Dylan Song by Song: "Joey" Trivia Quiz

Answer: a mobster

The song is about Joseph Gallo, a member of the New York City Profaci (later Colombo) crime family. He was killed on his birthday, April 7, 1972, in Little Italy while at Umberto Clam House. Joey Gallo was convicted of multiple felonies and accused of at least two murders, but the song paints a sympathetic portrait of the mobster. American journalist and rock writer Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs called the song "repellent" and "romantic."

Answer: Desire

"Desire" was recorded over several days in 1975 and released by Columbia on January 5, 1976. The producer of the album was Don DeVito, and it was Bob Dylan's seventeenth studio album, following "The Basement Tapes" and preceding "Hard Rain." It included another long, biographic song about the imprisoned boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

Answer: Jacques Levy

In a 2009 interview with Bill Flanagan, Bob Dylan said, "Jacques Levy wrote the words. Jacques had a theatrical mind and he wrote a lot of plays. So the song might have been theater of the mind. I just sang it."

Jacques Levy collaborated with Dylan on several of the songs on "Desire." The lyricist, who was also a clinical psychologist and theater director (he directed Sam Shepard's "Red Cross"), passed away in 2004.

Answer: an accordion

Also known as "Joe the Blond" (because of his hairy blond chest) and "Crazy Joe," Joseph Gallo was born in 1929. His father, Umberto Gallo, was a bootlegger during Prohibition. Joey was diagnosed with schizophrenia after an arrest in 1950.

Answer: Johnny Thunders

Johnny Thunders is the stage name of John Anthony Genzale. He was a member of the New York Dolls and The Heartbreakers, though he eventually became a solo artist. He died at the St. Peter House in New Orleans in 1991, presumably of drug-related causes.

Answer: Kid Blast

"Larry was the oldest, Joey was next to last.
They called Joe 'Crazy,' the baby they called, 'Kid Blast.'"

Joe Gallo worked as an enforcer and a hitman for Joe Profaci and also ran a betting operation and an extortion racket. He was sent to prison for conspiracy and extortion and spent time in Green Haven, Attica, and Auburn Correctional facilities.

Answer: Clay

The chorus of the song runs:
"Joey, Joey, king of the streets, child of clay
Joey, Joey, what made them want to come and blow you away?"

In 1967, Jimmie Rodgers had a song titled "Child of Clay" that ran:
"And now his aimless days begin
To drift into sordid sin hm, hm
And soon his dislike turns to hate
As the stamp of life seals his fate hm, hm."

The expression "child of clay" is often used to contrast the earthly ("clay") with the spiritual. Men, unlike angels, were made from clay according to the Genesis creation story.

Answer: Nietzsche

"He did ten years in Attica, reading Nietzsche and Wilhelm Reich.
They threw him in the hole one time for trying to stop a strike."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th century German philosopher who wrote about language, aesthetics, nihilism, power, and existence, among other things. He was the author of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," "Beyond Good and Evil," and "The Will to Power."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, theologian, and author of "The Cost of Discipleship." He preached against Germany's idolatrous regard for Hitler and helped organize church resistance against the Nazi regime. He was convicted for his participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler and was executed just two weeks before U.S. soldiers liberated the camp where he was imprisoned.

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, and Thomas Hobbes was a British philosopher of the 17th century and author of "The Leviathan."

Answer: Black men

"His closest friend were black men, 'cause they seemed to understand
What it's like to be in society with a shackle on your hand."

In Green Haven, Joey befriended Leroy "Nicky" Barnes, an African-American drug dealer, and gave him pointers on how to improve his trafficking organization in the future, because he believed Harlem's drug market would shift toward having more African-American gangs as suppliers. The Sicilian Mafia looked askance on Joey for associating with black inmates.

Answer: Jimmy Cagney

"When they let him out in '71, he'd lost a little weight,
But he dressed like Jimmy Cagney and I swear he did look great."

Jimmy Cagney was an American actor and dancer who typically played tough guys in films such as "The Public Enemy," "Angels with Dirty Faces," and "White Heat."

In his later, years, according to the song, Joey did not carry a gun: "'I'm around too many children,' he'd say, 'they should never know of one.'"