Like a Rolling Stone
Encyclopedia
"Like a Rolling Stone" is a 1965 song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan
. Its confrontational lyrics originate in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England
. After the lyrics were heavily edited, "Like a Rolling Stone" was recorded a few weeks later as part of the sessions for the forthcoming album Highway 61 Revisited
. During a difficult two-day preproduction, Dylan struggled to find the essence of the song, which was demoed without success in 3/4 time. A breakthrough was made when it was tried in a rock music
format, and rookie session musician Al Kooper
improvised the organ
riff for which the track is known. However, Columbia Records
was unhappy with both the song's length at over six minutes and its heavy electric sound, and was hesitant to release it. It was only when a month later a copy was leaked to a new popular music club and heard by influential DJs that the song was put out as a single. Although radio stations were reluctant to play such a long track, "Like a Rolling Stone" reached number two in the US charts and became a worldwide hit.
The track has been described as revolutionary in its combination of different musical elements, the youthful, cynical sound of Dylan's voice, and the directness of the question in the chorus: "How does it feel?". "Like a Rolling Stone" transformed Dylan's career and is today considered one of the most influential compositions in post-war popular music and has since its release been both a music industry and popular culture milestone which elevated Dylan's image to iconic. The song has been covered by numerous artists, varying from The Jimi Hendrix Experience
, The Rolling Stones
, The Wailers to Green Day
.
, Dylan was unhappy with the public's expectations of him, as well as the direction his career was going, and seriously considered quitting the music business. In a 1966 Playboy
interview, he described his dissatisfaction: "Last spring, I guess I was going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it was a very draggy situation ... But 'Like a Rolling Stone' changed it all. I mean it was something that I myself could dig. It's very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you."
The basis of the song came from an extended piece of verse. In 1966, Dylan described the genesis of "Like a Rolling Stone" to journalist Jules Siegel
:
During 1965, Dylan composed prose, poems, and songs by typing incessantly. Footage of Dylan in his suite at the Savoy Hotel
, London, captures this process in Dont Look Back. But he told two interviewers that "Like a Rolling Stone" began as a long piece of "vomit" (in one account 10 pages, in another 20 pages) which then acquired musical form. He never spoke of any other major composition in this way. In an interview with CBC radio
in Montreal
, Dylan called the creation of the song a "breakthrough," explaining that it changed his perception of where he was going in his career. He said that he found himself writing "this long piece of vomit, 20 pages long, and out of it I took 'Like a Rolling Stone' and made it as a single. And I'd never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that was what I should do ... After writing that I wasn't interested in writing a novel, or a play. I just had too much, I want to write songs."
From the extended version on paper, Dylan crafted four verses and the chorus in Woodstock, New York
. The song was written on an upright piano in the key of G sharp and was changed to C on the guitar in the recording studio. Dylan invited Mike Bloomfield
, lead guitarist of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band
, to play on the recording session. Asked by Dylan to visit his house in Woodstock for the weekend to learn new material, Bloomfield later recalled: "The first thing I heard was 'Like a Rolling Stone'. I figured he wanted blues, string bending, because that's what I do. He said, 'Hey, man, I don't want any of that B.B. King stuff'. So, OK, I really fell apart. What the heck does he want? We messed around with the song. I played the way that he dug, and he said it was groovy."
The recording sessions were produced by Tom Wilson on June 15–16, 1965, in Studio A of Columbia Records
, 799 Seventh Avenue, in New York City. In addition to Bloomfield, the other musicians enlisted were Paul Griffin
on piano, Joe Macho, Jr. on bass, Bobby Gregg
on drums, and Bruce Langhorne
on tambourine, all booked by Wilson. Gregg and Griffin had previously worked with Dylan and Wilson on Bringing It All Back Home
.
On the first day, five takes of the song were recorded in a markedly different style from the eventual release—a 3/4 waltz time, with Dylan on piano. The lack of sheet music meant the song was played by ear. However the essence of the song was discovered in the course of the chaotic session. They did not reach the first chorus until the fourth take, but after the following harmonica fill Dylan interrupted, saying, "My voice is gone, man. You wanna try it again?" This take was subsequently released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. The session ended shortly afterwards.
When the session re-convened the following day, June 16, Al Kooper
joined the proceedings. Kooper, at that time a 21-year-old session guitarist, was not originally supposed to play but was present as Wilson's guest. When Wilson stepped out, however, Kooper sat down with his guitar with the other musicians, hoping to take part in the recording session. By the time Wilson returned, Kooper, who had been intimidated by Bloomfield's guitar playing, was back in the control room. After a couple of rehearsal takes, Wilson moved Griffin from Hammond organ
to piano. Kooper then went to Wilson, saying that he had a good part for the organ. Wilson belittled Kooper's organ-playing abilities, but as Kooper later said, "He just sort of scoffed at me ... He didn't say 'no'—so I went out there." Wilson, surprised to see Kooper at the organ, nevertheless allowed him to play on the track. Upon hearing a playback of the song, Dylan insisted that the organ be turned up in the mix, despite Wilson's protestations that Kooper was "not an organ player."
