BOB DYLAN LYRICS

  Lyrics - Bob Dylan Lyrics

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Bob Dylan's influence on popular music is incalculable. As
a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop
songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to
winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious narratives. As
a vocalist, he broke down the notions that in order to
perform, a singer had to have a conventionally good voice,
thereby redefining the role of vocalist in popular music.
As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music,
including electrified folk-rock and country-rock. And that
just touches on the tip of his achievements. Dylan's force
was evident during his height of popularity in the '60s —
the Beatles' shift toward introspective songwriting in the
mid-'60s never would have happened without him — but his
influence echoed througho More...

Bob Dylan Lyrics List:
(Submit New Bob Dylan Lyrics)
  • 10,000 Men Lyrics
  • 2 x 2 Lyrics
  • 4th Time Around Lyrics
  • A Fool Such as I Lyrics
  • A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall Lyrics
  • A Satisfied Mind Lyrics
  • Abandoned Love Lyrics
  • Absolutely Sweet Marie Lyrics
  • Ain't No Man Righteous (No Not One) Lyrics
  • Ain't No More Cane Lyrics
  • Ain't Talkin' Lyrics
  • Alberta #1 Lyrics
  • Alberta #2 Lyrics
  • All Along the Watchtower Lyrics
  • All I Really Want to Do Lyrics
  • All Over You Lyrics
  • All the Tired Horses Lyrics
  • Angelina Lyrics
  • Apple Suckling Tree Lyrics
  • Are You Ready? Lyrics
  • Arthur McBride Lyrics
  • As I Went Out One Morning Lyrics
  • Baby, I'm in the Mood for You Lyrics
  • Baby, Let Me Follow You Down Lyrics
  • Baby, Stop Crying Lyrics
  • Ballad in Plain D Lyrics
  • Ballad of a Thin Man Lyrics
  • Ballad of Hollis Brown Lyrics
  • Band Of The Hand Lyrics
  • Belle Isle Lyrics
  • Bessie Smith Lyrics
  • Beyond The Horizon Lyrics
  • Big Yellow Taxi Lyrics
  • Billy 1 Lyrics
  • Billy 4 Lyrics
  • Billy 7 Lyrics
  • Billy (Main Title Theme) Lyrics
  • Black Crow Blues Lyrics
  • Black Diamond Bay Lyrics
  • Blackjack Davey Lyrics
  • Blind Willie McTell Lyrics
  • Blood in My Eyes Lyrics
  • Blowin' in the Wind Lyrics
  • Blue Moon Lyrics
  • Bob Dylan's 115th Dream Lyrics
  • Bob Dylan's Blues Lyrics
  • Bob Dylan's Dream Lyrics
  • Boots of Spanish Leather Lyrics
  • Born in Time Lyrics
  • Born In Time (Live Version) Lyrics
  • Broke Down Engine Lyrics
  • Brownsville Girl Lyrics
  • Buckets of Rain Lyrics
  • Bunkhouse Theme Lyrics
  • Bye And Bye Lyrics
  • Call Letter Blues Lyrics
  • Can't Help Falling in Love Lyrics
  • Can't Wait Lyrics
  • Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? Lyrics
  • Canadee-i-o Lyrics
  • Cantina Theme (Workin' for the Law) Lyrics
  • Caribbean Wind Lyrics
  • Cat's in the Well Lyrics
  • Catfish Lyrics
  • Changing of the Guards Lyrics
  • Chimes of Freedom Lyrics
  • Clean-Cut Kid Lyrics
  • Clothes Line Lyrics
  • Cocaine Blues Lyrics
  • Cold Irons Bound Lyrics
  • Cold Irons Bound (Live Version) Lyrics
  • Copper Kettle Lyrics
  • Corrina, Corrina Lyrics
  • Country Pie Lyrics
  • Covenant Woman Lyrics
  • Cry Awhile Lyrics
  • Dark Eyes Lyrics
  • Day of the Locusts Lyrics
  • Days of 49 Lyrics
  • Dead Man, Dead Man Lyrics
  • Dear Landlord Lyrics
  • Death is Not the End Lyrics
  • Delia Lyrics
  • Desolation Row Lyrics
  • Diamond Joe Lyrics
  • Dignity Lyrics
  • Dirge Lyrics
  • Dirt Road Blues Lyrics
  • Disease of Conceit Lyrics
  • Do Right to Me Baby Lyrics
  • Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight Lyrics
  • Don't Think Twice, It's All Right Lyrics
  • Don't Ya Tell Henry Lyrics
  • Down Along the Cove Lyrics
  • Down in the Flood Lyrics
  • Down the Highway Lyrics
  • Drifter's Escape Lyrics
  • Driftin' Too Far from Shore Lyrics
  • Early Mornin' Rain Lyrics
  • Emotionally Yours Lyrics
  • Endless Highway Lyrics
  • Eternal Circle Lyrics
  • Eve of Destruction Lyrics
  • Every Grain of Sand Lyrics
  • Everything is Broken Lyrics
  • Farewell Angelina Lyrics
  • Father of Night Lyrics
  • Final Theme Lyrics
  • Fixin' to Die Lyrics
  • Floater (Too Much To Ask) Lyrics
  • Folsom Prison Blues Lyrics
  • Foot of Pride Lyrics
  • Forever Young Lyrics
  • Frankie & Albert Lyrics
  • Freight Train Blues Lyrics
  • Froggie Went a Courtin' Lyrics
  • From a Buick 6 Lyrics
  • Gates of Eden Lyrics
  • Girl of the North Country Lyrics
  • God Knows Lyrics
  • Goin' to Acapulco Lyrics
  • Going, Going, Gone Lyrics
  • Golden Loom Lyrics
  • Gonna Change My Way of Thinking Lyrics
  • Gospel Plow Lyrics
  • Got My Mind Made Up Lyrics
  • Gotta Serve Somebody Lyrics
  • Gotta Travel On Lyrics
  • Grand Coulee Dam Lyrics
  • Had a Dream About You, Baby Lyrics
  • Handsome Molly Lyrics
  • Handy Dandy Lyrics
  • Hard Times Lyrics
  • Hard Times in New York Town Lyrics
  • Hazel Lyrics
  • He Was a Friend of Mine Lyrics
  • Heart of Mine Lyrics
  • Highlands Lyrics
  • Highwater (For Charlie Patton) Lyrics
  • Highway 51 Blues Lyrics
