Click on the headline to link to an American Left History entry on some of birthday boy Bob Dylan’s earlier work.
Markin comment:
No question Bob Dylan, his early folk-inspired protest songs, and his persona had a great influence on me, and my generation, the generation of ’68, period. Whether he was the “voice” of our generation, or a voice is seriously open to question but what is not is his long-standing commitment to keep pushing the music envelope. And to do so relentlessly , for whatever reason, if only to keep himself from the easy old man rocking chair. His place in the music pantheon (folk, folk rock, rock, popular, country, mountain, Tin Pan Alley, whatever, he has respectable niches in each) and with many chapters in the American songbook is secure. Keep moving, brother.
*******
Line for line Desolation Row is my number one Bob Dylan song. It is the one that I sing (to myself) on those glooming days we all have. Do I know all the lines by heart from memory. No way. This is not unlike the fate of a lot of Dylan songs, as a well-know musician once reminded me. We all remember about half the verses of many Dylan songs on recall. True, brother, true.
********
Desolation Row Lyrics
Bob Dylan
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 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 fortunetelling 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.
Now 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
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went 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 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're spoonfeeding 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 outa 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 door knob 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
Dont send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
Markin comment:
No question Bob Dylan, his early folk-inspired protest songs, and his persona had a great influence on me, and my generation, the generation of ’68, period. Whether he was the “voice” of our generation, or a voice is seriously open to question but what is not is his long-standing commitment to keep pushing the music envelope. And to do so relentlessly , for whatever reason, if only to keep himself from the easy old man rocking chair. His place in the music pantheon (folk, folk rock, rock, popular, country, mountain, Tin Pan Alley, whatever, he has respectable niches in each) and with many chapters in the American songbook is secure. Keep moving, brother.
*******
Line for line Desolation Row is my number one Bob Dylan song. It is the one that I sing (to myself) on those glooming days we all have. Do I know all the lines by heart from memory. No way. This is not unlike the fate of a lot of Dylan songs, as a well-know musician once reminded me. We all remember about half the verses of many Dylan songs on recall. True, brother, true.
********
Desolation Row Lyrics
Bob Dylan
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 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 fortunetelling 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.
Now 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
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went 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 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're spoonfeeding 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 outa 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 door knob 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
Dont send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
Too bad Dylan will apparently be performing at a concert in Tel Aviv in June 2011--despite the call by Palestinian solidarity activists around the globe and the BDS movement for an anti-apartheid cultural boycott by musicians of Apartheid Israel. Perhaps some of the lyrics to "The Poet of PBS" folk song of a few years ago might explain why Dylan--unlike John Lennon--became more mainstream in his politics during the late 1960s and early 1970s (and later wrote his "Neighborhood Bully" song that seemed to support Israeli government militarism in the Middle East):
ReplyDeleteThe Poet of PBS
Was just in it for himself
He took tunes from the Folk
Made money and then sold out.
His manager's got some footage for a commercial promo film
To justify him selling out and his silence while his government killed
So they hired a director and controlled how he did the edits
And the Corporate Rock house artist is now The Poet of PBS.
He moved to his cousin's frat house near a campus in the Midwest
Then impersonated Woody Guthrie and added hip black lyrics
He hung out in the Village and Broadsides taught him to write protest
And the Times man composed the album notes for The Poet of PBS.
With his corporate media backing and his crafty manager
He turned his back on the Folk community to become a millionaire
Then he hid in his country mansion, while Vietnam was wrecked
And cash or drugs destroyed the soul of The Poet of PBS.
Forty years of artistic failure followed his creative moral youth
Forty years of defensiveness, forty years of obscuring truth
And when his tour has ended and they write his epitaph
They'll say: "The rebel poet became The Poet of PBS".
Bob- Good point (and nice jabbing lyrics) on Dylan's politics which were always ugly after the first early 1960s rush. I would point out that John Lennon's, after he got into immigration trouble, also took a dive right, or rather ducked his head. I like Trotsky's position on these cultural types (Breton, Rivera, Kahlo, Malraux, etc.in his day)-let them do their cultural thing to add to humankind's storehouse of knowledge- and basically keep out of our way.
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