This session saw 15 recorded takes. The song had by now evolved into its familiar form, in 4/4 time with Dylan on electric guitar. After the fourth take—the master take that was released as a single—Wilson happily commented, "That sounds good to me." Nevertheless, Dylan and the band persisted in recording the song 11 more times.
in 1965, "Like a Rolling Stone" was first relegated to the "graveyard of canceled releases" because of concerns from the sales and marketing departments over its unprecedented six-minute length and "raucous" rock sound. In the days following the rejection, Considine took a discarded acetate
of the song to a club called Arthur—a newly opened disco popular with celebrities and media people. At the crowd's insistence, the demo was played over and over, until finally it wore out. The next morning, a disc jockey and a programming director from the city's leading top 40 stations called Columbia and demanded copies. Shortly afterwards, on July 20, 1965, "Like a Rolling Stone" was released as a single with "Gates of Eden
" as its B-side.
Despite its length, the song became Dylan's biggest hit to date and remained in the US charts for 12 weeks, where it reached number 2—behind The Beatles
' "Help!
". The promotional copies released to disc jockeys on July 15 had the first two verses and two refrains on one side, while the rest of the song was put on the other. Deejays who wanted to play the whole song would simply flip the vinyl over. While many radio stations were reluctant to play the song in its entirety, public demand eventually forced them to air the full song. This helped the single reach its number 2 peak, several weeks after its release. It was a Top 10 hit in other countries, including Canada
, Ireland
, the Netherlands
, and the United Kingdom
.
And the first verse ends with lines deriding her current condition:
Despite the vitriol, the song also depicts compassion for Miss Lonely, as well as joy in the freedom of losing everything. Jann Wenner
has commented that "Everything has been stripped away. You're on your own, you're free now ... You're so helpless and now you've got nothing left. And you're invisible—you've got no secrets—that's so liberating. You've nothing to fear anymore." The final verse ends with the lines:
The refrain
emphasizes these themes:
Dylan biographer Robert Shelton summed up the song's meaning as: "A song that seems to hail the dropout life for those who can take it segues into compassion for those who have dropped out of bourgeois surroundings. 'Rolling Stone' is about the loss of innocence and the harshness of experience. Myths, props, and old beliefs fall away to reveal a very taxing reality."
In a humorous vein, Dylan commented on the moral perspective of "Like a Rolling Stone" at a press conference at KQED television studio on December 3, 1965. A reporter suggested to Dylan the song took a hard line on a girl, and asked "Do you want to change their lives? or do you want to point out to them the error of their ways?" Laughing, Dylan replied, "I want to needle them."
Commentators have tried to tie the characters in the song to specific people in Dylan's orbit in 1965. In his book POPism: The Warhol '60s
, Andy Warhol
recalled that some people in his circle believed that "Like a Rolling Stone" contained hostile references to him; he was told, "Listen to 'Like a Rolling Stone'—I think you're the diplomat on the chrome horse, man." The reason behind Dylan's alleged hostility to Warhol was supposedly Warhol's treatment of Edie Sedgwick
, an actress and model. Sedgwick has been suggested as the basis of the central character in the song, 'Miss Lonely'. Sedgwick was briefly involved with Dylan in late 1965 and early 1966, around which time there was some discussion of the two making a movie together. According to Warhol collaborator Paul Morrissey
, Sedgwick may have been in love with Dylan, and was shocked when she found out that Dylan had secretly married Sara Lownds in November 1965. However, in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Michael Gray
argues that Sedgwick had no connection with "Like a Rolling Stone", but states "there's no doubt that the ghost of Edie Sedgwick hangs around Blonde on Blonde
".
Greil Marcus
has alluded to a suggestion by art historian Thomas Crow
that Dylan had written the song as a comment on Warhol's scene: "I heard a lecture by Thomas Crow ... about "Like a Rolling Stone" being about Edie Sedgwick within Andy Warhol's circle, as something that Dylan saw from the outside, not being personally involved with either of them, but as something he saw and was scared by and saw disaster looming and wrote a song as a warning, and it was compelling." Joan Baez
, Marianne Faithful and Bob Neuwirth
have also been mooted as possible targets of Dylan's scorn. Dylan's biographer Howard Sounes
warned against reducing the song to the biography of one person, and suggested "it is more likely that the song was aimed generally at those [Dylan] perceived as being 'phony. Sounes adds, "There is some irony in the fact that one of the most famous songs of the folk-rock era—an era associated primarily with ideals of peace and harmony—is one of vengeance."
Mike Marqusee
has written at length on the conflicts in Dylan's life during this time, with its deepening alienation from his old folk-revival audience and clear-cut leftist causes. He suggests that the song is probably self-referential. "The song only attains full poignancy when one realises it is sung, at least in part, to the singer himself: he's the one 'with no direction home.'" Dylan himself has noted that after his motorcycle accident in 1966 he realized that "when I used words like 'he' and 'it' and 'they,' and talking about other people, I was really talking about nobody but me."
on July 25, 1965. Many of the audience's folk enthusiasts objected to Dylan's use of electric guitars
, looking down on rock 'n roll, as Bloomfield put it, as popular amongst "greasers, heads, dancers, people who got drunk and boogied." According to Dylan's friend, music critic Paul Nelson
, "The audience [was] booing and yelling 'Get rid of the electric guitar'", while Dylan and his backing musicians gave an uncertain rendition of their new single.
