Editing Highway 61 Revisited (section)

==== "Desolation Row" ====
{{Listen|filename=Desolation_Row.ogg
|title="Desolation Row" |description=Featuring a "courtly, [[flamenco]]-tinged guitar backing",<ref name=gilldesolation/> it has been suggested that in "[[Desolation Row]]", Dylan combined the cultural chaos of mid-1960s America with sepia-tinged TV westerns he remembered from his youth, such as ''[[Rawhide (TV series)|Rawhide]]'' and ''[[Gunsmoke]]''.<ref name = Polizzotti139>{{harvnb|Polizzotti|2006|pp=139–141}}</ref>}}
Dylan concludes ''Highway 61 Revisited'' with the sole [[acoustic guitar|acoustic]] exception to his rock album. Gill has characterized "[[Desolation Row]]" as "an 11-minute epic of entropy, which takes the form of a [[Federico Fellini|Fellini-esque]] parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of iconic characters". These include historical celebrities such as [[Albert Einstein]] and [[Nero]], the biblical characters [[Noah]] and [[Cain and Abel]], the Shakespearean figures of [[Ophelia]] and [[Romeo]], ending with literary titans [[T.S. Eliot]] and [[Ezra Pound]].<ref name=gilldesolation>{{harvnb|Gill|1998|p=89}}</ref> The song opens with a report that "they're selling postcards of the hanging", and adds "the circus is in town".<ref>{{harvnb|Desolation Row by Bob Dylan}}</ref> Polizzotti connects this song with the [[1920 Duluth lynchings|lynching of three black circus workers in Duluth, Minnesota]], which was Dylan's birthplace, and describes "Desolation Row" as a cowboy song, "the 'Home On The Range' of the frightening territory that was mid-sixties America".<ref name = Polizzotti139/> In the penultimate verse, the passengers on the ''[[Titanic]]'' are shouting "[[Which Side Are You On?]]"<ref name = "Shelton283">{{harvnb|Shelton|1986|p=283}}</ref> Shelton suggests Dylan is asking, "What difference which side you're on if you're sailing on the ''Titanic''?" and is thus satirizing "simpleminded political commitment".<ref name = "Shelton283"/>