  • Highway 61 Revisited Lyrics
  • Honest With Me Lyrics
  • Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance Lyrics
  • House Carpenter Lyrics
  • House of the Rising Sun Lyrics
  • Hurricane Lyrics
  • I'll Be Your Baby Tonight Lyrics
  • I'll Keep It with Mine Lyrics
  • I'll Remember You Lyrics
  • I Am a Lonesome Hobo Lyrics
  • I and I Lyrics
  • I Believe in You Lyrics
  • I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) Lyrics
  • I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine Lyrics
  • I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know Lyrics
  • I Pity the Poor Immigrant Lyrics
  • I Shall Be Free Lyrics
  • I Shall Be Free No.10 Lyrics
  • I Shall Be Released Lyrics
  • I Threw It All Away Lyrics
  • I Wanna Be Your Lover Lyrics
  • I Want You Lyrics
  • Idiot Wind Lyrics
  • If Dogs Run Free Lyrics
  • If Not for You Lyrics
  • If You Gotta Go, Go Now Lyrics
  • If You See Her, Say Hello Lyrics
  • In My Time of Dyin' Lyrics
  • In Search of Little Sadie Lyrics
  • In the Garden Lyrics
  • In the Summertime Lyrics
  • Is Your Love in Vain? Lyrics
  • Isis Lyrics
  • It's All Over Now, Baby Blue Lyrics
  • It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) Lyrics
  • It Ain't Me, Babe Lyrics
  • It Hurts Me Too Lyrics
  • It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry Lyrics
  • Jack-A-Roe Lyrics
  • Jet Pilot Lyrics
  • Jim Jones Lyrics
  • Joey Lyrics
  • John Brown Lyrics
  • John Wesley Harding Lyrics
  • Jokerman Lyrics
  • Just Like a Woman Lyrics
  • Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics
  • Katie's Been Gone Lyrics
  • Kingsport Town Lyrics
  • Knockin' on Heaven's Door Lyrics
  • Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie Lyrics
  • Lay Down Your Weary Tune Lyrics
  • Lay, Lady, Lay Lyrics
  • Lenny Bruce Lyrics
  • Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat Lyrics
  • Let's Stick Together Lyrics
  • Let It Be Me Lyrics
  • Let Me Die in My Footsteps Lyrics
  • License to Kill Lyrics
  • Like a Rolling Stone Lyrics
  • Lily of the West Lyrics
  • Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts Lyrics
  • Little Maggie Lyrics
  • Little Sadie Lyrics
  • Living the Blues Lyrics
  • Lo and Behold! Lyrics
  • Lone Pilgrim Lyrics
  • Lonesome Day Blues Lyrics
  • Long-Distance Operator Lyrics
  • Long Time Gone (1962) Lyrics
  • Lord Protect My Child Lyrics
  • Love Henry Lyrics
  • Love Minus Zero/No Limit Lyrics
  • Love Sick Lyrics
  • Maggie's Farm Lyrics
  • Make You Feel My Love Lyrics
  • Mama, You Been on My Mind Lyrics
  • Man Gave Names to All the Animals Lyrics
  • Man in the Long Black Coat Lyrics
  • Man of Constant Sorrow Lyrics
  • Man of Peace Lyrics
  • Man on the Street Lyrics
  • Mary Ann Lyrics
  • Masters of War Lyrics
  • Maybe Someday Lyrics
  • Meet Me in the Morning Lyrics
  • Million Dollar Bash Lyrics
  • Million Miles Lyrics
  • Minstrel Boy Lyrics
  • Mississippi Lyrics
  • Mixed Up Confusion Lyrics
  • Moonlight Lyrics
  • Moonshiner Lyrics
  • Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine Lyrics
  • Most of the Time Lyrics
  • Motorpsycho Nightmare Lyrics
  • Mozambique Lyrics
  • Mr. Bojangles Lyrics
  • Mr. Tambourine Man Lyrics
  • My Back Pages Lyrics
  • Nashville Skyline Rag Lyrics
  • Need a Woman Lyrics
  • Neighborhood Bully Lyrics
  • Nettie Moore Lyrics
  • Never Gonna Be the Same Again Lyrics
  • Never Say Goodbye Lyrics
  • New Morning Lyrics
  • New Pony Lyrics
  • Night After Night Lyrics
  • Ninety Miles an Hour (Down a Dead End Street) Lyrics
  • No More Auction Block Lyrics
  • No Time to Think Lyrics
  • Nobody 'Cept You Lyrics
  • North Country Blues Lyrics
  • Not Dark Yet Lyrics
  • Nothing was Delivered Lyrics
  • Obviously Five Believers Lyrics
  • Odds and Ends Lyrics
  • Oh, Sister Lyrics
  • On a Night Like This Lyrics
  • On the Road Again Lyrics
  • One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) Lyrics
  • One More Night Lyrics
  • One More Weekend Lyrics
  • One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) Lyrics
  • One Too Many Mornings Lyrics
  • Only a Hobo Lyrics
  • Only a Pawn in Their Game Lyrics
  • Open the Door, Homer Lyrics
  • Orange Juice Blues (Blues for Breakfast) Lyrics
  • Outlaw Blues Lyrics
  • Oxford Town Lyrics
  • Paths of Victory Lyrics
  • Peggy Day Lyrics
  • Percy's Song Lyrics
  • Please, Mrs. Henry Lyrics
  • Pledging My Time Lyrics
  • Po' Boy Lyrics
  • Political World Lyrics
  • Positively 4th Street Lyrics
  • Precious Angel Lyrics
  • Precious Memories Lyrics
  • Pressing On Lyrics
  • Pretty Peggy-O Lyrics
  • Property of Jesus Lyrics
  • Queen Jane Approximately Lyrics
  • Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) Lyrics
  • Quit Your Low Down Ways Lyrics
  • Ragged & Dirty Lyrics
  • Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 Lyrics
  • Rambling, Gambling Willie Lyrics
  • Rank Strangers to Me Lyrics
  • Restless Farewell Lyrics
  • Ring of Fire Lyrics
  • Ring Them Bells Lyrics
  • River Theme Lyrics
  • Rollin' And Tumblin' Lyrics
