(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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