My Site

Performances:

• 262 times acoustic w/ band – top year 2000 (42 times)
• 19 times acoustic – top year – top year 1966 (13 times)
• 166 times w/band – top year 2011 (32 times)
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• First performance: Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, New York – Aug 28, 1965
• Last performance: Pepsi Live at Rogers Arena, Vancouver – July 25, 2017

First known performance: Forest Hills, NY, August 28, 1965

Last known performance: Empire Polo Club, Indio, California -14 October 2016

Forest Hills, NY, August 28, 1965:

Valby Hallen
Copenhagen, Denmark
21 September 1987

• Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
• Tom Petty (guitar)
• Mike Campbell (guitar)
• Benmont Tench (keyboards)
• Howie Epstein (bass)
• Stan Lynch (drums)

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune-telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Now Ophelia, she’s ’neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession’s her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah’s great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

Cardiff International Centre Arena
Cardiff, Wales
27 March 1995

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

NEC Arena
National Exhibition Center
Birmingham, England
24 June 1998

Musicians:

• Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
• Bucky Baxter (pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
• Larry Campbell (guitar)
• Tony Garnier (bass)
• David Kemper (drums & percussion)

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They’re trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She’s in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
“Have Mercy on His Soul”
They all play on pennywhistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row

Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains
They’re getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They’re spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls
“Get Outa Here If You Don’t Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row”

Rockhal
Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
21 October 2011

• Bob Dylan (vocal & keyboard)
• Stu Kimball (guitar)
• Charlie Sexton (guitar)
• Donnie Herron (violin, mandolin, steel guitar)
• Tony Garnier (bass)
• George Recile (drums & percussion)

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters, no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

-Egil