That one fiddle, in short, moves the setting from Transylvania back to Rome. The noble vampire has many qualities and skills, but musically adept he is neither in Bram Stoker’s original nor in any adaptation of the material (though in Van Helsing, 2004, he is quite a dancer). The turn, then, to an evil genius playing the fiddle abruptly derails that train of thought. And then there’s the prediction One day you will ask for me / There’ll be no one else that you’ll want to see – Dracula’s female victims do indeed become zombie-like groupies, completely under the spell of their killer. After the blood and the handkerchief from the previous verse, the sinister narrator speaks ominous texts, which all sound perfectly coming from the mouth of the bloodthirsty count apart from the death threats I’ll strip you of life and I’ll strip you of breath also the substantively correct relocation announcement: the UnDead truly do live in a crypt, in a house of death, during the day. The opening of this fifth verse, after all, keeps building on that Dracula trail for a while. The by-catch is that this leads the lyrics somewhat back on track. Which works both ways, presumably a poet like Dylan, who can shake songtexts out of his sleeve while associating, will probably end up with Nero via Roman king -destroyed your city, and thus with that cartoonish image of a fiddle-playing maniac.
Especially with a narrator who already is compared to a city-destroying Roman king. So strong, in fact, that a verse such as Bring down my fiddle, tune up my strings, spoken by such a bloodthirsty narrator as in “Early Roman Kings”, irrevocably evokes associations with Nero. Cartoonesque, of course (fiddles are not invented until 1000 years later), but admittedly, visually strong. Whereas Suetonius only mentions that Nero sings (“The Sack of Illium” is lost, and presumably one of his own compositions), later generations soon thrust a lute into his hand, and still later generations find a fiddle an even better detail to illustrate Nero’s cruel insanity. In fact, the image only becomes more theatrical as the centuries go by.
More serious historians think that Nero was not even in the city at the time of the Great Fire (AD 64), and they also justifiably question all the stories about Nero’s orgies, atrocities and murders, but the image is ineradicable. Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas and exulting, as he said, in ‘the beauty of the flames,’ he sang the whole of the Sack of Ilium, in his regular stage costume.” For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs. “He set fire to the city so openly that several ex-consuls did not venture to lay hands on his chamberlains although they caught them on their estates with tow and fire-brands. History really has not been too kind to Nero, and we owe the most persistent and popular story about him to the Roman historian Suetonius, who does like to spice up his De Vita Caesarum (The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, AD 121) with juicy, rancid and exaggerated details anyway Well, I was strummin' as the ship go down They say that Nero fiddled while Rome burned up In Chapin’s case, Nero is given some more substance, as a famous mythical lie about Nero is used as a comparison for the protagonist’s actions: Jesus Christ can walk on the water As we all know, the Titanic did not sail at dawn, but at noon, and indeed: the soundscape of be to – Nero – Neptune is a supple, very musical triplet. The ninth verse of “Desolation Row” opens with the enigmatic words Praise be to Nero’s Neptune / The Titanic sails at dawn, where, as often, euphony seems to have been a decisive argument for the choice of words. Just like Dylan’s masterpiece, without too much dramatic depth, by the way.
Gonna break it wide open like the early Roman KingsĪpart from “Desolation Row”, there is probably only one song in the entire Western canon that features both the sinking of the Titanic and Emperor Nero: Harry Chapin’s “Dance Band On The Titanic” from 1977. There’ll be no one else that you’ll want to see VI The beauty of the flames I’ll strip you of life, strip you of breath Early Roman Kings (2012) part V: I will massacre you.Early Roman Kings (2012) part IV: You can ring my bell, ring my bell.Early Roman Kings (2012) part III: He had a left like Henry’s hammer.
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