Desolation Row - Live at TCN 9 TV, Sydney, Australia - April 1966

They're selling postcards of the hanging
 They're painting the passports brown
 The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
 The circus is in town
 Here comes the blind commissioner
 They've got him in a trance
 One hand is tied to the tightrope walker
 The other is in his pants
 And the riot squad, they're restless
 They need somewhere to go
 As Lady and I look out tonight
 From Desolation Row
 Cinderella, she seems so easy
 "It takes one to know one," she smiles
 And puts her hands in her back pocket
 Bette Davis style
 And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
 "You belong to me, I believe"
 And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
 You'd better leave"
 And the only sound that's left
 After the ambulances go
 Is Cinderella sweeping up
 On Desolation Row
 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's 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
 Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
 For her I feel so afraid
 On her 22nd birthday
 She already is an old maid
 To her death is quite romantic
 She wears an ironed 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
 Einstein disguised as Robin Hood
 With his memories in a trunk
 Passed this way an hour ago
 With his friend, a jealous monk
 Now he looked so immaculately frightful
 As he bummed a cigarette
 Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
 And reciting the alphabet
 You would not think to look at him
 But he was famous long ago
 For playing the electric violin
 On Desolation Row
 Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
 Inside of a leather cup
 But all his sexless patients
 They are 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 the penny whistle
 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
 In a perfect image of a priest
 They are spoon-feeding Casanova
 To get him to feel more assured
 Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
 After poisoning him with words
 And the phantom shouting to skinny girls
 "Get out of here if you don't know"
 Casanova is just being punished
 For going to Desolation Row
 At midnight all the agents
 And the superhuman crew
 Come out and round up everyone
 That knows more than they do
 And they bring them to the factory
 Where their heart attack machine
 Is strapped across their shoulders
 And then the kerosene
 Is brought down from the castles
 By insurance men who go
 Check to see that nobody is escaping
 To Desolation Row
 Praise be to Nero's Neptune
 The Titanic sails at dawn
 Everybody's shouting
 "Which side are you on?"
 And Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot
 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 me how I was doing
 Was that some kind of joke?
 All these people that you mentioned
 Yes, I know them, they are 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