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EXTRACTS (Full text here)
The key to the success of the recording on Highway 61 Revisited was the addition of second acoustic guitarist Charlie McCoy, who later played with Dylan on Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. Various attempts to record the song with electric guitars, drums and even piano proved unsuccessful. Finally the decision was made to go back to an acoustic guitar led recording. The addition of McCoy’s brightly inventive fills and, in particular, the little rhythmic flourish that comes at the end of each verse, drive the song along. Russ Savakas’ low key bass playing also helps anchor the sound. The result is a highly spirited performance, transforming a song which could be seen as doomy and depressing into a triumphantly uplifting hymn to the new rising consciousness of the mid ‘60s.
Dylan is very fond of using circuses as metaphors. He also seems to like the sound of the word ‘circus’ itself. In Mr. Tambourine Man his protagonist is …circled by the circus sands…Ballad of a Thin Man includes a parade of ‘circus freaks’ and performers. It may be that all the events and characters in the song are actually part of a ‘circus’. This, it seems, is how Dylan views the modern world – as a fantastical show full of ‘performers’ desperately trying to impress us. Then we are introduced to the first character. The narrative tone shifts to that of a circus barker, who declares: …Here comes the blind commissioner… This figure appears to be some kind of generic authority figure, but he is also a circus performer. We are told that he is in some kind of trance and that …one hand is tied to the tightrope walker… It seems that he has been made to ‘walk the tightrope’ –obviously a very perilous task for a blind person to be asked to do. But in case we have any sympathy for him, Dylan undercuts this with vicious humour …the other is in his pants… which may be a sexual reference but could also imply that this official is ‘trousering’ any profits from the circus. So he may be a symbol of ‘blind’, directionless but corrupt authority. Or he may just be ‘playing with himself’.
The concluding lines: …And the riot squad, they’re restless/ They need somewhere to go/ As Lady and I look out tonight from Desolation Row…continue the‘t’ alliterationfrom the line about the ‘tight rope walker’. The notion of a ‘restless’ riot squad now pushes the narrative in a more socio-political direction; the inference being that the ‘squad’ is basically a bunch of thugs spoiling for a fight. In the context of the 1960s civil rights movement and the viciously racist policing that protesters were often met with, this seems particularly apposite. So far we have been given a picture of a topsy-turvy, corrupt world, elements of which are nevertheless presented as popular entertainment to the ‘brainwashed’ population. It is important to note, however, that the world that is being described is not ‘Desolation Row’ itself. Here we see the narrator and his ‘Lady’ looking at this mad world from that place. This will be consistent throughout the song. ‘Desolation Row’ is in fact a place of refuge; the only place where sanity and true humanity can be found. This may seem somewhat contradictory, but the world being described here – whatever its drawbacks – is hardly ‘desolate’.
The term ‘desolation’ can be strongly identified with the notion of being ‘beat’, which Kerouac, Ginsberg and others advanced as a measure of the degradation and ‘madness’ they felt they had to put themselves through to truly break away from the mind set of conventional society. Kerouac’s stream-of-consciousness novel Desolation Angels had recently been published and Dylan – ever the magpie – lifts several lines from it in this song. ‘Desolation Row’ is, of course, a state of mind rather than a physical location. It represents a place which is not necessarily easy to get to. Top reach it one must, perhaps, be ready to subject oneself to a ‘desolate’ existence, perhaps by pushing oneself to mental extremes. But it appears to be the only place from which one can really appreciate just how twisted and crazy the ‘real world’ has become.
The next eight verses introduce us to a cavalcade of characters, who may or may not double as circus performers. Dylan sums up each of their qualities succinctly, with mordant wit. We begin in the world of fairytales, with Cinderella, in a story which advances the idea that true human worth (in the form of the honest, but put-upon servant girl) must triumph over wealth and narcissism (as epitomised by the heroine’s ugly sisters). But the character who we meet here certainly does not seem to be waiting for Prince Charming or expecting any magical transformations. We are told that …she seems so easy… and that, in a delicately ifrather suggestively. executed turn of phrase: ….”It takes one to know one”, she smiles… Then, in a quite brilliantly visual transformation, we hear that…Then she puts her hands in her back pockets/ Bette Davis style…This is a modern, ‘liberated’ Cinderella, presumably dressed in jeans. ‘She seems so easy’ may suggest a woman who is particularly sexually active. The actress Bette Davis, who specialised in powerful female roles in which she displayed an independent sexuality, really did have a habit of putting her hands in her back pocket.
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