Handwritten Bob Dylan ‘Desolation Row’ lyrics fetch £350,000 at auction
A one-of-a-kind set of handwritten lyrics penned by Bob Dylan are set to sell for £350,000 at auction. Handwritten words and edits to the song ‘Desolation Row’ have officially hit the auction block.
The new sale is just the latest in a recent string of Dylan lyrics that are fetching astronomical prices at auction. Back in 2020, original manuscripts for ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’, ‘Lay Lady Lay’ and ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ were acquired and sold, with ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ listed for £1.8 million.
“In terms of rarity, unlike ‘Times’, ‘Hard Rain’, ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, where several examples of each exist, there are no other examples of ‘Desolation Row’,” the auction listing website Moment in Time writes. “Dylan’s archives in the Tulsa museum does not include any version of it. In over 50 years no other example of ‘Desolation Row’ has ever been hinted at existing.”
‘Desolation Row’ first appeared as the apocalyptic 11-minute closing track of Dylan’s 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. The lyric sheet that went on the block was obtained by a lifelong friend of Dylan’s who received the lyric sheet decades ago.
The idea of getting handwritten Dylan material seems a bit novel, considering how Dylan currently finds himself in some choppy waters following the revelation that he had used an autopen to sign supposedly “handwritten” signatures of his new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song.
Check out the studio recording of ‘Desolation Row’ down below.
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