  • Romance in Durango Lyrics
  • Ruben Remus Lyrics
  • Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands Lyrics
  • Sally Sue Brown Lyrics
  • Santa Fe Lyrics
  • Sara Lyrics
  • Sarah Jane Lyrics
  • Saved Lyrics
  • Saving Grace Lyrics
  • See That My Grave is Kept Clean Lyrics
  • Seeing the Real You at Last Lyrics
  • Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) Lyrics
  • Series of Dreams Lyrics
  • Seven Curses Lyrics
  • Seven Days Lyrics
  • She's Your Lover Now Lyrics
  • She Belongs to Me Lyrics
  • Shelter from the Storm Lyrics
  • Shenandoah Lyrics
  • Shooting Star Lyrics
  • Shot of Love Lyrics
  • Sign on the Window Lyrics
  • Silvio Lyrics
  • Simple Twist of Fate Lyrics
  • Sittin' on Top of the World Lyrics
  • Sitting on a Barbed-Wire Fence Lyrics
  • Slow Train Lyrics
  • Solid Rock Lyrics
  • Somebody Touched Me Lyrics
  • Someday Baby Lyrics
  • Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart Lyrics
  • Something's Burning, Baby Lyrics
  • Something There is About You Lyrics
  • Song to Woody Lyrics
  • Spanish Harlem Incident Lyrics
  • Spanish is the Loving Tongue Lyrics
  • Spirit On The Water Lyrics
  • Stack A Lee Lyrics
  • Stage Fright Lyrics
  • Standing In The Doorway Lyrics
  • Step It Up And Go Lyrics
  • Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again Lyrics
  • Subterranean Homesick Blues Lyrics
  • Sugar Baby Lyrics
  • Summer Days Lyrics
  • Suze (The Cough Song) Lyrics
  • Sweetheart Like You Lyrics
  • Take a Message to Mary Lyrics
  • Take Me as I Am Lyrics
  • Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues Lyrics
  • Talkin' World War III Blues Lyrics
  • Talkin Hava Negeilah Blues Lyrics
  • Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues Lyrics
  • Talking New York Lyrics
  • Tangled Up in Blue Lyrics
  • Tears of Rage Lyrics
  • Tell Me Lyrics
  • Tell Me That It Isn't True Lyrics
  • Tell Me, Momma Lyrics
  • Temporary Like Achilles Lyrics
  • The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest Lyrics
  • The Ballad of Ira Hayes Lyrics
  • The Boxer Lyrics
  • The Death of Emmett Till Lyrics
  • The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar Lyrics
  • The Levee's Gonna Break Lyrics
  • The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll Lyrics
  • The Man in Me Lyrics
  • The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down Lyrics
  • The Shape I'm In Lyrics
  • The Times They Are A-Changin' Lyrics
  • The Weight Lyrics
  • The Wicked Messenger Lyrics
  • They Killed Him Lyrics
  • Things Have Changed Lyrics
  • This Wheel's on Fire Lyrics
  • Three Angels Lyrics
  • Thunder On The Mountain Lyrics
  • Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love) Lyrics
  • Til I Fell In Love With You Lyrics
  • Time Passes Slowly Lyrics
  • Times They Are A Changing Lyrics
  • Tiny Montgomery Lyrics
  • To Be Alone with You Lyrics
  • To Ramona Lyrics
  • Tombstone Blues Lyrics
  • Tomorrow is a Long Time Lyrics
  • Tomorrow Night Lyrics
  • Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You Lyrics
  • Too Much of Nothing Lyrics
  • Tough Mama Lyrics
  • Trouble Lyrics
  • True Love Tends to Forget Lyrics
  • Trust Yourself Lyrics
  • Tryin' To Get To Heaven Lyrics
  • Turkey Chase Lyrics
  • Tweedle Dee And Tweedle Dum Lyrics
  • Two Soldiers Lyrics
  • T.V. Talkin' Song Lyrics
  • Ugliest Girl in the World Lyrics
  • Unbelievable Lyrics
  • Under the Red Sky Lyrics
  • Under Your Spell Lyrics
  • Union Sundown Lyrics
  • Up on Cripple Creek Lyrics
  • Up to Me Lyrics
  • Visions of Johanna Lyrics
  • Wade In The Water Lyrics
  • Waiting For You Lyrics
  • Walkin' Down the Line Lyrics
  • Wallflower Lyrics
  • Walls of Red Wing Lyrics
  • Watching the River Flow Lyrics
  • Watered Down Love Lyrics
  • We Better Talk This Over Lyrics
  • Wedding Song Lyrics
  • Went to See the Gypsy Lyrics
  • What Can I Do For You? Lyrics
  • What Good Am I? Lyrics
  • What Was It You Wanted? Lyrics
  • When Did You Leave Heaven? Lyrics
  • When He Returns Lyrics
  • When I Paint My Masterpiece Lyrics
  • When The Deal Goes Down Lyrics
  • When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky Lyrics
  • When the Ship Comes In Lyrics
  • When You Awake Lyrics
  • When You Gonna Wake Up? Lyrics
  • Where Are You Tonight? Lyrics
  • Where Teardrops Fall Lyrics
  • Who Killed Davey Moore? Lyrics
  • Wiggle Wiggle Lyrics
  • Wigwam Lyrics
  • Winterlude Lyrics
  • With God on Our Side Lyrics
  • Woogie Boogie Lyrics
  • Workingman's Blues #2 Lyrics
  • World Gone Wrong Lyrics
  • Worried Blues Lyrics
  • Yazoo Street Scandal Lyrics
  • Ye Shall Be Changed Lyrics
  • Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread Lyrics
  • You're a Big Girl Now Lyrics
  • You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go Lyrics
  • You're Gonna Quit Me Lyrics
  • You're No Good Lyrics
  • You Ain't Goin' Nowhere Lyrics
  • You Angel You Lyrics
  • You Belong To Me Lyrics
  • You Changed My Life Lyrics
  • You Wanna Ramble Lyrics
    (Submit New Bob Dylan Lyrics)






