The first time I heard this song was a cover version by the Grateful Dead. I said to myself 'that's got to be a Bob Dylan song,' and sure enough, it was.
Most song writers will never write three lines as good as the weakest line in this marathon of devastating one liners. Played his heart out on that harmonica too. Used to be a delivery driver. This one made me late. I wasn't going to turn it off for nothing.
The first time I heard this song it was live.. in 1965, not long after the album came out. I had avoided buying the album until after the concert so I could hear the songs with fresh ears, and it was a good decision. this was when Dylan was doing his first tour with The Band (minus Levon at that point), and the first half was solo acoustic and then the band played the second half. This song was during the solo acoustic part, and was just mesmerizing. I hung on every word. (and, they didn't boo the electric stuff in Columbus, Ohio! although, my elderly English teacher did leave at intermission.) A couple years ago I relearned it and sang (almost) all the verses from memory at a couple of shows. A good test of my level of dementia.
1- We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us-if at all-not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men. T.S. Elliot
This song is about a lynching of 4 Black circus workers in Duluth, MN in the 1920s. A teenage girl who accused the 4 men of rape, recanted her story after the lynching. She died recently. You used to be able to buy sick, racist postcards with pictures of lynched Black men in stores. White men with smiles watching a Black man hang from a tree. Strange Fruit indeed. Dylan's first words told you what was happening: "They're selling postcards of the hanging" (Lynching). Over 4,000 Black men have been lynched in the South and North by white racists. See the National Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, AL for full details. Thanks Bob, for another history lesson. No matter how horrible to view, the truth needs to be told.
The song is not about the hanging. The context is the mid 60's and a society totally dysfunctional and lacking a moral center. Johnson had just upped our involvement in Vietnam to nearly 500,000 troops. In the song Dylan is retreating from that society, one that is so aberrant it would sell postcards of a hanging, which he has assaulted with intense fury for years in songs like "Hard Rain", "Masters of war", "Subterranean Homesick blues", "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding", "Tombstone Blues" and "Highway 61 Revisited", among others. Now he is tired. The surrealistic landscape he creates is a painting of that madness using well known figures from history, literature and religion but "rearranging their faces" to paint a portrait of a world gone insane. "Desolation Row" itself is a sanctuary of awareness and authenticity beyond this mayhem, where people are punished, prevented from, peeking into, denied the ability to go there. In the last verse Dylan is telling people "if you don't get it, don't bother me" There was a famous 60's expression "You are either on the bus or off the bus", referring to Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters. "I received your letter yesterday (About the time the door knob broke) When you asked how I was doing Was that some kind of joke?.... Right now I can't read too good Don't send me no more letters no Not unless you mail them From Desolation Row" The "letter" is referring to a letter Irwin Silber wrote publicly in "Sing Out" folk magazine chiding Dylan for "betraying" the folk protest movement. In "Desolation Row" Dylan is tired of labels, societal expectations and conventional thinking and is saying "either you get the larger picture or you don't and if you don't (mail them from DR) , don't bother me. Dylan's music here was pioneering as he influenced the Beatles and everyone else lyrically and was a precursor to the explosion of Acid Rock and anti establishment feeling it embodied and powerfully expressed by bands and artists like Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and the Who among many others. This all broke in 1967, about two years after Desolation Row. Dylan helped lead the way.
The opening line could be about the three black men arrested for rape of a white woman who were taken out of custody hanged and photos were being sold that was in Bob's hometown of Duluth in the 1920s . I've tried my best to try and work out Dylan's lyrics but it has driven me insane literally insane, ask my family but now I just enjoy the pure poetry of Dylan's lyrics.
