unrelenting and blistering. To assault Jesus and religion directly with the line "The Sun's not yellow, its chicken" is quite a feat.

But in Desolation Row Dylan changes. Most here have commented on the lyrics but the tone, manner of musical construction, tempo, and placement on the album matter. It is acoustic, not electric. It moves at a much slower pace, similar to "It takes a lot to Laugh, It takes a train to cry". It has a laconic feel, like a meandering river that knows its destination.

Dylan imo is tired. He has thrown everything he has had with a fury at the dysfunctional society he lives in, similar to the anguished cry and plea of the brilliant "Flesh Failures" of Hair. Now he retreats into one final summation of all he sees. But he needs sanctuary in his weariness. This is "Desolation Row", the place of consciousness where only those awakened to the truth as Dylan sees it can live. Others "peek into it", are "punished for going to it", or for "escaping to it", or especially "not thinking about it". Dylan "leans out of it", " "looks out from it", and finally demands that you "send your letters" from it".

The brilliance of the languid melodic strain and Charlie Mccoy's guitar riffs, again move the song like an inexorable river. Here Dylan, in complete symbol and metaphor draws from the heart of the literary, religious, cultural and political ethos of the West to tell his story of a land gone wrong, where everything is inverted, where no sense makes all the sense in the world. "All these people that you mentioned (the oeuvre of Western Civilization), yes I know them, they're quite lame , I had to rearrange their faces, and give them all another name". The brilliance of the great "Its All Right Ma...is here, but now it is becoming muted. What more can Dylan say? If you can't get it now, when are you going to get it?

On his next album, Blonde on Blonde, Dylan moves more completely into this weariness, the political becomes almost entirely personal as the rage subsides into almost an existential despair ("Visions of Johanna", "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", "Just Like a Woman", you name it.)

Desolation Row is the beginning off the finale to a body of work that pits the artist against conventional thinking and mores that is unparalleled in our time. There is an unusual synchronicity with Dylan's music and his contempt and fury at the interviewer in the famous Time Interview from "Don't Look Back".

This is a great, great epic ballad, one I can listen to over and over again and it stands alone in Rock history. There is a reason, it, and its creator have become legend. It is a gift of monumental proportions.