    Review about Bob Dylan

    Mr Jones as carnival freak | Reviewer: Steve Borrow
        ------ About the song Ballad of a Thin Man performed by Bob Dylan


    An irritating, pompous, besuited journo who asked too many inane questions during an interview with Bob has been immortalized as the famous Thin Man in this song. His interrogatory style reminded Bob of the William Powell detective in the 1930s Thin Man series of movies.

    Bob has turned the interrogation back on Mr Jones: Something is happening, but you don’t know what it is. Do you Mr Jones?

    Without being conscious of it, Mr Jones has become so institutionalized by his normative upbringing that he walks a stranger among his own people. He is a carnival freak, so hard wired with corporatist values that he no longer has a firm appreciation of reality. He works within the institutional media and his contacts have a stake in the way reality is shaped, perhaps preprogrammed to some extent. He is not permitted to think freely, but is spoon fed with “facts when someone attacks (his) imagination”.

    Professors, the official custodian’s of knowledge, like the cut of his jib and he fits an acceptable model of the corporate man. He has learned a lot about social outcasts from those who were part of the legal conveyor belt, but this formalism has prevented him from tapping into the life experiences of those he pretends to understand (“eyes in your pocket and nose on the ground...you should be made to wear earphones”). He is inculcated with the selective learning derived from formal education, but it hasn’t made him knowledgeable about the world of flesh and blood, the world Bob writes and sings about. If anything, it had made him both arrogant and ignorant.

    Bob’s ubiquitous circus performers make another appearance here. In place of jugglers and clowns we have a sword swallower and midget, freaks at a freak show that remind us that Mr Jones is really a performer in a theatrical sideshow and has reduced the entire exercise to absurdity.

    Then we have Bob enjoying a little word play with his pun about a cow – a poor creature that exists as a milk producing factory with no critical capacity is likened to Mr Jones. If you can’t produce milk, Mr Jones, he tells him, you may as well go home. Milk is a metaphor for ideas fed to the public through the media.




    Dylan's mortality | Reviewer: andy gross
        ------ About the song Shooting Star performed by Bob Dylan

    This song, along with "Things Have Changed" and "Not Dark Yet" ushered in Dylan's mortality period, which has produced some great work. Loss, regret, anger, confusion, romance all infuse the songs of this period culminating with the spectacular "Modern Times."
    The language as become more stripped down. There are still the Biblical pronouncements, but they are more intimate now; ironic and shaped by time and the erosion of a life.
    "Shooting Star" with its, "Listen to the engine, listen to the bell, as the last fire truck from hell goes rolling by... It's the last temptation, the last account the last time you might hear the sermon on the mount, the last radio is playing" signals an awareness of a personal rather than social epiphany of emotional attenuation, a kind of inner apocalypse.
    Wherever he goes from here, I think this Dylan song is as much a harbinger of what was to come as either "Mr. Tambourine Man," or "Highway 61."