@@elston3153 It is about that exactly as it happened near to where Dylan lived. I think his grandfather knew about it directly. I don't think the song is about that in toto in particular but a society that has descended into madness, It sets the tone for the barbarity of people who would do such a thing and then make post cards about it as souvenirs. Or those who would napalm innocent civilians, I agree in Dylan's surrealistic work one cannot deconstruct every line and match it to something literal in life but it is not always that hard to figure out what he means. For example Tombstone blues which I think alludes to Vietnam quite a bit. Opening verse. "The sweet pretty things are in bed now, of course The city fathers, they are trying to endorse The reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse But the town has no need to be nervous The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits To Jezebel the nun, she violently knits A bald wig for Jack the Ripper, who sits At the head of the Chamber of Commerce" Paul Revere was a great Patriot. Why are the "city fathers" (those in authority) trying to "reincarnate" (reinvent or call upon ) this legend for modern usage? Dylan then uses point counterpoint -Jezebel-nun, violently knitting (normally a calm activity), bald-wig, wigs have hair ,and then "Jack the Ripper, who sits, at the head of the Chamber of Commerce" What kind of society has a horrific serial killer at the head of business affairs? America in Vietnam did. (and this is most authority that collaborated with the war, not just Johnson) The images fly fast but with the ferocity of pace and tempo drag one into a world that is insane with violence. Desolation Row is similar but different. Rather than attacking the psychosis head on (as was also done directly, not surrealistically in "It's All 'Right Ma" and "Masters of War"), the singer retreats into the sanctuary of Desolation Row where sanity reigns and people are prevented or punished for going there, But the singer more dispassionately puts a giant spotlight on the caravan and kaleidoscope of a land completely disjointed using some of its most revered literary, historical and religious figures and symbols- rearranged faces and names- to put that insanity in stark relief. The last lines tell all "Right now, I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters no Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row" The letters refer to the letter to Dylan from Irwin Silber of Sing Out magazine who chided Dylan strongly for "abandoning" the folk protest movement. Dylan will have none of it. Either you get it or you don't. On the bus or off the bus. Otherwise don't bother me. Here is the letter www.edlis.org/twice/threads/open_letter_to_bob_dylan.html
You could go up tempo with a short song like From a Buick Six, Highway 61, Tombstone Blues ~ from this same mid 60s era ~ songs that crashed into my life when I was 13 Or you could explore earlier folk Dylan ~ he sang Only a Pawn in their Game at the rally where MLK made his famous speech. Plenty more great songs in there ~ The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, Holliss Brown .. Then there’s the later versions of Dylan ~ Knocking on Heaven’s Door, Jokerman, Blind Willie McTell, What was it you wanted, Señor (Tales of Yankee Power), One More Cup of Coffee, Foot of Pride, Something’s got a hold of my Heart Then there’s Dylan in the 21st century ~ Things Have Changed, Thunder on the Mountain, Beyond here lies Nothing And his latest long masterpiece ~ Murder Most Foul Someone here can probably tell you I’ve missed some of the best ones. I know ~ Beautiful to watch you & other reactors discovering Dylan anyway
Some of his songs are linearly narrative, but a lot of them, this one included, are imo riffs on impressions, concepts & allusions. Think metaphoris. He's dancing on his own level. Trying to de-construct him literally isn't really what he's putting down - yes, there are exceptions, but most of his greatest songs are metaphorical, poetical allusions often standing on their own meaning, verse by verse, or even sentence by sentence - and all points in between. :)
I've seen Dylan play this live twice, and have many live recordings of this song, and not one of them has hit thirteen minutes, let alone forty-five. Perhaps whomever provided you with those "facts" was really talking about The Grateful Dead's live covers of this song, because they weren't talking about Bob Dylan.
Phuliminizzi makes an understandable mistake in expecting this song to be a simple common song only wrapped around a simple emotion or message. It isn't as if Dylan hasn't written dozens of these. Few people are going to like this one, it is deep and it is done in a jazz format lyrically. This time I heard it, I focused on the music which seems to be flamingo style which is repriticious and would be boring if not for the lyrics. I get a kick out of listening or reading the critics and commentators trying to analyze Dylan's abstract works such as this with the reasonable everyday mind which is the left side brain. It won't work and is laughable. The right side intuitive brain is a wordless part of our psyche from which comes a different truth, often leading us to a spiritual truth of God which also no human on earth completely understands. We do for a brief instant but then it is gone as we move on in life. Each time I listen to this, it invokes a different image because I have moved on in my learning and experience. This happens only when I read great literature or great philosophy. The song invokes conflicts but so does this happen before you create or strive to resolve conflicts. Then comes the peace for the mind can only take so much chaos then comes the endorphins giving us an internal drug induced response. This is represented in the calming repearious flamingo music. Remember, with many faiths to reach a religious euphoria, there is chanting, a drum beat and music to aid you into getting there. I am amazed to have written the above, little of it was what I preplanned to write. I never 'saw' the religious link in this song before.
![FIRST TIME LISTENING TO BOB DYLAN - HURRICANE [FIRST TIME REACTION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eRZ_aHyAK_c/mqdefault.jpg)
![FIRST TIME LISTENING TO BOB DYLAN - HURRICANE [FIRST TIME REACTION]](/img/tr.png)
I think this song exemplifies why there are college classes that interpret Bob Dylan songs.
Master Dylan....Picasso like....painting pictures with words!
This album is one of if not the most important in the history of modern music. Check out more from it. Great reaction
Bob is out there.
The first time I got stoned and listened to this song I thought I found the meaning of life
Actually, he's sung it in concert 581 times! I've seen him perform it a few times myself.
The first time I heard this song was a cover version by the Grateful Dead.
