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Sunday, September 30, 2018

Master Blueprints # 36: "And the Good Samaritan He’s Dressing, He’s Getting Ready for the Show, He’s Going to the Carnival Tonight on Desolation Row”

(Personal reflections inspired by Bob Dylan songs)

Song: “Desolation Row”
Album: Highway 61 Revisited
Release Date: August 1965

What makes transcendent art?  More to the point, what makes a transcendent artist?  Well, I can only speculate, but I do think I’m in a better position to do so than I was before I started writing these Music and Memory entries over 8 years ago.  For example, I know now that if you are doing something creatively, you can’t cherry pick your subject matter.  If a handful of thoughts are dangling in front of you, they all need to be plucked sooner than later. It’s the only way you can move on to another handful of thoughts.  And it’s the only way that I know of to keep the creative juices flowing.  At times, a given thought can be daunting, even risky; be it related to the complexity or heaviness of the subject matter.  These are the moments that make or break your creative spirit.  You are either going to plow on through, take a breather, or bag it all together.

I’ve forever been drawn to the creative risk takers among us, which includes musicians.  A leap of faith has often proven to result in something brilliant for such musical souls, including Neil Young, John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Van Morrison, and of course Bob Dylan. Mr. Young confounded his live audiences time and time again, playing only new music on many of his tours, which could on occasion be bizarrely experimental (see Trans).  At least twice he took this to the extreme, producing his new music right there in front of the crowd.  Several of my favorite Neil Young albums were done this way, including Time Fades Away and Rust Never Sleeps.  Mr. Lennon up and quit the Beatles, and not long after was declaring that war (Vietnam) was over (if you want it).  He made these declarations during “Bed In” interviews-for-peace with his wife Yoko Ono. One could make the argument that this oft-ridiculed act freed Lennon’s mind-space up for his first two superb solo albums, Plastic Ono Band and Imagine.  Mr. Townshend pushed a grand concept, Lifehouse, to nervous breakdown and back, going as far as involving a large studio audience in his concept before succumbing to pressure to release something before it was truly ready (the salvaged remains would end up being nothing less than the super-charged Who’s Next).  Mr. Van Morrison left his band and homeland (Ireland) behind to start anew in ‘Boston Town’ in the late 60s (broke and forgotten), leading to his seminal work Astral Weeks. 

These chosen paths are not for the mild or meek (all these gentleman, as well as Bob Dylan - who I’ll be getting to – have/had abrasive sides to their personalities).  Such paths can lead to loneliness and isolation (to use the title of a beautiful John Lennon song off Plastic Ono Band).  And yet, this is what separates the top-tier musicians from the crowd.  The process of taking big risks can be painful, and excruciatingly difficult to maintain over an extended period.  Few artists who have tackled such risk to the degree that Neil Young, John Lennon, Pete Townshend and Van Morrison have, can handle it in the long-term.  Those who cannot either die young (Mozart), burn out (Syd Barret) or fade away (pick em'). 

From my rather limited perspective, no musician has pursued that artistic purity, nor expressed the sense of sacrifice, solitude and what it takes to get and stay there better than Bob Dylan.  The amazing thing is that he began expressing an understanding of this at a rather early stage in his career.  His song, “Mr. Tambourine Man” is a perfect example.  The real quantum leap, however can be found in the songs off Highway 61 Revisited, personified in the closing number “Desolation Row”, which frankly knocked me off my feet this week, as I found myself taking in the song as if I’d never heard it before.

How to describe my mid-week clairvoyant moment regarding all things “Desolation Row”?  Let me start with another song off the album, “Ballad of a Thin Man”, which offers up in many ways the counterpoint to “Desolation Row”.  I was originally planning to build on Thin Man as this week’s Blueprint (which, by the way, I chalk up as one of Bob Dylan’s all-time best vocal efforts, albeit cynical in a style Ray Davies would be proud of).  I had reservations, however.  Although superb in every way, “Ballad of a Thin Man” detracts from one of my core values of this blog site, which has me attempting to stay above the fray.  The song rips into people who just don’t get it, the type who cave to superficiality and never see the forest for the trees.  Although Bob Dylan had reached a stage in his career at that time where I believe he was deserving of delivering such general criticism, I myself feel as if I am far from it (at least within the context of this blog series). 

And so, as I listened to Highway 61 Revisited I kept my options opened.  I had already tackled the opening number, the monumental “Like A Rolling Stone” (see Master Blueprint # 15), which was much more affiliated with “Ballad of A Thin Man” anyhow in terms of song meaning.  But there are so many other masterful songs on this album.  Indeed, roughly one fifth of my eventual 50 Bob Dylan entries could conceivably be based on songs off Highway 61 Revisited alone.  It’s that good.  

