Desolation Row: Bob Dylan's Poetic Letter from 1965

by Jochen Markhorst

Bob Dylan's legendary 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited is still considered one of the best albums in rock history. The opening song "Like A Rolling Stone" is a comet and the impact shakes the entire rock world.When Bruce Springsteen is asked if he feels he owes Dylan anything, The Boss replies: “When I was sixteen and I had Highway 61 on my little mono record player in my room at night, I’d listen to it a thousand times. It’s one of those debts that you can never repay.”And the album of which, very unusual, Dylan says, “I could buy it myself.”The final track is the only acoustic track on the record, the long, melancholic, poetic explosion "Desolation Row", Dylan's kaleidoscopic impression of “what goes on around here”, the mysterious masterpiece that is a first building block of his later Nobel Prize.“Like Desolation Row... there's no logical way that you can arrive at lyrics like that. I don't know how it was done,” Dylan muses more than twenty years later, in 1987.In Desolation Row. Bob Dylan's poetic letter from 1965, the seventh Dylan book by Dylan scholar Jochen Markhorst, the reader is taken through the history, background and impact of the song, the ten verses, the recording sessions and the aftermath. Coming close to answering the question how it was done.

144 pages, Paperback

Published February 29, 2020

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, it’s the same with all of them. It’s the same with all books about my records and songs, you know. All these intellectual books only appeal to a small group of people, you know. Even people like Greil Marcus, you know, Robert Shelton, you know... all these people, you know. Even people, you know, like Jochen Markhorst, you know. They all appeal to a certain group of people, you know. And no one else, really. They just, you know, sell a certain amount of books and they sell them to people who only want to talk about them among themselves.



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[Wes F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another slew of insightful thoughts/ideas on one of Dylan's greatest songs--Desolation Row. It's always been one of my favorite Dylan compositions & performances. Markhost knows his stuff & pulls out lots of literary references and good background info on this classic tune.