I said to myself 'that's got to be a Bob Dylan song,' and sure enough, it was.
Yes ~ More Dylan
I like early Dylan. Love Minus Zero is one of my favorites.
Love Minus Zero is a great song. Another great song is Tom Thumb's Blues
Probably one of the greatest songs ever
Most song writers will never write three lines as good as the weakest line in this marathon of devastating one liners. Played his heart out on that harmonica too. Used to be a delivery driver. This one made me late. I wasn't going to turn it off for nothing.
♥ this song! The whole album is brilliant! I suggest these Dylan songs: Tangled Up In Blue, Shelter From The Storm & Visions Of Johanna
dylan is one the greatests in eua , in the music, in the art around the planet
The first time I heard this song it was live.. in 1965, not long after the album came out. I had avoided buying the album until after the concert so I could hear the songs with fresh ears, and it was a good decision. this was when Dylan was doing his first tour with The Band (minus Levon at that point), and the first half was solo acoustic and then the band played the second half. This song was during the solo acoustic part, and was just mesmerizing. I hung on every word. (and, they didn't boo the electric stuff in Columbus, Ohio! although, my elderly English teacher did leave at intermission.) A couple years ago I relearned it and sang (almost) all the verses from memory at a couple of shows. A good test of my level of dementia.
that was great.... liked and subscribed
Thanks and welcome
Very hard to pick a favorite Dylan song. Would suggest "Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again".
You nailed that
Bob has never played any song for 45 minutes.
He always plays this song at this length it is here
1- We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
T.S. Elliot
"I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name."
This song is about a lynching of 4 Black circus workers in Duluth, MN in the 1920s. A teenage girl who accused the 4 men of rape, recanted her story after the lynching. She died recently. You used to be able to buy sick, racist postcards with pictures of lynched Black men in stores. White men with smiles watching a Black man hang from a tree. Strange Fruit indeed. Dylan's first words told you what was happening: "They're selling postcards of the hanging" (Lynching). Over 4,000 Black men have been lynched in the South and North by white racists. See the National Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, AL for full details. Thanks Bob, for another history lesson. No matter how horrible to view, the truth needs to be told.
The song is not about the hanging. The context is the mid 60's and a society totally dysfunctional and lacking a moral center. Johnson had just upped our involvement in Vietnam to nearly 500,000 troops. In the song Dylan is retreating from that society, one that is so aberrant it would sell postcards of a hanging, which he has assaulted with intense fury for years in songs like "Hard Rain", "Masters of war", "Subterranean Homesick blues", "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding", "Tombstone Blues" and "Highway 61 Revisited", among others.
Now he is tired. The surrealistic landscape he creates is a painting of that madness using well known figures from history, literature and religion but "rearranging their faces" to paint a portrait of a world gone insane. "Desolation Row" itself is a sanctuary of awareness and authenticity beyond this mayhem, where people are punished, prevented from, peeking into, denied the ability to go there. In the last verse Dylan is telling people "if you don't get it, don't bother me" There was a famous 60's expression "You are either on the bus or off the bus", referring to Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters.
"I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?....
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row"
The "letter" is referring to a letter Irwin Silber wrote publicly in "Sing Out" folk magazine chiding Dylan for "betraying" the folk protest movement. In "Desolation Row" Dylan is tired of labels, societal expectations and conventional thinking and is saying "either you get the larger picture or you don't and if you don't (mail them from DR) , don't bother me.
Dylan's music here was pioneering as he influenced the Beatles and everyone else lyrically and was a precursor to the explosion of Acid Rock and anti establishment feeling it embodied and powerfully expressed by bands and artists like Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and the Who among many others. This all broke in 1967, about two years after Desolation Row. Dylan helped lead the way.
The opening line could be about the three black men arrested for rape of a white woman who were taken out of custody hanged and photos were being sold that was in Bob's hometown of Duluth in the 1920s . I've tried my best to try and work out Dylan's lyrics but it has driven me insane literally insane, ask my family but now I just enjoy the pure poetry of Dylan's lyrics.
@@elston3153 It is about that exactly as it happened near to where Dylan lived. I think his grandfather knew about it directly. I don't think the song is about that in toto in particular but a society that has descended into madness, It sets the tone for the barbarity of people who would do such a thing and then make post cards about it as souvenirs. Or those who would napalm innocent civilians, I agree in Dylan's surrealistic work one cannot deconstruct every line and match it to something literal in life but it is not always that hard to figure out what he means. For example Tombstone blues which I think alludes to Vietnam quite a bit. Opening verse.