In preparation for most entries into this blog series, I’ve often done a bit of homework, researching here and there on what others have said about the song at hand.  Not this go around.  At least, not consciously.  This time it was 100% personal and visceral, which is the ideal place to go mentally.  It’s what I truly strive for in this blog series:  A moment listening to the music when I can say “Wow. I am so thrilled to finally make this connection.  I have broken on through to the other side”.   

How did this come to be this time around?  Again, I was tooling around with “Ballad of a Thin Man”, trying to conjure up ideas related to losing/finding yourself, when I let the album play out in its entirety for the umpteenth time. “Desolation Row”, the 9th and final song on the album, queued up and played out in my ears as it had so often before. Most of my connections with this song to date had been confusing.  Bob Dylan sings of a seemingly endless parade of real and fictional characters, as well as a place with the type of name (Desolation Row) which leads one to believe that…… you just don’t want to go there.  Which in ways already described earlier in this entry is somewhat true (in terms of how hard it is), just not in the way I had been thinking to that point.

But for whatever reason, this time it was different.  Suddenly I was hearing “Desolation Row” like I’d never heard it before (it happens with this blog series).  I don’t know how to explain…it just clicked!  Where before there was randomness, now there was a pattern.  Tears welled up in my eyes. In a ‘New York Minute’ the song had become…. beautiful ( https://vimeo.com/11222889 ) I’ll try to explain in the paragraphs below, but right up front I’ll say this:  Bob Dylan’s harmonica breaks, both prior to the last stanza and in closing the song, are telling.  Where before my ‘breakthrough’, these instrumental breaks were borderline irritating, now they were deeply moving.  They put the icing on the cake.  I believe there is analogy here with Dylan’s vocals too, not only in this song, but in all his music. You just hope for the moment where you can finally see what all the fuss is about.

Before I get into the lyrics I feel a need to reach out to the true Dylanologists out there.  I know that you know how deep this song is. But I admit, I’m a relative novice because deep inside, I’m more of an integrator:  I’ve been writing about many musicians in these blog entries over the years.  And although I realize Bob Dylan is at the top of the heap, I’m often spread too thin to be able to master the subject matter in a way that you can.  I only hope you can appreciate my peripheral insights in a way where you can say “yeah, this guy gets it”.  This is more than I could hope for. 

At the heart of “Desolation Row” is purity and pain. The two go hand in hand.  Brilliance (which is there too) is but a biproduct.  The song opens with lyrics that are very misleading in terms of the song’s core meaning: “They’re selling postcards of the hanging”.  This is Bob Dylan at his best.  He throws you off the scent.  What he’s really doing here, however, is presenting a polar-opposite character trait from what he eventually gets to; the type of persona that is defined by integrity and wisdom.  The opening stanza must continue along this vulgar vein first though, and soon Dylan is rolling out one of his most all-time classic lines:

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

Dylan sings this with such hopeless resignation. These characters go nameless, as everyone who Dylan sings about in a negative light goes in this song.  These are individuals on the outside of Desolation Row, which again, can be confusing to the novice listener.  What’s the twist?  The first hint is at the very end of that first stanza, when Dylan sings “As Lady and I look out tonight from Desolation Row”.  Here is where the insider perspective kicks in.  And it carries on with Cinderella in the 2nd stanza, and the hunchback of Notre Dame and Good Samaritan in the 3rd stanza, and Einstein in the 5th, and Casanova and the Phantom of the Opera in the 7th and T.S. Eliot in the 9th (Dylan toggles between outsiders and insiders every other stanza).  These are individuals, both real and fictional, who have beared their crosses so to speak.  Who have chosen the truer path.  Who have confronted tyranny by not caving to it; sticking to the ideals of who they are.  These are the individuals on Desolation Row.  Others are peaking in (Ophelia).  The remainder avoid it at all cost, with some (the Fascist types) even trying to prevent people from getting there. 

I’m a good way into Clinton Heylin’s voluminous Bob Dylan biography Behind the Shades Revisited, which is loaded with quotes about the man. One of my favorite quotes thus far is from poet Allan Ginsberg who stated around the time of the release of Highway 61 Revisited in 1966; “Dylan has sold out to God.  That is to say, his command was to spread his beauty as wide as possible.  It was an artistic challenge to see if great art can be done on a jukebox. And he proved it can”.  I’m guessing Ginsberg had “Desolation Row” in mind when he said that.

I too was elevated this week after my cathartic moment of insight. I’ll try to hold on to that burst of wisdom for as long as I can.  I’ll keep this week’s Blueprint in mind when I see someone do something extraordinary, or utter kind words, or stick to their virtuous ideals rather than cave to weaker, easier choices.  And I’ll try to keep it in mind if I see someone beaten down and weathered.  Perhaps that someone “was famous long ago”, and now they are simply gazing out at me ….from Desolation Row.

Pete

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