Bob Dylan fans have labelled an unplugged version of Desolation Row as one of his best performances of all time.
The legendary songwriter’s listeners are spoilt for choice when it comes to live performances, with an abundance of bootlegs available. A performance of Desolation Row from MTV Unplugged has since been praised as one of the best-ever performances Dylan ever gave. One user taking to the r/BobDylan subreddit, wrote: “One of his best performances is Desolation Row on MTV Unplugged. So today I was building an MTV Unplugged best-of playlist and obviously a ton of these songs are on there but this version of Desolation Row is what convinced me to listen to the whole thing.
“That is definitely my favourite recording of Desolation Row. It’s got such a warm flow and I love the instruments backing him up. I’m also building decade-based Dylan playlists and the 90’s one is dominated by this performance.
“I listened to two MTV albums today and one was Dylan’s and the other was Jay-Z’s. While Dylan is like my favorite artist, I do think Jay-Z’s was better over all but it’s very close. That live version of Izzo is so good.”
Other users have agreed that Desolation Row is often the source of his best live performances. One user wrote: “Agreed. I’ll add that I love how listening to something so much during certain points in your life can birth an association between the two. I listened to MTV Unplugged – particularly that track – so much during a 2012 trip to Hawaii that now I associate that version of Desolation Row with Hawaii, and that’s just gravy on the biscuit right there.”
Another wrote: “I do love that version of Desolation Row. The acoustic picking, Tony on upright bass, the little organ fills: it just comes together so beautifully. It’s a song he seems to put a lot into almost every time he plays it. Another favourite version for me is Berlin, October 20, 2003, with Bob on piano and harmonica, which also contains a couple of truly lovely Freddie Koella guitar solos.
“For me personally, I fondly recall seeing Bob play it in August of 2010 in San Francisco at the Warfield Theatre. I swear you could feel the spirit of Jerry Garcia enter the room. There’s a nice, chill version that was played during the 2018 tour. I like the Newcastle, UK, 22 August performance best from that year. It’s hard to describe, but the way he kind of speak/sings the song just gives it a whole different flavour.”
One of his best performances is Desolation Row on MTV Unplugged
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Others shared their fondness for the MTV Unplugged sessions, which were recorded just three years before Dylan released the Grammy-winning Time Out of Mind. They wrote: “I always had a fondness for MTV Unplugged and that track in particular. It’s funny how Dylan is surrounded by a group of his touring musicians, and yet the sound is so different than usual, shaping itself to the Unplugged ‘brand,’ I suppose, but still producing something interesting.”
Another agreed, adding: “I’m with you. Maybe the biggest lie ever told about Bob Dylan is that Unplugged sucks. All the Dylan experts shit on it because they see it as Bob conceding to commercialism: agreeing to wear the Ray-Bans and polka dot shirt and play his greatest hits in a bid to regain fans, which they view as a desperate and uncool move.
“The problems with this idea are many. 1) Bob did everything but concede to the demands of “the man”; the thing is called Unplugged and he wouldn’t even agree to unplug, he had an electric organ and a pedal steel backing him up; 2) He didn’t just play the greatest hits; 3) So what if we wore the old outfit, it looks cool; 4) The performances are killer.”