"The sweet pretty things are in bed now, of course
The city fathers, they are trying to endorse
The reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse
But the town has no need to be nervous
The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun, she violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper, who sits
At the head of the Chamber of Commerce"
Paul Revere was a great Patriot. Why are the "city fathers" (those in authority) trying to "reincarnate" (reinvent or call upon ) this legend for modern usage? Dylan then uses point counterpoint -Jezebel-nun, violently knitting (normally a calm activity), bald-wig, wigs have hair ,and then
"Jack the Ripper, who sits, at the head of the Chamber of Commerce"
What kind of society has a horrific serial killer at the head of business affairs? America in Vietnam did. (and this is most authority that collaborated with the war, not just Johnson)
The images fly fast but with the ferocity of pace and tempo drag one into a world that is insane with violence.
Desolation Row is similar but different. Rather than attacking the psychosis head on (as was also done directly, not surrealistically in "It's All 'Right Ma" and "Masters of War"), the singer retreats into the sanctuary of Desolation Row where sanity reigns and people are prevented or punished for going there, But the singer more dispassionately puts a giant spotlight on the caravan and kaleidoscope of a land completely disjointed using some of its most revered literary, historical and religious figures and symbols- rearranged faces and names- to put that insanity in stark relief. The last lines tell all
"Right now, I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row"
The letters refer to the letter to Dylan from Irwin Silber of Sing Out magazine who chided Dylan strongly for "abandoning" the folk protest movement. Dylan will have none of it. Either you get it or you don't. On the bus or off the bus. Otherwise don't bother me.
Here is the letter
www.edlis.org/twice/threads/open_letter_to_bob_dylan.html
“Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot are fighting in the captains tower”.
You could go up tempo with a short song like From a Buick Six, Highway 61, Tombstone Blues ~ from this same mid 60s era ~ songs that crashed into my life when I was 13
Or you could explore earlier folk Dylan ~ he sang Only a Pawn in their Game at the rally where MLK made his famous speech. Plenty more great songs in there ~ The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, Holliss Brown ..
Then there’s the later versions of Dylan ~ Knocking on Heaven’s Door, Jokerman, Blind Willie McTell, What was it you wanted, Señor (Tales of Yankee Power), One More Cup of Coffee, Foot of Pride, Something’s got a hold of my Heart
Then there’s Dylan in the 21st century ~ Things Have Changed, Thunder on the Mountain, Beyond here lies Nothing
And his latest long masterpiece ~ Murder Most Foul
Someone here can probably tell you I’ve missed some of the best ones. I know ~
Beautiful to watch you & other reactors discovering Dylan anyway
The hanging mentioned in the first stanza probably refers to the lynching of three Black men in Duluth, MN in 1920.
Some of his songs are linearly narrative, but a lot of them, this one included, are imo riffs on impressions, concepts & allusions. Think metaphoris. He's dancing on his own level. Trying to de-construct him literally isn't really what he's putting down - yes, there are exceptions, but most of his greatest songs are metaphorical, poetical allusions often standing on their own meaning, verse by verse, or even sentence by sentence - and all points in between. :)
many people dont get this
I've seen Dylan play this live twice, and have many live recordings of this song, and not one of them has hit thirteen minutes, let alone forty-five. Perhaps whomever provided you with those "facts" was really talking about The Grateful Dead's live covers of this song, because they weren't talking about Bob Dylan.
The Grateful Dead' covers of this song are no longer on average than Dylan's versions.
xxx
Glad you didn't pause.
That one's a marathon. There are too many cultural and literary references to count.
Phuliminizzi makes an understandable mistake in expecting this song to be a
simple common song only wrapped around a simple emotion or message. It
isn't as if Dylan hasn't written dozens of these. Few people are going to like
this one, it is deep and it is done in a jazz format lyrically. This time I heard it,
I focused on the music which seems to be flamingo style which is repriticious
and would be boring if not for the lyrics.
I get a kick out of listening or reading the critics and commentators trying
to analyze Dylan's abstract works such as this with the reasonable everyday
mind which is the left side brain. It won't work and is laughable. The right
side intuitive brain is a wordless part of our psyche from which comes a
different truth, often leading us to a spiritual truth of God which also no
human on earth completely understands. We do for a brief instant but then
it is gone as we move on in life.
Each time I listen to this, it invokes a different image because I have moved
on in my learning and experience. This happens only when I read great
literature or great philosophy. The song invokes conflicts but so does this
happen before you create or strive to resolve conflicts. Then comes the
peace for the mind can only take so much chaos then comes the
endorphins giving us an internal drug induced response. This is represented
in the calming repearious flamingo music. Remember, with many faiths to
reach a religious euphoria, there is chanting, a drum beat and music to
aid you into getting there.
I am amazed to have written the above, little of it was what I preplanned
to write. I never 'saw' the religious link in this song before.
This guy clearly has no idea what this song is about