Dylan Song by Song: "Desolation Row" Quiz

Answer: Over 11 minutes

This epic song clocked in at eleven minutes and 21 seconds and was recorded on August 4, 1965. The producer was Bob Johnston, and it was released on the Columbia label. Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song number twelve in its article "The 100 Greatest Bob Dylan Songs of All Time."

Answer: Highway 61 Revisited

"Highway 61 Revisited," Dylan's sixth studio album, was released on August 30, 1965 in the United States. It peaked at number three on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 and at number four on the U.K. albums chart. The album featured Mike Bloomfield on electric guitar and Paul Griffin and Al Kooper on piano.

Answer: T.S. Eliot

In Rolling Stone magazine, Mick Jagger said, "Someone said 'Desolation Row' is Dylan's version of 'The Waste Land.' I'm not sure if that's true, but it's a wonderful collection of imagery - a fantasy Bowery - that really gets your imagination working."

In the song, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot are "fighting in the captain's tower." Ezra Pound edited T.S. Eliot's work, including "The Wasteland," which he heavily annotated, so this fighting could potentially allude to the poets fighting over that very work. T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland," like "Desolation Row," is replete with imagery and allusions.

Answer: Al Kooper

The electric version featured Al Kooper on electric guitar and Harvey Brooks on electric bass. It was not selected for the "Highway 61 Revisited" album, which instead used an acoustic version of the song, but it was later included on the soundtrack for "No Direction Home," which was released as "The Bootleg Series Volume 7." Six takes of "Desolation Row" were recorded in all, and several of them were released on volume 12 of the bootleg series.

Al Kooper, a record producer and session musician, plays a diverse array of instruments, including guitar, bass, Hammond organ, keyboards, percussion, and mandolin. He recorded with Dylan in the studio in 1965 and 1966 and played with him in concert at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

Answer: The hanging

"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."

Mark Polzzotti, in his 2006 book "Highway 61 Revisited," suggests that these lines may refer to a lynching of three black men in Bob Dylan's hometown of Duluth, Minnesota in June of 1920. The men were working for a traveling circus at the time they were accused of raping a white woman, and photographs of the mob lynching actually were sold as postcards. Dylan's father was a child at the time and may have told the story to his son.

Answer: urban

The song continues after the first two lines with details that indicate a bustling city environment, where one might find questionable politicians (the blind commissioner) and violent tensions (the restless riot squad):

"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."

Bob Dylan revealed in a November 29, 1969 Rolling Stone magazine interview with Jan Wenner that beat poet and friend Allen Ginsberg had influenced some of his lyrics at the time of the writing of "Desolation Row." Dylan said, "His poetry is city poetry. Sounds like the city." Dylan's "Desolation Row" also captures the feeling of an urban environment, full of diverse characters, bustling activity, excitement, human loneliness, and the simmering threat of violence.

Answer: Bette Davis

"Cinderella, she seems so easy, 'It takes one to know one,' she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style."

Dylan's song is rich in allusions to literature, history, and art. Here a 20th century actress and a fairytale princess are jumbled together. Dylan alludes to numerous writers, including Shakespeare, Eliot, Pound, and Hugo. Bette Davis was born in 1908 and starred in such classic films as "All About Eve," "Of Human Bondage," "Death on the Nile," and "All This and Heaven, Too."

Answer: Mr. Darcy

Mr. Darcy (of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice") nowhere appears in Bob Dylan's song.

"The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" is a 19th century French gothic novel by Victor Hugo that has been repeatedly adapted for film, most famously by Walt Disney. The story features Quasimodo, a deformed, 20-year-old hunchback who is the bell ringer at Notre Dame Cathedral. The hunchback bears the mark of his deformity; the biblical figure of Cain bears a mark after he murders his brother Abel.

Answer: The Gospel of Luke

The Good Samaritan is one of four Biblical characters mentioned in the song, along with Cain, Abel, and Noah. The parable of the Good Samaritan is found in Luke 10:25-37 in the New Testament. In the parable, a traveller is beaten, robbed, stripped, and left wounded by the side of the road. A Jewish priest and a Levite pass by him without stopping to help him, but a Samaritan stops and helps. In Dylan's song, the Samaritan is on his way to a show.