    Dylan is god | Reviewer: Curfew Gull
        ------ About the song Moonshiner performed by Bob Dylan

    I first heard this song back in 1991 when the first Bootleg series came out. It is easily my favourite early non-Bob written song he performed. The sweet somber harmonica at the end of the song, compliments the lyrics and his voice. Dylan makes this song his own, he makes me feel like he has lived through "17 long years" of drinking. But at the time he recorded this song he was barely 21 years old.


    P.F.Sloan | Reviewer: eralperdogan
        ------ About the song Eve of Destruction performed by Bob Dylan

    If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal says Lennon, bullshit is global destruction politics of those nations enrolled, if exist would history reveal the truth, and this song is one of beatiful songs that P.F.Sloan had written


    Dylan’s tarot reading of contemporary culture circa 1965 | Reviewer: Steve Borrow
        ------ About the song Desolation Row performed by Bob Dylan

    Bob Dylan was embraced as the great new voice of the American folk music scene during the sixties revival, and performed at the Newport Folk festivals in 1963 and 1964 to great acclaim. His album "Bringing It All Back Home", released in March 1965, give a foretaste of the direction he would eventually take. He would move away from a standard acoustic folk repertoire and commit the unforgivable heresy of going electric.

    On Sunday, 25 July 1965, Bob asserted his independence from the orthodoxy of the folk scene by switching on his Fender Stratocaster and stirring up a violent audience reaction. Four days later he resumed work on on new album, the monumental "Highway 61 Revisited". On 4 August 1965, he recorded the last track, Desolation Row, the first out-take having been made on 29 July.

    Looking at the verses closely, you get the sense that Bob composed them at different times. He told Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone Magazine in a November 1969 interview that he wrote it in the back of a New York Cab. He may not have been kidding when he said that, but the spontaneity of the writing is evident from the jumble of obscure, partially formed images, and the apparent dissociation between the subject matter of each verse as they flicker past the narrator and Lady like shorts at an art film fest. The song may have been reduced to writing quickly, but the ideas were probably incubating for some time. Indeed, this is how the words and music are to be experienced. On first play, the ear picks up a particular reference, cloaked in hypnotic sound, and before it can be comprehended the images following flood through, creating an overall impression of a distorted, chaotic world of transmogrified fables and iconic references transported to this weird landscape where nothing makes sense at all. You get the impression that Bob picked up a pack of Tarot cards, sliced them up with pair of scissors, and reassembled them at random (more about this later). As we move through the verses, our mind is crowded with a whole zoo of mysterious beings. The thread linking the verses is a repetition of the mantra found in the last line of each verse: “on desolation row”.

    We should be open to the possibility that Bob didn’t intend this song to have any particular meaning at all. Perhaps he was inviting us to step in and experience the display, as one does after entering an Andy Warhol art shows. He may have been intoxicated by the stream of images flowing through his consciousness at the time he composed it and, like T S Eliot, refrained from later speculation on the subject to ensure that it’s meaning didn’t become fixed. In that way the interpretations are never closed and the work continues as a living, breathing organism capable of adapting to new cultural frames of reference. To give it a particular meaning would effectual drive a stake through it’s heart and hand it over to the taxidermist. Bob has left it to the listener to make of it what he or she will. Isn’t that what happens when we view surreal art in a gallery?

    In seeking to extract some meaning from the song, we need to take care not to drift too far from the symbolism employed. Bob Dylan is gifted with an extraordinary capacity to act as a cipher and to synthesize disparate strands of thought into something fresh and interesting. He tells us in “Chronicles I”, ostensibly a memoir of his early years, that he had immersed himself in a lot of great literature at that time (pre 1966). What we can say with confidence is that the songs on "Highway 61 Revisited" were influenced by his exposure to beat literature and a particularly fertile association with the celebrated poet Allen Ginsberg. There seems to be broad agreement that the song title came from an amalgam of Jack Kerouac’s novel Desolation Angels, which was published the same year as Desolation Row, and John Steinbeck’s novella, Cannery Row. Bob adds a passing reference to Cannery Row in his epic veneration of womanhood, Sad Eye Lady of the Lowlands, which came immediately after this album on the great Blonde on Blonde. The title, though, is a thinly disguised adaptation of Eliot’s title for The Waste Land.

    Kerouac’s novel was written in his trademark fractured, conversational style during 63 days of isolation when engaged as a fire watcher on Desolation Peak, which is located in Cascade National Park. It is interesting to note that when asked where Desolation Row was during a KQED press conference on 3 December 1965, Bob replied: “Somewhere place in Mexico . It’s across the border. It’s noted for its Coke factory”, which is where an entire chapter of Desolation Angels was set. Of course, it is not set anywhere in particular. It is an idea, an abstract composite of many elements. In another part of his answer Bob replied: “Coca Cola machines, sells a lotta Coca Cola down there”. Beyond the obvious drug reference, I suspect it is also Bob-speak for a pervasive form of corporate American culture: brilliantly packaged and marketed, appealing to the senses, but probably detrimental in the long run. It also a possible aside to Andy Warhol art and his paintings of Green Coca Cola Bottle made in 1962. Bob associated with Warhol for a time and was gifted with a screen print Bob is alleged to have used as a dart board. Bob returned the favour by sending one of manager Grossman’s old armchairs.
    Cannery Row is set in a redundant sardine factory in Monterey , which Steinbeck populates with a poor, but dignified community of social outcasts. The key character, Mack, organizes a party for one of the community that gets very raucous, resulting in the trashing of the poor fellows home and laboratory. Mack seeks redemption by organizing a second party, and the story explores the interaction of the support cast of battlers. Steinbeck described Cannery Row as: “a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, nostalgia, a dream”.

