I thought this was interesting, in an interview for Playboy magazine in '66, when asked what he would do if elected president, Dylan replied that he would "immediately rewrite 'The Star Spangled Banner', and little school children, instead of memorizing'"America the Beautiful' would have to memorize 'Desolation Row.'"
Also, this song might have been influenced by Kerouac's 1965 novel "Desolation Angels", which contains the phrases "perfect image of a priest" and "her sin is her lifelessness".
The first line, i've discovered, is a reference to a hanging of three Black men in Duluth, Minnesota (Dylan's home town) in 1920. In order to keep the memory of the event alive, "postcards of the hanging" were sold in Duluth.
I thought this was interesting, in an interview for Playboy magazine in '66, when asked what he would do if elected president, Dylan replied that he would "immediately rewrite 'The Star Spangled Banner', and little school children, instead of memorizing'"America the Beautiful' would have to memorize 'Desolation Row.'"
Also, this song might have been influenced by Kerouac's 1965 novel "Desolation Angels", which contains the phrases "perfect image of a priest" and "her sin is her lifelessness".
The first line, i've discovered, is a reference to a hanging of three Black men in Duluth, Minnesota (Dylan's home town) in 1920. In order to keep the memory of the event alive, "postcards of the hanging" were sold in Duluth.