Audience reaction is half the battle for all-time great songs. Whether we listeners know a hit when we hear it or not, on first response, is one of the wild charms of live performance. For Bob Dylan, his first run-through of Desolation Row in front of a live audience is no doubt a historic moment. Whether it was at the time, though, is another conversation. Such is the benefit of looking back on these moments, which must have felt, initially, like another murmur of surprise, yet another new song from a growing folk hero. Nobody but those on stage could have known the impact, and the notoriety the song would have as one of the all-time greats. What the Highway 61 Revisited version of this classic song may not reach for is the humour, the whimsical and subconscious storytelling key to Desolation Row.
It can be heard in this live performance, Forest Hills, 1965. Do not mistake the humour for anything less than an addition to Desolation Row. At its core, the song is one of the all-time greats, a tremendously written piece of work which may very well be the highlight of this period. A laughing audience is the reason this works, though part of it may be Dylan’s previous dealings with comedy in song. His humorous moments can be heard all through his career, it just depends on the circumstances. Wit and commentary are close bedfellows for Dylan here and perhaps we would do well to remember the hilarity of these subconscious scribbles in future. Desolation Row (Forest Hills 1965) is a peculiar experience. The laughing becomes an instrument, an expectation that filters through every other line, though humour back then has changed massively. Cinderella sweeping up is no longer the gut punch it serves up here, nor are blind commissioners.
But there is a beauty in the humour, the out-there imagery it creates is not just genius but has a wry edge to it. That much may be lost in the performances Dylan would give this song in future, in the stripped-down and amped-up renditions in the decades to come. But cast your mind back to that performance Dylan gave this on The Outlaw Tour, armed with a spanner. His soft smile, the sense of reconnecting with the humour of the song at the forefront, is perhaps best of all for that rendition of Desolation Row. It is not as though audiences are going to be howling out of their seats at modern performances, but there is an energy which lends itself to returning this Highway 61 Revisited song back to its comedic, lighter roots.
Projection of an audience on a song is all part of it. We can laugh or cry at whichever song we please, the best, like Desolation Row, can do both. Dylan’s straight performance is the key here, as is the understanding of it on future performances. It is a footnote lost to time because of the unwieldy praise heaped on its album version and the releases to follow. A stream of consciousness like this is funny if taken at face value, if interpreted as a story with connecting parts. But does Desolation Row have anything tying these vignettes together other than the titular street? Who knows, the Forest Hills crowd surely thinks so. Interpretations have evolved, the times have changed, and Desolation Row feels more like a raging comment on everyday life and all its oddities and intricacies in the minds of those players on the street. There is fun to have in that, yet it appears most of all on this debut performance.