In addition to ranking this song number 12 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Bob Dylan Songs of All Time," Rolling Stone also ranked it number 187 on its list of "500 Greatest Songs of All Time."

Answer: Ophelia

This is a haunting allusion that, like Cinderella solitarily sweeping up on Desolation Row after the ambulances go, evokes feelings of loneliness. In Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Ophelia is in love with Prince Hamlet, and might have potentially become his wife, but because of his actions, she is driven to madness and drowns herself at a young age. Dylan's line, "To her, death is quite romantic / she wears an iron vest" may allude to this drowning.

Answer: He's reciting the periodic table of elements

Einstein is reciting the alphabet, not the periodic table of elements:

"Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk
Now he looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette
And 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."

The jealous monk may be Rasputin, whom Dylan mentions elsewhere in the song "I Wanna Be our Lover": "Rasputin he's so dignified / He touched the back of her head and he died."

Answer: sexless

"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 the penny whistles, you can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough from Desolation Row."

This verse suggests a sort of tyranny of the psychiatrist and a controlling nurse ("she's in charge of the cyanide hole") that may draw to mind the novel or movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." The patients are ready to rebel against their doctor, perhaps because of his severe methods of treatment. But the nurse is on his side, suggesting they won't succeed in their rebellion.

Answer: Casanova

The 18th century Italian adventurer Giacomo Girolamo Casanova wrote a famous autobiography, "Story of My Life," in which he recounted his elaborate affairs with women. Ever since, his name has become a synonym for a womanizer. Given his famous sexual exploits, it's therefore an ironic image that he needs to be spoonfed to feel assured. "Then they'll kill him with self-confidence," Dylan sings, "after poisoning him with words."

Answer: more than they do

"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."

Mark Polzzotti, in his 2006 book "Highway 61 Revisited," suggested that Bob Dylan may have drawn inspiration for the title of "Desolation Row" by combing half of two different titles: beat poet Jack Kerouac's "Desolation Angels" and American novelist John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row"

Answer: Which side are you on?!

The song, "Which Side Are You On?" was written in 1931 by Florence Reece, the wife of union organizer Sam Reece, and became a left wing political slogan. The song was taken up by 60s folk singers such as Pete Seeger. In his 1986 book "No Direction Home," Robert Shelton suggests this line is a criticism of "simpleminded political commitment." When the ship is going down (as the Titanic did), that's no time to worry about political bickering and alignments.

Answer: mermaids

"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."

This allusion to the sea and lovely mermaids, juxtaposed with T.S. Eliot, calls to mind a line from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

"We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown."

Answer: the doorknob

"Yes, I received your letter yesterday, about the time the doorknob broke
When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke?"

The doorknob breaking suggests a home in disrepair and a general state of impoverishment, a life that is spiraling downward, thus making the question "How are you?" a joke. These lines are reminiscent of the bitter ones in "Positively 4th Street" in which Dylan sings:

"You say 'how are you?', 'good luck', but ya don't mean it
When you know as well as me, you'd rather see me paralyzed
Why don't you just come out once and scream it?"

Answer: Juliet

Shakespeare's character Juliet from the play "Romeo and Juliet" is not mentioned in the song. Instead, Romeo seems to be pining after Cinderella:

Cinderella, she seems so easy...
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'd better leave'."

The Phantom of the Opera, a character from the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe, appears later in the song:

"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."

Ophelia has been previously mentioned in this quiz as appearing beneath a window, wearing an iron vest, and being an old maid on her twenty-first birthday. Dylan continues:

"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."

Answer: 1994

"MTV Unplugged" began airing in 1989. Dylan preformed an abbreviated version of "Desolation Row," which came in at just over eight minutes, on the popular television show. His performance was recorded on November 17 and 18 in 1994 and the live album was released on May 2, 1995. The "MTV Unplugged" album peaked at number 23 on the U.S. Billboard 200.

A live version of "Desolation Row" may also be found on "The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert," which was released in 1998. The Official Bob Dylan Website reports Dylan played the song live 581 times between August 28, 1965 and August 26, 2018.

Answer: My Chemical Romance

Recorded in 2008 and released as a single on January 26, 2008, the My Chemical Romance version of "Desolation Row" reached number twenty on the U.S. Billboard Alternative Songs Chart and number 52 on the UK Singles Chart. MCR released its first album, "I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love" in 2002.