Bob Dylan's Highway 61: on "Desolation Row"

[@x0rn312]

3:40 ish It's amazing to me how people don't understand Bob Dylan because they're so keen to project their own politics on to it. I feel like this tendency is exactly what drove him away from protest music and folk, he's not saying "which side are you on" to advocate picking a side ... he's saying that whole worldview & attitude is bullshit I'm glad that you point that out, this is a good analysis.

[@paulosergiocarvalho9787]

My favorite Dylan's song.

[@maplebob23]

Probably understanding what Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot are fighting about would help clarify things in the Titanic bit but the real question is why does Bob Dylan write himself as sniffing drainpipes in the autobiographical stanza?

[@maplebob23]

Well, I found out that Ezra Pound was a great editor and he edited T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland and then while I was watching a My Chemical Wedding video the thought occurred to me, “It’s a real shame that the communists of the 1930s didn’t realize that communism is fascism.” Then I realized, of course! That’s the Titanic in the song! But it could also just be that Dylan is referring to himself as both Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, the hypergraphia fighting with the editorial side, the captain’s tower being his head? Of course, the real Captain’s Tower exists in Malta. So Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot aren’t even on the ship. Maybe the whole song is simply Dylan’s attempt at telling us we are living in a simulation and Desolation Row is the way out? Or maybe it’s about various people he met at music festivals? Or maybe it’s all about the wearing of hats which fell out of favor with men after JFK? Then they started wearing stupid baseball caps instead! You know? Buy a real hat or go hatless! Don’t wear a baseball cap unless you are playing baseball!

[@maplebob23]

What happened the week this video was made? It’s five years later now.

[@jackcutler9096]

People who proclaim to "know" Dylan

[@johnthornton4266]

My take is that he is quite content to watch the madness of the world and society from his little spot in the world on Desolation Row. Metaphorically speaking. Every verse obviously is a metaphor. The Titanic of coarse watched their Grand unsinkable ship go down in the icy waters, from lifeboats or not in the same Icy Water.

[@theodorwinters3655]

Very helpful interpretation. (Also, the guy on the right looks if Yannis Pappas and Bret Weinstein had a baby)