Highway 61 Revisited was issued at the end of August 1965. When Dylan went on tour that fall, "Like a Rolling Stone" took the closing slot on his setlist and held it, with rare exceptions, through the end of his 1966 "world tour." On May 17, 1966, during the last leg of the tour, Dylan and his band performed at Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England. Just before they started to play the track, an audience member yelled "Judas
!", apparently referring to Dylan's supposed "betrayal" of folk music. Dylan responded, "I don't believe you. You're a liar!" With that, he turned to the band, ordering them to "play it fucking loud".
Since then, "Like a Rolling Stone" has remained a staple in Dylan's concerts, often with revised arrangements. It was included in his 1969 Isle of Wight
show and in both his reunion tour with The Band
in 1974 and the Rolling Thunder Revue
tour in 1975–76. The song continued to be featured in other tours throughout the 1970s and 1980s. On the Never Ending Tour
, which began in 1988, "Like a Rolling Stone" has been one of the five most performed songs, with 653 performances registered through 2005.
Besides Highway 61 Revisited, the song's standard release can be found on four official albums: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits
, Biograph
, The Essential Bob Dylan
, and Dylan
. In addition, the early, incomplete studio recording in 3/4 time appears on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. Live performances of the song are included on Self Portrait
, Before the Flood
, Bob Dylan at Budokan
, MTV Unplugged
, The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert, The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
, and The Band's Rock of Ages
.
described the track as "a chaotic amalgam of blues, impressionism, allegory, and an intense directness in the central chorus: 'How does it feel'". The song had an enormous impact on popular culture and rock music. Its success made Dylan a pop icon, as Paul Williams notes:
Record producer Paul Rothchild, producer of The Doors
' first five albums, recalled the elation that an American musician had made a record that successfully challenged the primacy of the British Invasion
groups. He said, "What I realized when I was sitting there is that one of US—one of the so-called Village
hipsters—was making music that could compete with THEM—the Beatles
, and the Stones
, and the Dave Clark Five—without sacrificing any of the integrity of folk music or the power of rock'n'roll."
The song had a huge impact on Bruce Springsteen
, who was 15 years old when he first heard it. Springsteen described the moment during his speech inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in 1988 and also assessed the long-term significance of "Like a Rolling Stone":
Dylan's contemporaries in 1965 were both startled and challenged by the single. Paul McCartney
remembered going around to John Lennon's
house in Weybridge
to hear the song. According to McCartney, "It seemed to go on and on forever. It was just beautiful ... He showed all of us that it was possible to go a little further." Frank Zappa
had a more extreme reaction: "When I heard 'Like a Rolling Stone', I wanted to quit the music business, because I felt: 'If this wins and it does what it's supposed to do, I don't need to do anything else ...' But it didn't do anything. It sold but nobody responded to it in the way that they should have." Nearly forty years later, in 2003, Elvis Costello
commented on the innovative quality of the single. "What a shocking thing to live in a world where there was Manfred Mann
and the Supremes
and Engelbert Humperdinck
and here comes 'Like a Rolling Stone'".
Although CBS tried to make the record more "radio friendly" by cutting it in half and spreading it over both sides of the vinyl, both Dylan and fans demanded that the full six-minute take be placed on one side and that radio stations play the song in its entirety. "Like a Rolling Stone"'s subsequent success played a big part in changing the music business convention that singles had to be under three minutes in length. The surreal cast of characters and Dylan's verbal inventiveness also represented an innovation in Top 10 singles. In the words of Rolling Stone, "No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time."
In 1966, Dylan told Ralph Gleason: "Rolling Stone's the best song I wrote." In 2004, speaking to Robert Hilburn
, Dylan still felt that the song had a special place in his work: "It's like a ghost is writing a song like that, it gives you the song and it goes away. You don't know what it means. Except that the ghost picked me to write the song."
More than 40 years since its release, "Like a Rolling Stone" remains highly regarded, as measured by polls of reviewers and fellow songwriters. A 2002 ranking by Uncut
and a 2005 poll in Mojo
both rated it Dylan's number one song. As for his personal views on such polls, Dylan told Ed Bradley
in a 2004 interview on 60 Minutes
that he never pays attention to them, because they change frequently. Illustrating his point was the 100 Greatest Songs of All Time poll by Mojo in 2000, which included two Dylan singles, but not "Like a Rolling Stone". Five years later, the magazine named it his number one song. Rolling Stone picked "Like a Rolling Stone" as the number two single of the past 25 years in 1989, and then in 2004 placed the song at number one on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
". In 2011, Rolling Stone again placed "Like a Rolling Stone" at the top of their list of "500 Greatest Songs Of All Time". In 2006, Pitchfork Media
placed it at number 4 on their list of "The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s".
