"Desolation Row" is a 1965 song written and sung by Bob Dylan.

It
was recorded on August 4, 1965 and released as the closing track
of Dylan's sixth studio album, Highway 61 Revisited. It has been
noted for its length (11:21) and surreal lyrics in which Dylan weaves
characters from history, fiction, the Bible and his own invention into
a series of vignettes that suggest entropy and urban chaos.
"Desolation Row" is often ranked as one of Dylan's greatest
compositions.[1]

Although the album version of "Desolation Row" is acoustic, the song was initially recorded
in an electric version. The first take was recorded during an evening session on July 29,
1965[2] with Harvey Brooks on electric bass and Al Kooper on electric guitar. This version
was eventually released in 2005 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The
Soundtrack.[3]
On August 2, Dylan recorded five further takes of "Desolation Row".[4] The Highway 61
Revisited version was recorded at an overdub session on August 4, 1965, in Columbia's
Studio A in New York City. Nashville-based guitarist Charlie McCoy, who happened to be in
New York, was invited by producer Bob Johnston to contribute an improvised acoustic
guitar part and Russ Savakusplayed bass guitar.[5][6] Author Mark Polizzotti credits some of
the success of the song to McCoy's contribution: "While Dylan's panoramic lyrics and
hypnotic melody sketch out the vast canvas, it is McCoy's fills that give it their
shading."[5] Outtakes from the August sessions were released on The Bootleg Series Vol.
12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 in 2015.[7]

Interpretation[edit]
When asked where "Desolation Row" was located, at a TV press conference in San
Francisco on December 3, 1965, Dylan replied: "Oh, that's some place in Mexico, it's
across the border. It's noted for its Coke factory."[8] Al Kooper, who played electric guitar on
the first recordings of "Desolation Row", suggested that it was located on a stretch
of Eighth Avenue, Manhattan, "an area infested with whore houses, sleazy bars and porno
supermarkets totally beyond renovation or redemption".[9] Polizzotti suggests that both the
inspiration and title of the song may have come from Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac,
and Cannery Row by John Steinbeck.[9]
When Jann Wenner asked Dylan in 1969 whether Allen Ginsberg had influenced his songs,
Dylan replied: "I think he did at a certain period. That period of... 'Desolation Row,' that kind
of New York type period, when all the songs were just city songs. His poetry is city poetry.
Sounds like the city."[10]
The south-western flavored acoustic guitar backing and eclecticism of the imagery led
Polizzotti to describe "Desolation Row" as the "ultimate cowboy song, the 'Home On The
Range' of the frightening territory that was mid-sixties America".[11] In the penultimate verse
the passengers on the Titanic are "shouting 'Which Side Are You On?'", a slogan of left-
wing politics, so, for Robert Shelton, one of the targets of this song is "simpleminded
political commitment. What difference which side you're on if you're sailing on the
Titanic?"[12] In an interview with USA Today on September 10, 2001, the day before the
release of his album Love and Theft, Dylan claimed that the song "is a minstrel song
through and through. I saw some ragtag minstrel show in blackface at the carnivals when I
was growing up, and it had an effect on me, just as much as seeing the lady with four
legs."[13]
The song opens with a report that "they're selling postcards of the hanging", and notes "the
circus is in town". Polizzotti, and other critics, have connected this song with the lynching of
three black men in Duluth. The men were employed by a traveling circus and had been
accused of raping a white woman. On the night of June 15, 1920, they were removed from
custody and hanged on the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East. Photos of the
lynching were sold as postcards.[14] Duluth was Bob Dylan’s birthplace. Dylan’s father,
Abram Zimmerman, was eight years old at the time of the lynchings, and lived only two
blocks from the scene. Abram Zimmerman passed the story on to his son

BOB DYLAN

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941) is an American singer-
songwriter, author, and visual artist who has been a major figure in popular culture for six
decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when songs such as
"Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became
anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and anti-war movement. His lyrics during this period
incorporated a wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences,
defied pop-music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture.
Following his self-titled debut album in 1962, which mainly comprised traditional folk songs,
Dylan made his breakthrough as a songwriter with the release of The Freewheelin' Bob
Dylan the following year. The album featured "Blowin' in the Wind" and the thematically
complex "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". For many of these songs he adapted the tunes and
sometimes phraseology of older folk songs. He went on to release the politically
charged The Times They Are a-Changin' and the more lyrically abstract and
introspective Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan encountered
controversy when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation, and in the space
of 15 months recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the
1960s: Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on
Blonde (1966). The six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" (1965) radically expanded what
a pop song could convey.
In July 1966, Dylan withdrew from touring after being injured in a motorcycle accident.
During this period he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, who had
previously backed him on tour. These recordings were released as the collaborative
album The Basement Tapes, in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan
explored country music and rural themes in John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville
Skyline (1969), and New Morning (1970). In 1975, he released Blood on the Tracks, which
many saw as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he became a born-again Christian and
released a series of albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more
familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. The major works of his later career
include Time Out of Mind (1997), "Love and Theft" (2001), and Tempest (2012). His most
recent recordings have comprised versions of traditional American standards, especially
songs recorded by Frank Sinatra. Backed by a changing lineup of musicians, he has toured
steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed "the Never Ending Tour".
Since 1994, Dylan has published eight books of drawings and paintings, and his work has
been exhibited in major art galleries. He has sold more than 100 million records, making
him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has also received numerous
awards including ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award.
Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Minnesota Music Hall of
Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer
Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music
and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power". In
2012, Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2016, he was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great
American song tradition".[3]