    This provides an extrinsic aid to interpreting the images evoked in each verse of Bob’s epic. The influence of T S Eliot is evident throughout the whole song, which can be seen as a hybrid fusion of these three main ideas, set in the context of a Tarot reading, effectually utilizing a thematic device applied by Eliot in The Waste Land. It also uses Steinbeck’s setting of the outrageous party to present a parade of clichéd literary allusions, displaying them, as it were, through circus glass - twisted and misshapen. They are observed by the narrator and the mysterious Lady from their vantage point in Desolation Row. You see in that a parallel with Kerouac looking for smoke curling up out of the conifer forest from his vantage point near Desolation Peak .

    The central meaning of the song seems to be a concern with modernism and the cold, clinical reduction of artistic endeavor, particularly in the case of poetry and song writing, to “a thing pinned and wriggling on the wall”. Poetic expression seemed in danger of become a purely elitist, academic pursuit, lacking a creative spontaneity expressive of the human condition in all of its manifestations. Wasn’t that a concern of the beats? The beat movement, on the other hand, may have been perceived by Dylan as an over reaction to this elitism, abandoning intellectual rigor altogether. And then there is subservience to market demands and the dumbing down that inevitably follows when the bean counters get to stamp the logo on everything. Warhol, in particular seems to be a concern here.

    We also sense Bob’s disenchantment with the folk music scene that rejected him after Newport ’65. We know he came to reject the very notion of the protest song per se as an effective vehicle for expressing complexity. They were, he said, dead before they are performed, which brings us full circle to this idea of the poem or song having the character of a living evolving thing with an open, adaptable meaning.

    Bob Dylan’s escape from the museum of folk music forms and his adoption of rock as the vehicle for expressing his more profound poetic ideas is consistent with his implied critique of elitism. How he later reconciled such a view with a song like Hurricane is problematic, but he did express it strongly around the time Highway 61 Revisited was released. If a song is given a finite temporal and spatial context, it cannot transcend that space and time. It may serve an ephemeral political purpose, but that is all. “Which side are you on?”, for example, which is mentioned in Desolation Row, was about Harlan County Miners, and in Bob’s has a specific frame of reference requiring a fixed response.

    It is possible that the characters named in the song, like Dylan’s own name, are aliases for real people in the contemporary art and music scene. This was, of course, a favourite trick of Kerouac – to give his associates, Ginsberg among them, pseudonyms and write honestly about them. Perhaps he let’s us in on the secret where, in the last verse, he says:

    “All those people that you mention, yes, I know them. They’re quite lame. I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name”.

    Bob fuses them composites to deepen the disguise.



    brilliant. | Reviewer: Anonymous
        ------ About the song Positively 4th Street performed by Bob Dylan

    this song is about a friend or friends that he had that he once hung out with then realized that they were superficial and were constantly trying to fit in and hide who they really were. the kind of people that take pleasure in other peoples misery and will act like they love you to your face but you know the second they turn around they would deny they even knew you. i think we can all relate with bob on this one as it seem our society just seems to keep on multiplying these types of people.


    Blind Willie Mctell | Reviewer: Surfddogdude
        ------ About the song Blind Willie McTell performed by Bob Dylan

    This song is up there with Visions of Johanna and others as mere poetic genius. The mood he creates in this song is haunting. "I'm Gazing out the window of the Saint James Hotel. And I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell".


    The sadness is the point | Reviewer: JohnMcLaughlin
        ------ About the song Bob Dylan's Dream performed by Bob Dylan

    I know it's not fashionable to read the artist into the lyrics or the oetic text, but in this case, it's so profoundly first-personal, coming from someone whose various masks and personae have come to cloak the young man from the Midwest, not so long before arrived in the big city, that I find it impossible to let this one go. Sadness over lost friendship cuts to the core for so many of us who have travled that road in our own waysa, of course, that it's also possible to pick it up and put it to our own uses too, so it goes both ways, inwards to the personal, and outwards to the near universal. One of the most perfect of his early songs, and one you could wish he hadn't felt compelled to write. I like PP&M, OK, but they're to tuneful, not lost enough for me. As so often, Dylan is his own best interpreter, and I could listen to this one over and over if it didn't hurt so much.


    The Story of The Hurricane | Reviewer: Steve Borrow
        ------ About the song Hurricane performed by Bob Dylan

    This is one of the best protest songs ever composed. In eleven short stanzas, Bob Dylan gets to tell the whole story of the 1966 frame-up of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, whose real crime, Bob asserts, was being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was released on the Desire Album on 5 January 1976, just after Blood on the Tracks.

    We find none of the abstraction here as in, say, Blonde on Blonde. The song unrolls like a cinematic experience with the powerful chorus reinforcing the central theme: “this is the story of the Hurricane, a man the authorities came to blame for something that he never done”. Note the deliberate “done” for “did”. Bob is championing Rubin’s cause and wants us appreciate his perspective, to have empathy for him, so he presents the narrative in a vernacular the Hurricane might use himself. The gravity of the injustice is measured by the denial of Rubin’s manifest destiny to become world middleweight boxing champion. Scarlet Rivera’s violin perfectly compliments the bottom sound, pulsing like a heartbeat to Bob’s oration – he recites the verses, rather than sings them.