, David Bowie
, The Four Seasons
, The Rascals
, Judy Collins
, Johnny Winter
, Cher
, The Rolling Stones
, Anberlin
, Spirit
, Michael Bolton
, The Creation
, David Gilmour
, The Surfaris
, John Mellencamp
, The Wailers, and Green Day
. Guitarist Jimi Hendrix
, performing with The Jimi Hendrix Experience
, recorded a live version at the Monterey Pop Festival
. Hendrix was an avid fan of Bob Dylan, and especially liked "Like a Rolling Stone". "It made me feel that I wasn't the only one who'd ever felt so low ..." Hendrix said. After the second verse, Hendrix skipped to the fourth. Hendrix played the electric guitar, and music critic Greil Marcus
described the atmosphere of the Hendrix recording thus:
The song has also been covered in various languages. Hugues Aufray
covered the song in French ("Comme des pierres qui roulent" (Aufray Trans Dylan, 1995)), Austrian Wolfgang Ambros
included an Austrian-German dialect version "Allan Wia a Stan" on his 1978 LP Wie Im Schlaf which reached position 8 in the Austrian charts for 8 weeks, German band Bap
created a dialect of Cologne version "Wie 'ne Stein" on its LP Vun drinne noh drusse and Lars Winnerbäck
did a performance of the song in Swedish titled "Som en hemlös själ", literally "Like a Homeless Soul". Articolo 31
recorded an Italian version titled "Come una Pietra Scalciata" (literally, "Like a Kicked-off Stone") for their 1998 album Nessuno. Articolo 31's version is a hip-hop
song which contains overdubs of a confused girl's voice, rapped parts and DJing. This version contains only three verses and is four and a half minutes long.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
. Its confrontational lyrics originate in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England
Bob Dylan UK Tour 1965
Bob Dylan's 1965 England Tour was a tour that Bob Dylan gave in England during late April and early May 1965. It was widely documented by filmmaker D. A...
. After the lyrics were heavily edited, "Like a Rolling Stone" was recorded a few weeks later as part of the sessions for the forthcoming album Highway 61 Revisited
Highway 61 Revisited
Highway 61 Revisited is the sixth studio album by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. It was released in August 1965 by Columbia Records. On his previous album, Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan devoted Side One of the album to songs accompanied by an electric rock band, and Side Two to solo acoustic numbers...
. During a difficult two-day preproduction, Dylan struggled to find the essence of the song, which was demoed without success in 3/4 time. A breakthrough was made when it was tried in a rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
format, and rookie session musician Al Kooper
Al Kooper
Al Kooper is an American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears , providing studio support for Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965, and also bringing together guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills to...
improvised the organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
riff for which the track is known. However, Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
was unhappy with both the song's length at over six minutes and its heavy electric sound, and was hesitant to release it. It was only when a month later a copy was leaked to a new popular music club and heard by influential DJs that the song was put out as a single. Although radio stations were reluctant to play such a long track, "Like a Rolling Stone" reached number two in the US charts and became a worldwide hit.
The track has been described as revolutionary in its combination of different musical elements, the youthful, cynical sound of Dylan's voice, and the directness of the question in the chorus: "How does it feel?". "Like a Rolling Stone" transformed Dylan's career and is today considered one of the most influential compositions in post-war popular music and has since its release been both a music industry and popular culture milestone which elevated Dylan's image to iconic. The song has been covered by numerous artists, varying from The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience were an English-American psychedelic rock band that formed in London in October 1966. Comprising eponymous singer-songwriter and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist and backing vocalist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, the band was active until June 1969, in which...
, The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
, The Wailers to Green Day
Green Day
Green Day is an American punk rock band formed in 1987. The band consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist and backing vocalist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool...
.
Writing and recording
In the spring of 1965, returning from the tour of England documented in the film Dont Look BackDont Look Back
Dont Look Back is a 1967 documentary film by D.A. Pennebaker that covers Bob Dylan's 1965 concert tour in the United Kingdom.In 1998, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically...
, Dylan was unhappy with the public's expectations of him, as well as the direction his career was going, and seriously considered quitting the music business. In a 1966 Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
interview, he described his dissatisfaction: "Last spring, I guess I was going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it was a very draggy situation ... But 'Like a Rolling Stone' changed it all. I mean it was something that I myself could dig. It's very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you."
The basis of the song came from an extended piece of verse. In 1966, Dylan described the genesis of "Like a Rolling Stone" to journalist Jules Siegel
Jules Siegel
Jules Siegel is a writer and graphic designer whose work has appeared over the years in Playboy, Best American Short Stories, Library of America's Writing Los Angeles, and many other publications...
:
During 1965, Dylan composed prose, poems, and songs by typing incessantly. Footage of Dylan in his suite at the Savoy Hotel
Savoy Hotel
The Savoy Hotel is a hotel located on the Strand, in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan operas, the hotel opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by...
, London, captures this process in Dont Look Back. But he told two interviewers that "Like a Rolling Stone" began as a long piece of "vomit" (in one account 10 pages, in another 20 pages) which then acquired musical form. He never spoke of any other major composition in this way. In an interview with CBC radio
CBC Radio
CBC Radio generally refers to the English-language radio operations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC operates a number of radio networks serving different audiences and programming niches, all of which are outlined below.-English:CBC Radio operates three English language...
in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Dylan called the creation of the song a "breakthrough," explaining that it changed his perception of where he was going in his career. He said that he found himself writing "this long piece of vomit, 20 pages long, and out of it I took 'Like a Rolling Stone' and made it as a single. And I'd never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that was what I should do ... After writing that I wasn't interested in writing a novel, or a play. I just had too much, I want to write songs."
From the extended version on paper, Dylan crafted four verses and the chorus in Woodstock, New York
Woodstock, New York
Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 at the 2000 census.The Town of Woodstock is in the northern part of the county...
. The song was written on an upright piano in the key of G sharp and was changed to C on the guitar in the recording studio. Dylan invited Mike Bloomfield
Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard "Mike" Bloomfield was an American musician, guitarist, and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, since he rarely sang before 1969–70...
