This is my favourite Dylan album...when it came out it was a radical change of pace for him - initially his avid fans hated it. 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'd 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 fortune telling 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 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 Now he looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette And he when 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 the 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 are 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 ... #BobDylan #Folk #SingerSongwriter
Like you, my two favourite albums, I just think HWY 61 refreshed him after a degree of staleness had crept in. Blonde-on-Blonde double is next in line for me.
Double like Just realized that the album title "Highway 61 Revisited" could be Dylan' s way of saying "I'm regenerating myself' by changing tack/format. Hm ? I wonder.
Highway 61 is a real road that passed through a lot of famous blues musicians' hometowns. Stolen from Wikipedia: In his memoir Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan described the kinship he felt with the route that supplied the title of his sixth album: "Highway 61, the main thoroughfare of the country blues, begins about where I began. I always felt like I'd started on it, always had been on it and could go anywhere, even down in to the deep Delta country. It was the same road, full of the same contradictions, the same one-horse towns, the same spiritual ancestors ... It was my place in the universe, always felt like it was in my blood."[2] When he was growing up in the 1950s, Highway 61 stretched from Thunder Bay (Ontario) – north of the Canada–US border), through Duluth, where Dylan was born, and from St. Paul, all the way down to New Orleans. Along the way, the route passed near the birthplaces and homes of influential musicians such as Muddy Waters, Son House, Elvis Presley and Charley Patton. The "empress of the blues", Bessie Smith, died after sustaining serious injuries in an automobile accident on Highway 61. Critic Mark Polizzotti points out that blues legend Robert Johnson is alleged to have sold his soul to the devil at the highway's crossroads with Route 49.[3] The highway had also been the subject of several blues recordings, notably Roosevelt Sykes' "Highway 61 Blues" (1932) and Mississippi Fred McDowell's "61 Highway" (1964).[4] Dylan has stated that he had to overcome considerable resistance at Columbia Records to give the album its title. He told biographer Robert Shelton: "I wanted to call that album Highway 61 Revisited. Nobody understood it. I had to go up the ****ing ladder until finally the word came down and said: 'Let him call it what he wants to call it'."[5] Michael Gray has suggested that the very title of the album represents Dylan's insistence that his songs are rooted in the traditions of the blues: "Indeed the album title Highway 61 Revisited announces that we are in for a long revisit, since it is such a long, blues-travelled highway. Many bluesmen had been there before [Dylan], all recording versions of a blues called 'Highway 61'." I think the idea that Highway 61 was were Robert Johnson sold his soul alone makes the title worth it.
The reason for my comment Quill as he took inspiration from many of those mentioned in the article you've posted. He knew his musical history. "Dylan's renaissance" could be the sub-title to Hwy 61 Revisited. A side note to the article... my best man ( also from Hull - old school pal (for over 60 years)) who comes round every Sat to my place to listen to City games & watch PL matches (no sound obviously) got the nickname "Motel 61 Steve". Came from an assignation he had with a young lady in Sudbury, Northern Ontario, when we were both working in the mines for the summer college work ('68 if i recall) experience. He'd disappeared for a couple of nights & we had no idea where the bugger was. I'll be teasing the old sod tomorrow about this having just recalled it.
I think the fact that the album prior being called 'Bringing It All Back Home' also ties in quite a lot. He 'went home', and then 'journeyed down 61'.
