"Desolation Row" is a 1965 song written and sung by Bob Dylan. It was recorded on August 4, 1965 and released as the closing track of Dylan's sixth studio album, Highway 61 Revisited. It has been noted for its length (11:21) and surreal lyrics in which Dylan weaves characters from history, fiction, the Bible and his own invention into a series of vignettes that suggest entropy and urban chaos.
Read more about Desolation Row: Recording, Release and Interpretation, Live Performance, Cover Versions
Famous quotes containing the words desolation and/or row:
“When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)