, lead guitarist of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Paul Butterfield
Paul Butterfield was an American blues vocalist and harmonica player, who founded the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the early 1960s and performed at the original Woodstock Festival...
, to play on the recording session. Asked by Dylan to visit his house in Woodstock for the weekend to learn new material, Bloomfield later recalled: "The first thing I heard was 'Like a Rolling Stone'. I figured he wanted blues, string bending, because that's what I do. He said, 'Hey, man, I don't want any of that B.B. King stuff'. So, OK, I really fell apart. What the heck does he want? We messed around with the song. I played the way that he dug, and he said it was groovy."
The recording sessions were produced by Tom Wilson on June 15–16, 1965, in Studio A of Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
, 799 Seventh Avenue, in New York City. In addition to Bloomfield, the other musicians enlisted were Paul Griffin
Paul Griffin (musician)
Paul Griffin was an American session musician and pianist, who recorded with hundreds of artists from the late 1950s to the 1990s...
on piano, Joe Macho, Jr. on bass, Bobby Gregg
Bobby Gregg
Robert J. Gregg is a musician who has performed as a drummer and has also been a record producer. As a drum soloist and band leader he recorded one album and several singles, including one Top 40 single in the United States...
on drums, and Bruce Langhorne
Bruce Langhorne
Bruce Langhorne is an American folk musician. He was active in the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s, primarily as a session guitarist for folk albums and performances...
on tambourine, all booked by Wilson. Gregg and Griffin had previously worked with Dylan and Wilson on Bringing It All Back Home
Bringing It All Back Home
Bringing It All Back Home is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's fifth studio album, released in March 1965 by Columbia Records. The album is divided into an electric and an acoustic side. On side one of the original LP, Dylan is backed by an electric rock and roll band - a move that further alienated...
.
On the first day, five takes of the song were recorded in a markedly different style from the eventual release—a 3/4 waltz time, with Dylan on piano. The lack of sheet music meant the song was played by ear. However the essence of the song was discovered in the course of the chaotic session. They did not reach the first chorus until the fourth take, but after the following harmonica fill Dylan interrupted, saying, "My voice is gone, man. You wanna try it again?" This take was subsequently released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. The session ended shortly afterwards.
When the session re-convened the following day, June 16, Al Kooper
Al Kooper
Al Kooper is an American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears , providing studio support for Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965, and also bringing together guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills to...
joined the proceedings. Kooper, at that time a 21-year-old session guitarist, was not originally supposed to play but was present as Wilson's guest. When Wilson stepped out, however, Kooper sat down with his guitar with the other musicians, hoping to take part in the recording session. By the time Wilson returned, Kooper, who had been intimidated by Bloomfield's guitar playing, was back in the control room. After a couple of rehearsal takes, Wilson moved Griffin from Hammond organ
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...
to piano. Kooper then went to Wilson, saying that he had a good part for the organ. Wilson belittled Kooper's organ-playing abilities, but as Kooper later said, "He just sort of scoffed at me ... He didn't say 'no'—so I went out there." Wilson, surprised to see Kooper at the organ, nevertheless allowed him to play on the track. Upon hearing a playback of the song, Dylan insisted that the organ be turned up in the mix, despite Wilson's protestations that Kooper was "not an organ player."
This session saw 15 recorded takes. The song had by now evolved into its familiar form, in 4/4 time with Dylan on electric guitar. After the fourth take—the master take that was released as a single—Wilson happily commented, "That sounds good to me." Nevertheless, Dylan and the band persisted in recording the song 11 more times.
Release
According to Shaun Considine, release coordinator for Columbia RecordsColumbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
in 1965, "Like a Rolling Stone" was first relegated to the "graveyard of canceled releases" because of concerns from the sales and marketing departments over its unprecedented six-minute length and "raucous" rock sound. In the days following the rejection, Considine took a discarded acetate
Acetate disc
An acetate disc, also known as a test acetate, dubplate , lacquer , transcription disc or instantaneous disc...
of the song to a club called Arthur—a newly opened disco popular with celebrities and media people. At the crowd's insistence, the demo was played over and over, until finally it wore out. The next morning, a disc jockey and a programming director from the city's leading top 40 stations called Columbia and demanded copies. Shortly afterwards, on July 20, 1965, "Like a Rolling Stone" was released as a single with "Gates of Eden
Gates Of Eden (song)
"Gates of Eden" is a song by Bob Dylan that appears on his fifth studio album Bringing It All Back Home, released on March 22, 1965 by Columbia Records. It was also released as a single as the B-side of "Like a Rolling Stone". Dylan plays the song solo, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and...
" as its B-side.
Despite its length, the song became Dylan's biggest hit to date and remained in the US charts for 12 weeks, where it reached number 2—behind The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' "Help!
Help! (song)
"Help!" is a song by The Beatles that served as the title song for both the 1965 film and its soundtrack album. It was also released as a single, and was number one for three weeks in both the United States and the United Kingdom....
". The promotional copies released to disc jockeys on July 15 had the first two verses and two refrains on one side, while the rest of the song was put on the other. Deejays who wanted to play the whole song would simply flip the vinyl over. While many radio stations were reluctant to play the song in its entirety, public demand eventually forced them to air the full song. This helped the single reach its number 2 peak, several weeks after its release. It was a Top 10 hit in other countries, including Canada
RPM (magazine)
RPM was a Canadian music industry publication that featured song and album charts for Canada. The publication was founded by Walt Grealis in February 1964, supported through its existence by record label owner Stan Klees. RPM ceased publication in November 2000.RPM stood for "Records, Promotion,...
