Bob Dylan - Desolation Row ("Stoned Version")

Bob Dylan - Desolation Row (Album: "Highway 61 Revisited")

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
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.

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
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 better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row.
Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
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.

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then 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.

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 penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row.
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
They're spoon-feeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get outta here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row.

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.

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting
"Which side are you on?"
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.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke ?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.

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Yes, the track's been altered - flame all you like. This isn't here claiming to be a faithful representation. This is here because no other copy exists on YouTube as of the upload date; at least this way you can jog your memory if you've heard it before, or get a rough idea if you have not.

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Category:

Music

Tags:

• Bob Dylan
• Desolation Row
• Highway 61 Revisited

[UizMofo123]

does anyone know were i can find the real version of this song?

[olegvorshinsky]

@UizMofo123 "Uploaded by gtomlinson1894 on Jun 4, 2011 ORIGINAL ALBUM VERSION" watch?v=d9T0zNfO8t0 Two questions: how did gtomlinson1894 evade the block, and how long before the video is taken down?

[thapsyonic]

Doood! Why tha fuck would you ever do that to this song? That would be like turning stair way to heaven into an Alvin and the chipmunks verison. I know you list it as the "stoned" version and all. But if you listen to the song, it needs no help in being stoned. For F's sake he is holding a bowl in his hand on the cover. And for all you Dylanates out there no it's not a harmonica its a bowl. I had the chance to meet him once and I asked him and he told me it was a Bowl that a fan gave him.

[olegvorshinsky]

@thapsyonic You can't read, can you?

[WISDOMX9]

I actually like this version - Now I am wondering what all those yokels in the old neighborhood who used to wonder and criticize me for being such a HUGE Dylan "fan" would say? All they 'heard' was a voice! I'm certain they never had the brains to get it. ) Dylan has been my favorite poet for nearly 1/2 a century.

Thank you for this –

Mary

[olegvorshinsky]

@WISDOMX9 You're welcome. It does force you to concentrate on the words, which are more easily understood here than in the "helium version." Thanks for the props.

[BobDylansDream3]

fuck the haters the words are still the same? and it still fuckin rocks

[1978Roadrunner]

Some people have a lot of time and a drugproblem .

[armansinlado]

how hard can be to find this f*kin' song on its original, only cover around here, no offense but i wanna hear the real master.........

[jgyll8mt]

@UizMofo123 On Dylan's album "Highway 61 Revisited."

[MrJoncando]

....sounds like mi dad..& he's dead..hahaHa

[DShaw42011]

Sounds like Richie Havens haha

[TossThatCoin]

I looked if you also did changing of the gards, it didn't take me to long to find that out. :)

I don't know how to do it, so maybe if you feel like it, you could slow down the gards.

It's all good, take care.

[TossThatCoin]

Of all the Dylan songs you just had to pick Desolation Row, now didn't you? :)

[stu1966stu]

@UizMofo123

cohen

[TheMarbleIndex3000]

well this is fucking silly.