Where is ‘Desolation Row’ from the classic Bob Dylan song?
He entered international consciousness as a 22-year-old, but like a musical Benjamin Button, Bob Dylan imbued wisdom far beyond his years. A high-school fascination with rock ‘n’ roll by the likes of Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Buddy Holly matured with a thirst for affecting lyricism in the accommodating field of folk music. By his late teens, Dylan was enamoured with Woody Guthrie and his politically charged folk canon.
During the height of Dylan’s early fame, his style popularised acoustic folk, drawing attention for its sociopolitical rhetoric, especially in hits like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’ and ‘Masters of War’. Meanwhile, songs like ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ beckoned an imminent countercultural revolution that saw the baby boomer generation at odds with a war-mongering establishment.
Famously, Bob Dylan turned his back on acoustic folk in 1965, starting with his acoustic/electric hybrid album, Bringing It All Back Home. That same year, he released the equally revered Highway 61 Revisited. While these albums are less politically energised, Dylan began to prove himself worthy of the Nobel Prize in Literature he would win some five decades later.
Dylan’s rapidly propagating knack for poetic lyricism was inspired greatly by his reading habits. It would appear the line, “You’re very well read, it’s well known,” in ‘Ballad of Thin Man’ was self-directed. Crucially, his literary diet was rich in the non-conformist sprawlings of Beat Generation writers such as William S. Burroughs and his new friend at the time, Allen Ginsberg.
In a heady confluence of literary and musical inspiration, Dylan released some of his most enduring pieces between 1965 and ’66, the year of Blonde on Blonde. A particular highlight is ‘Desolation Row’, the epic closer for Highway 61 Revisited. For many, this titanic feat of songcraft is among Dylan’s greatest accomplishments.
As this era of Dylan’s songwriting demanded, ‘Desolation Row’ is thematically broad and attractively elusive. Across its 11 published verses, the song introduces a rolling cast of characters, including Robin Hood, Cinderella, the Good Samaritan, Cain and Abel. The narrative fragments are difficult to untangle, but all roads lead to Desolation Row. But where on Earth is the titular destination?
Where is Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row?
In December 1965, the San Francisco radio station KQED asked Dylan where Desolation Row was. “Oh, that’s some place in Mexico; it’s across the border. It’s noted for its Coke factory,” the 24-year-old replied sardonically.
Of course, Dylan’s witty reply served little in the way of a solid answer, but it’s apparent that Desolation Row is a figurative place. Furthermore, the various characters mentioned throughout the song are thought to resemble people in Dylan’s life as a reflection of his path to fame through the early 1960s.
Al Kooper, who played electric guitar on the early sessions for the song, once suggested that Desolation Row was a place later nicknamed as such on Eighth Avenue, Manhattan. He described it as “an area infested with whore houses, sleazy bars and porno supermarkets totally beyond renovation or redemption,” according to Mark Polizzotti in his book Highway 61 Revisited.
In his book, Polizzotti also suggests that Dylan was inspired by Beat writer Jack Kerouac’s novel Desolation Angels and John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. As two prominent works of 20th-century literature, Dylan most likely read both. Whether they consciously or subconsciously inspired the name is yet to be confirmed.
In a 1969 interview with Jann Wenner, Dylan noted the song as one of his most Beat-inspired creations when asked if Ginsberg directly inspired any of his songs. “I think he did at a certain period,” he replied. “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.”
Listen to ‘Desolation Row’ below.
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