Desolation Row chords by Bob Dylan (Official Version)
Intro 1
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Verse 1
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They're selling postcards of the hanging,
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they're painting the passports brown
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The beauty parlor is filled with sailors,
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the circus is in town
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Here comes the blind commissioner,
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they've got him in a trance
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One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker,
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the other is in his pants
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And the riot squad they're restless,
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they need somewhere to go
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As Lady and I look out tonight, from
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Desolation Row
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Verse 2
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Cinderella, she seems so easy,
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"It takes one to know one," she smiles
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And puts her hands in her back pockets
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Bette Davis style
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And in comes Romeo, he's moaning.
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"You belong to Me I believe"
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And someone says,
"You're in the wrong place, my friend,
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you'd better leave"
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And the only sound that's left
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after the ambulances go
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Is Cinderella sweeping up on
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Desolation Row
Verse 3
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Now the moon is almost hidden,
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the stars are beginning to hide
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The fortune telling lady
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has even taken all her things inside
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All except for Cain and Abel
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and the hunchback of Notre Dame
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Everybody is making love
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or else expecting rain
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And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing,
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he's getting ready for the show
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He's going to the carnival tonight on
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Desolation Row
Verse 4
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Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
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for her I feel so afraid
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On her twenty-second birthday
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she already is an old maid
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To her, death is quite romantic
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she wears an iron vest
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Her profession's her religion,
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her sin is her lifelessness
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And though her eyes are fixed
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upon Noah's great rainbow
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She spends her time peeking into
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Desolation Row
Verse 5
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Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
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with his memories in a trunk
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Passed this way an hour ago
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with his friend, a jealous monk
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Now he looked so immaculately frightful
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as he bummed a cigarette
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And he went off sniffing drainpipes
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and reciting the alphabet
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You would not think to look at him,
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but he was famous long ago
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For playing the electric violin on
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Desolation Row
Verse 6
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Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
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inside of a leather cup
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But all his sexless patients,
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they're trying to blow it up
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Now his nurse, some local loser,
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she's in charge of the cyanide hole
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And she also keeps the cards that read,
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"Have Mercy on His Soul"
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They all play on the penny whistles,
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you can hear them blow
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If you lean your head out far enough from
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Desolation Row
Verse 7
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Across the street they've nailed the curtains,
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they're getting ready for the feast
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The Phantom of the Opera
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in a perfect image of a priest
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They are spoon feeding Casanova
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to get him to feel more assured
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Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
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after poisoning him with words
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And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls,
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"Get outta here if you don't know"
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Casanova is just being punished for going to
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Desolation Row
Verse 8
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At midnight all the agents
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and the superhuman crew
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Come out and round up everyone
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that knows more than they do
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Then they bring them to the factory
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where the heart-attack machine
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Is strapped across their shoulders
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and then the kerosene
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Is brought down from the castles
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by insurance men who go
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Check to see that nobody is escaping to
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Desolation Row
Verse 9
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Praise be to Nero's Neptune,
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the Titanic sails at dawn
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Everybody's shouting,
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"Which side are you on?!"
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And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot
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fighting in the captain's tower
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While calypso singers laugh at them
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and fishermen hold flowers
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Between the windows of the sea
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where lovely mermaids flow
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And nobody has to think too much about
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Desolation Row
Solo 1
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Verse 10
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Yes, I received your letter yesterday,
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about the time the doorknob broke
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When you asked me how I was doing,
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was that some kind of joke
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All these people that you mention,
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yes, I know them, they're quite lame
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I had to rearrange their faces
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and give them all another name
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Right now, I can't read too good,
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don't send me no more letters no
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Not unless you mail them from
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Desolation Row
Solo 2
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Desolation Row
Bob Dylan
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