Possibly evoking a lynching that occurred in Duluth, Minn., when Bob Dylan’s father was a child, and with a cast of characters ranging from Cain and Abel to Cinderella to a Casanova with low self-esteem, the 11-minute “Desolation Row” is a carnival revue in song form, reported from an imaginary Bowery, where you might spot Pound and Eliot coming to blows or the Phantom of the Opera heckling girls. The sprawl of the lyrics finds its counterpoint in a spare, three-chord musical structure (no bridge and no chorus — just a refrain) with classical-guitar flourishes by session player Charlie McCoy. A hallucinatory dream of a purgatory cum artist’s retreat for fallen angels, “Desolation Row” makes squalor and chaos seem almost romantic.
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