, Ireland
Irish Singles Chart
The Irish Singles Chart is Ireland's music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on behalf of the IRMA by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured...
, the Netherlands
Dutch Top 40
The Dutch Top 40 is a weekly music chart, which started as the "Veronica Top 40", because the offshore radio station Radio Veronica was the first to introduce it. It remained "The Veronica Top 40" until 1974, when the station was forced to stop broadcasting...
, and the United Kingdom
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
.
Themes
Unlike conventional chart hits of the time, the lyrics of "Like a Rolling Stone" were not about love, but expressed resentment and a yearning for revenge. Author Oliver Trager describes the lyrics as "Dylan's sneer at a woman who has fallen from grace and is reduced to fending for herself in a hostile, unfamiliar world." Until now, the song's target, Miss Lonely, has taken the easy way out, gone to the finest schools and had high-placed friends, but now that her situation has become difficult she has no meaningful experiences on which to base her character. The opening lines of the song establish the woman's former condition:- Once upon a time you dressed so fine
- Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
And the first verse ends with lines deriding her current condition:
- Now you don't talk so loud
- Now you don't seem so proud
- About having to be scrounging your next meal
Despite the vitriol, the song also depicts compassion for Miss Lonely, as well as joy in the freedom of losing everything. Jann Wenner
Jann Wenner
Jann Simon Wenner is the co-founder and publisher of the music and politics biweekly Rolling Stone, as well as the owner of Men's Journal and Us Weekly magazines.-Childhood:...
has commented that "Everything has been stripped away. You're on your own, you're free now ... You're so helpless and now you've got nothing left. And you're invisible—you've got no secrets—that's so liberating. You've nothing to fear anymore." The final verse ends with the lines:
- When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
- You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
The refrain
Refrain
A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...
emphasizes these themes:
- How does it feel
- How does it feel
- To be on your own
- With no direction home
- Like a complete unknown
- Like a rolling stone
Dylan biographer Robert Shelton summed up the song's meaning as: "A song that seems to hail the dropout life for those who can take it segues into compassion for those who have dropped out of bourgeois surroundings. 'Rolling Stone' is about the loss of innocence and the harshness of experience. Myths, props, and old beliefs fall away to reveal a very taxing reality."
In a humorous vein, Dylan commented on the moral perspective of "Like a Rolling Stone" at a press conference at KQED television studio on December 3, 1965. A reporter suggested to Dylan the song took a hard line on a girl, and asked "Do you want to change their lives? or do you want to point out to them the error of their ways?" Laughing, Dylan replied, "I want to needle them."
Commentators have tried to tie the characters in the song to specific people in Dylan's orbit in 1965. In his book POPism: The Warhol '60s
Popism: The Warhol Sixties
Popism: The Warhol Sixties is a 1980 memoir by the American artist Andy Warhol . It was first published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich....
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
recalled that some people in his circle believed that "Like a Rolling Stone" contained hostile references to him; he was told, "Listen to 'Like a Rolling Stone'—I think you're the diplomat on the chrome horse, man." The reason behind Dylan's alleged hostility to Warhol was supposedly Warhol's treatment of Edie Sedgwick
Edie Sedgwick
Edith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick was an American actress, socialite, model and heiress. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol's superstars. Sedgwick became known as "The Girl of the Year" in 1965 after starring in several of Warhol's short films in the 1960s...
, an actress and model. Sedgwick has been suggested as the basis of the central character in the song, 'Miss Lonely'. Sedgwick was briefly involved with Dylan in late 1965 and early 1966, around which time there was some discussion of the two making a movie together. According to Warhol collaborator Paul Morrissey
Paul Morrissey
Paul Morrissey is an American film director, best-known for his association with Andy Warhol.Morrissey attended Ampleforth College, a private Roman Catholic boarding school and Fordham University, both Roman Catholic schools, and later served in the United States Army...
, Sedgwick may have been in love with Dylan, and was shocked when she found out that Dylan had secretly married Sara Lownds in November 1965. However, in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Michael Gray
Michael Gray (author)
Michael Gray is a British author who has written extensively about popular music.Gray grew up on Merseyside, attended Birkenhead School, and read History and English Literature at the University of York. Gray subsequently lived and worked in North Devon, Birmingham, West Malvern, London and North...
argues that Sedgwick had no connection with "Like a Rolling Stone", but states "there's no doubt that the ghost of Edie Sedgwick hangs around Blonde on Blonde
Blonde on Blonde
Blonde on Blonde is American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's seventh studio album, released in May or June 1966 on Columbia Records and produced by Bob Johnston. Recording sessions commenced in New York in October 1965, with a plethora of backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing...
".
Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.-Life and career:Marcus was born in San Francisco...
has alluded to a suggestion by art historian Thomas Crow
Thomas E. Crow
Thomas E. Crow is an American art historian and art critic who is best known for his influential writing on the role of art in modern society and culture....
that Dylan had written the song as a comment on Warhol's scene: "I heard a lecture by Thomas Crow ... about "Like a Rolling Stone" being about Edie Sedgwick within Andy Warhol's circle, as something that Dylan saw from the outside, not being personally involved with either of them, but as something he saw and was scared by and saw disaster looming and wrote a song as a warning, and it was compelling." Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
, Marianne Faithful and Bob Neuwirth
Bob Neuwirth
Bob Neuwirth is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and visual artist. A mainstay of the early 1960s Cambridge, Massachusetts, folk scene, he subsequently became a friend and associate of Bob Dylan alongside whom he appears in D.A...
have also been mooted as possible targets of Dylan's scorn. Dylan's biographer Howard Sounes
Howard Sounes
Howard Sounes is a British author, journalist and biographer.Howard Sounes began his career as a newspaper journalist as a staff reporter for the Sunday Mirror. He broke major stories concerning one of the most notorious murder cases in British criminal history, that of Fred West and Rosemary West...
warned against reducing the song to the biography of one person, and suggested "it is more likely that the song was aimed generally at those [Dylan] perceived as being 'phony. Sounes adds, "There is some irony in the fact that one of the most famous songs of the folk-rock era—an era associated primarily with ideals of peace and harmony—is one of vengeance."
Mike Marqusee
Mike Marqusee
Mike Marqusee is an American-born writer, journalist and political activist in London. His partner is the barrister Liz Davies.Marqusee, who describes himself as a "deracinated New York Marxist Jew" has lived in Britain since 1971...
has written at length on the conflicts in Dylan's life during this time, with its deepening alienation from his old folk-revival audience and clear-cut leftist causes. He suggests that the song is probably self-referential. "The song only attains full poignancy when one realises it is sung, at least in part, to the singer himself: he's the one 'with no direction home.'" Dylan himself has noted that after his motorcycle accident in 1966 he realized that "when I used words like 'he' and 'it' and 'they,' and talking about other people, I was really talking about nobody but me."
Live performances
Dylan performed the song live for the first time within days of its release, when he appeared at the Newport Folk FestivalNewport Folk Festival
The Newport Folk Festival is an American annual folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the previously established Newport Jazz Festival...
on July 25, 1965. Many of the audience's folk enthusiasts objected to Dylan's use of electric guitars
Electric Dylan controversy
By 1965, Bob Dylan had achieved the status of leading songwriter of the American folk music revival.Paul Simon suggested that Dylan's early compositions virtually took over the folk genre: "[Dylan's] early songs were very rich ... with strong melodies. 'Blowin' in the Wind' has a really strong...
, looking down on rock 'n roll, as Bloomfield put it, as popular amongst "greasers, heads, dancers, people who got drunk and boogied." According to Dylan's friend, music critic Paul Nelson
Paul Nelson (critic)
Paul Nelson was a folk and rock music critic who wrote for Sing Out! and Rolling Stone. He was instrumental in launching and supporting the careers of Bob Dylan, The New York Dolls, Elliott Murphy, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon...
, "The audience [was] booing and yelling 'Get rid of the electric guitar'", while Dylan and his backing musicians gave an uncertain rendition of their new single.
Highway 61 Revisited was issued at the end of August 1965. When Dylan went on tour that fall, "Like a Rolling Stone" took the closing slot on his setlist and held it, with rare exceptions, through the end of his 1966 "world tour." On May 17, 1966, during the last leg of the tour, Dylan and his band performed at Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England. Just before they started to play the track, an audience member yelled "Judas
Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot was, according to the New Testament, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. He is best known for his betrayal of Jesus to the hands of the chief priests for 30 pieces of silver.-Etymology:...
!", apparently referring to Dylan's supposed "betrayal" of folk music. Dylan responded, "I don't believe you. You're a liar!" With that, he turned to the band, ordering them to "play it fucking loud".
Since then, "Like a Rolling Stone" has remained a staple in Dylan's concerts, often with revised arrangements. It was included in his 1969 Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
show and in both his reunion tour with The Band
The Band
The Band was an acclaimed and influential roots rock group. The original group consisted of Rick Danko , Garth Hudson , Richard Manuel , and Robbie Robertson , and Levon Helm...
in 1974 and the Rolling Thunder Revue
Rolling Thunder Revue
The Rolling Thunder Revue was a famed U.S. concert tour consisting of a traveling caravan of musicians, headed by Bob Dylan, that took place in late 1975 and early 1976; the prevailing theory was that the tour was named after the Native American shaman Rolling Thunder. Others maintained that tour...
tour in 1975–76. The song continued to be featured in other tours throughout the 1970s and 1980s. On the Never Ending Tour
Never Ending Tour
The Never Ending Tour is the popular name for Bob Dylan’s endless touring schedule since June 7, 1988. During the past 23+ years, musicians have come and gone and the band has continued to evolve...
, which began in 1988, "Like a Rolling Stone" has been one of the five most performed songs, with 653 performances registered through 2005.
Besides Highway 61 Revisited, the song's standard release can be found on four official albums: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits
Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits
Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits is the eighth album released by Bob Dylan on Columbia Records, original catalogue number KCS 9643. It contains every Top 40 single Dylan enjoyed through 1967. It peaked at #10 on the pop album chart in the United States, and went to #3 on the album chart in the United...
