When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez
And it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs
When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outta you

–

This reminds me of Kerouac’s “On The Road” – conjuring up a dusty character lost somewhere in America, or South America, down on his luck, wanting to go home and singing off with the bleak but also funny line: “I’m going back to New York City/I do believe I’ve had enough.”
~Howard Souness (His 40 Greatest songs – Uncut Magazine)

Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don’t have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won’t even say what it is I’ve got

Sweet Melinda
The peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
And you’re so kind
And careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon

Up on Housing Project Hill
It’s either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you’re lookin’ to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don’t need you
And man they expect the same

Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost

I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they’d stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to call my bluff
I’m going back to New York City
I do believe I’ve had enough

“I was at the November 19th show in Madison Square Garden in New York which was the first time that Dylan had played New York after September 11th. As a concert it was a fairly standard set list, but there was an atmosphere in Madison Square Garden which was just incredible. There are good bootlegs of the concert but I don’t think they can capture the kind of feeling in the audience of welcoming Dylan to New York two months after September 11th, and there were two moments especially when this became very clear. He started singing “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and it was as if the entire audience just drew in its breath until the final line, going back to New York City, and when it got to that final line there was just this huge cheer that moved all over through the audience, it clearly at that moment had very, very special meaning for everyone in there.
~Stephen Scobie (to Andrew Muir in an interview for Judas! magazine)