    Towards the end of the song, Bob make brilliant use of irony. He provides a visual snapshot of the incarcerated Rubin with his bald head, assuming the pose of the Gotama Buddha, the universal embodiment of tranquility and forbearance, and contrasts that with the real perpetrators who are free to enjoy all night cocktail parties in their tuxedos and bow ties, just like old time gangsters:

    “Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise, while Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell, an innocent man in a living hell”.

    Bob excels at this narrative story telling. Song to Woody, Ballad of Hollis Brown, Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, John Wesley Harding, Billy, and Joey (on the same album) are examples of this biographical song writing.

    Rubin was freed in 1985 and in 1999 Academy Award winner, Denzel Washington, played his character in the movie Hurricane, which engendered a lot of sympathy for him. Rubin, now 70 years of age, is a popular public speaker making up for lost time.


    The Story of The Hurricane | Reviewer: Steve Borrow
        ------ About the song Hurricane performed by Bob Dylan

    This is one of the best protest songs ever composed. In eleven short stanzas, Bob Dylan gets to tell the whole story of the 1966 frame-up of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, whose real crime, Bob asserts, was being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was released on the Desire Album on 5 January 1976, just after Blood on the Tracks.

    We find none of the abstraction here as in, say, Blonde on Blonde. The song unrolls like a cinematic experience with the powerful chorus reinforcing the central theme: “this is the story of the Hurricane, a man the authorities came to blame for something that he never done”. Note the deliberate “done” for “did”. Bob is championing Rubin’s cause and wants us appreciate his perspective, to have empathy for him, so he presents the narrative in a vernacular the Hurricane might use himself. The gravity of the injustice is measured by the denial of Rubin’s manifest destiny to become world middleweight boxing champion. Scarlet Rivera’s violin perfectly compliments the bottom sound, pulsing like a heartbeat to Bob’s oration – he recites the verses, rather than sings them.

    Towards the end of the song, Bob make brilliant use of irony. He provides a visual snapshot of the incarcerated Rubin with his bald head, assuming the pose of the Gotama Buddha, the universal embodiment of tranquility and forbearance, and contrasts that with the real perpetrators who are free to enjoy all night cocktail parties in their tuxedos and bow ties, just like old time gangsters:

    “Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise, while Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell, an innocent man in a living hell”.

    Bob excels at this narrative story telling. Song to Woody, Ballad of Hollis Brown, Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, John Wesley Harding, Billy, and Joey (on the same album) are examples of this biographical song writing.

    Rubin was freed in 1985 and in 1999 Academy Award winner, Denzel Washington, played his character in the movie Hurricane, which engendered a lot of sympathy for him. Rubin, now 70 years of age, is a popular public speaker making up for lost time.


    Moving tribute to a forgotten hero | Reviewer: Steve Borrow
        ------ About the song The Ballad of Ira Hayes performed by Bob Dylan

    This haunting ballad recounts the story of forgotten Native American war hero, Corporal Ira Hayes, who died penniless and forgotten in 1955, a decade after featuring in the famous flag hoisting photograph following the victory at Iwo Jima. The story of that photo and the fate of Ira Hayes is movingly presented in the Clint Eastwood directed film, Flag of Our Fathers.

    The song is the one redeeming feature of Bob Dylan otherwise forgettable 1973 LP, Dylan. It is not a Dylan original, but composed by Peter Lafarge, also Native American, who was a talented singer, songwriter and actor, and an important member of the Greenwich Village folk movement in the 1960s. It was recorded by Johnny Cash way back in 1964, a year before Peter’s tragic death at the age of 34.


    Question marks hanging on the winds of chance | Reviewer: Steve Borrow
        ------ About the song Blowin' in the Wind performed by Bob Dylan

    A lot of his fans regard this as the Young Dylan’s (i.e. from his folk singer period) signature anthem. It is constructed from nine rhetorical questions, which may be reduced to a single one: how long will injustice be ignored and tolerated? Bob includes within the compass of this inquiry the degradation of human dignity, war, racism, and oppression. The answer provided is probably more illusive than might first appear. He tells his universalized friend that: “the answer is blowing in the wind”. Like leaves carried upon metaphoric winds of chance, perhaps? It takes a genius to write a song like this when barely out of his teens. Peter Paul and Mary made it world famous and its seemed to succinctly express what a lot of people thought about the 1950s.


    One of the greatest albums ever! | Reviewer: Boby
        ------ About the album Blonde on Blonde performed by Bob Dylan

    So many amazing song in just one CD. you have to get this album! Best songs hre are :Visions of Johanna, I Want You
    Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

    Just Like a Woman

    Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine ,One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)






    Bob the Jokerman - this one's on us | Reviewer: Steve Borrow
        ------ About the song Jokerman performed by Bob Dylan

    Jokerman is the outstanding track on the Infidels album, released in 1983, eight years after the celebrated Blood on the Tracks (1975). That great album was followed by Street Legal (1978), Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980), and Shot of Love (1981), which all disappointed some devoted Dylan fans because of its Christian themes. Bob had evidently found a sympathetic influence in the poetry of French Belgian symbolists, Rimbaud and Verlaine, so named because of their use of complex concepts or “symbols” as poetic devices. This allowed them to convey a wide expanse of complex meaning. Bob Dylan had been developing independently in that direction for many years, as we see from his description of “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall” during a 1962 interview with Studs Terkel. Each line of that song, he tells his interviewer, could be a song in itself. So, even that far back Bob’s transcendent vision could no longer be adequately conveyed by simple narrative, folk images. Blood on The Tracks expresses the maturing of that development.

    Consequently, Jokerman cannot become comprehensible from a narrative reading. Each symbol, construed separately, might contribute something to an overall appreciation after all of the constituent ekements have been considered (if not necessarily understood). It’s like reading clouds or clustering stars into constellations. Every observer will see something different in the landscape.

    It has been suggested that the song (I hesitate to call it a song) is an introspective response by the narrator to his status as a cultural “idol” in the context of his Christian conversion. Perhaps, but who would know? It is possible to discern some auto-biographical elements. The short video recording of Bob performing the song with his eyes shut most of the time, which is accessible on You-Tube, reinforces this interpretation, particularly the first two verses. Then it gets very abstract. It presents an intriguing parade of universal symbols (too many to list here)that leave one still guessing.

    In one interview Bob conducted just fater the release of Infidels, Bob identified Afro-Caribbean paganism as an inspiration (Jumbis). Is the Jokerman an Obeah Man, perhaps? Other commentators have suggested that it is a complex treatise on Reaganism, with Ronald Reagan being Jokerman. He does appear at the end of the short video presentation.

    Bob Dylan, when in the process of reducing these complex ideas to paper, may not have been entirely sure of what it all meant himself. He may have been overwhelmed by the stream of consciousness flowing through him at the time. Genius operates that way sometimes.

    Whatever one takes from it, Jokerman is unquestionably an extraordinary piece of popular songwriting, a hypnotic tour de force that will reward repeated listening.


    Bob goes Canadian | Reviewer: Steve Borrow
        ------ About the song Belle Isle performed by Bob Dylan

    This charming little tune is actually a Canadian (Newfoundland) folk ballad, derived from the Irish love song Loch Erin Sweet Riverside and The Lass of Dunmore. It was included in Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait album, released in 1970.


    The thin man | Reviewer: Ann
        ------ About the song Ballad of a Thin Man performed by Bob Dylan

    You are the thin man with charme and jokes.Mr, Jones is the stupid reporter,who has no respect for your lyric!He is propably informed about gossip,the lumberjackets.You can because of your reputation not answer directly back.He also is interested in Your looking.People of that kind don´t understand anything.He doesn`t want to talk to you about your music,he wears earphones.Why at all does he come?Give the reporters back,but continue it you own way.We like as you are.yours censerely Ann:


    The Best Dylan Song | Reviewer: Anonymous
        ------ About the song Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues performed by Bob Dylan

    This song says it all about his experiences and his perception of "pop rock" life. It is no surprise that the lyrics combined with the wonderful session players made a sweet (blues tinged) yet biting indictment of so much about America that still stands the test of time. Because "up on housing project hill it is either fortune or fame - you must pick one or the other though neither of them are to be what they claim".


    Prophetic street anthem for our times | Reviewer: Steve Borrow
        ------ About the song The Times They Are A-Changin' performed by Bob Dylan

    Reviewer: sbo25100@bigpond.net.au | 3/1/2008
    This song was written at a time when the civil rights movement was building a powerful momentum and the youth of the world were questioning the injustices they had inherited. It is, in one sense, a messianic prophesy and, in another, a call to arms. Bob calls on us (“people wherever we roam”) to prepare ourselves for an enveloping tide of social change that he predicts will unsettle the current order of things. He issues a plea to the keepers of conventional wisdom: parents, politicians, and writers, to accept the inevitability of this or be overwhelmed by it. The youth, he warns, can no longer be contained and will demand that your old ideas give way to their new vision. Like many of the Bob Dylan’s songs written at this time, it became something of an anthem for the international protest movement. Bob was right, of course. The times were a'changing, are a'changing, and will continue to change. Just ask Joe Hill when next you see him.


    Mr. Jones is both a journalist and the ignorance of people: | Reviewer: Anni Ecco
        ------ About the song Ballad of a Thin Man performed by Bob Dylan

    Dear Bob.Sorry my misunderstanding.Of course Mr. Jones is a reporter.He does not have his pulse at the time as you do.We seldom understand a war, before afterwards-do we?Yes the majority are dumb,we are not informed enough.Thank you for your lovely poems.You have a strange way to express yourself.You are right because as the permanent situation is now, then most of the people close their eyes for reality,because it often hurts too much to bother.The 2001 came behind us all,the leaders say thank you for your sore throat and give it back and so on.We the population are allways kept out of the powerful peoples play.After a war they won`t take any responsibility at either side,but to make it short.We love you more and more.They often undervalue the headmusicions importance.I look forward to hear more of your songs.Good luck!Sorry to be so dumb!95% of us are kept out of the rules,you know what I mean.Love Anni.


    A clever man like you,stop it! | Reviewer: Anni Ecco
        ------ About the song Ballad of a Thin Man performed by Bob Dylan

    Dear Bob.We all love you as you are.You don`t have to listen to gossip!Don`t case Mr Jones anymore.In the end He shall hate her and you shall love her!None of you can milk the cow.And don`t be suspisius!I have followed the radio songs,so I know the truth.But I think you have a heart of gold and Mr.jones has a heart of silver, perhaps,but stop arguing.Remember It was not to heart.We love Your advanced lyrics,remember that,dear Mister! Love Anni.N.B "The dumb" Don´t jumb on an illusion!Don´t let anybody heart You:"The walls have ears,once in a while"Everything has gone out of its proportions! Everybody hearts!Who of you are to trust?



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