, Biograph
Biograph (album)
Biograph is a 53-track compilation spanning the career of Bob Dylan, from his 1962 debut album to the 1981 LP Shot of Love. Released in 1985 by Columbia Records, on both a 5-LP and a 3-CD Box set, it was one of the earliest and most successful examples of the CD Box set...
, The Essential Bob Dylan
The Essential Bob Dylan
The Essential Bob Dylan is a compilation by Bob Dylan, released as a double-CD set in 2000, part of Columbia Records' "The Essential" series....
, and Dylan
Dylan (2007 album)
Dylan is a greatest hits collection by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. The collection was released on October 2, 2007 by Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings with worldwide distribution through Sony BMG...
. In addition, the early, incomplete studio recording in 3/4 time appears on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. Live performances of the song are included on Self Portrait
Self Portrait (Bob Dylan album)
Self Portrait is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's tenth studio album, released by Columbia Records in June 1970.Self Portrait was Dylan's second double album, and features mostly cover versions of well-known pop and folk songs. Also included are a handful of instrumentals and original compositions...
, Before the Flood
Before the Flood
Side threeSide four-Personnel:* Bob Dylan – vocal, guitars, harmonica, piano* Robbie Robertson – electric guitar, backing vocal* Richard Manuel – vocal, piano, electric piano, organ, drums* Garth Hudson – Lowrey organ, clavinet, piano, synthesizer, saxophone...
, Bob Dylan at Budokan
Bob Dylan at Budokan
Bob Dylan at Budokan is a live album by Bob Dylan, released in 1979 by Columbia Records. It was recorded during his 1978 world tour and is composed mostly of the artist's "greatest hits"...
, MTV Unplugged
MTV Unplugged (Bob Dylan album)
MTV Unplugged is a live album by Bob Dylan, released in 1995 by Columbia Records . It documents Dylan's appearance on the then-highly popular MTV Unplugged television series, recorded at Sony Music Studios in New York on November 17, 1994 and November 18, 1994...
, The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert, The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack is the third most recent installment in the Bob Dylan "Bootleg Series" of rare and/or officially unissued recordings....
, and The Band's Rock of Ages
Rock of Ages (album)
-Side two:-Side three:-Side four:-2001 bonus disc track listing:-Personnel:* Rick Danko - vocal, bass, violin* Levon Helm - vocal, drums, mandolin* Garth Hudson - organ, piano, accordion, tenor saxophone and soprano saxophone solos...
.
Legacy
The song's sound was revolutionary in its combination of electric guitar licks, organ chords, and Dylan's voice, at once young and jeeringly cynical. Critic Michael GrayMichael Gray (author)
Michael Gray is a British author who has written extensively about popular music.Gray grew up on Merseyside, attended Birkenhead School, and read History and English Literature at the University of York. Gray subsequently lived and worked in North Devon, Birmingham, West Malvern, London and North...
described the track as "a chaotic amalgam of blues, impressionism, allegory, and an intense directness in the central chorus: 'How does it feel'". The song had an enormous impact on popular culture and rock music. Its success made Dylan a pop icon, as Paul Williams notes:
Record producer Paul Rothchild, producer of The Doors
The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
' first five albums, recalled the elation that an American musician had made a record that successfully challenged the primacy of the British Invasion
British Invasion
The British Invasion is a term used to describe the large number of rock and roll, beat, rock, and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in the United States during the time period from 1964 through 1966.- Background :...
groups. He said, "What I realized when I was sitting there is that one of US—one of the so-called Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
hipsters—was making music that could compete with THEM—the Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, and the Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
, and the Dave Clark Five—without sacrificing any of the integrity of folk music or the power of rock'n'roll."
The song had a huge impact on Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
, who was 15 years old when he first heard it. Springsteen described the moment during his speech inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...
in 1988 and also assessed the long-term significance of "Like a Rolling Stone":
Dylan's contemporaries in 1965 were both startled and challenged by the single. Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
remembered going around to John Lennon's
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
house in Weybridge
Weybridge
Weybridge is a town in the Elmbridge district of Surrey in South East England. It is bounded to the north by the River Thames at the mouth of the River Wey, from which it gets its name...
to hear the song. According to McCartney, "It seemed to go on and on forever. It was just beautiful ... He showed all of us that it was possible to go a little further." Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
had a more extreme reaction: "When I heard 'Like a Rolling Stone', I wanted to quit the music business, because I felt: 'If this wins and it does what it's supposed to do, I don't need to do anything else ...' But it didn't do anything. It sold but nobody responded to it in the way that they should have." Nearly forty years later, in 2003, Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...
commented on the innovative quality of the single. "What a shocking thing to live in a world where there was Manfred Mann
Manfred Mann
Manfred Mann was a British beat, rhythm and blues and pop band of the 1960s, named after their South African keyboardist, Manfred Mann, who later led the successful 1970s group Manfred Mann's Earth Band...
and the Supremes
The Supremes
The Supremes, an American female singing group, were the premier act of Motown Records during the 1960s.Originally founded as The Primettes in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959, The Supremes' repertoire included doo-wop, pop, soul, Broadway show tunes, psychedelic soul, and disco...
and Engelbert Humperdinck
Engelbert Humperdinck (singer)
Engelbert Humperdinck is a British pop singer, best known for his hits including "Release Me " and "After the Lovin'" as well as "The Last Waltz" .-Early life:...
and here comes 'Like a Rolling Stone'".
Although CBS tried to make the record more "radio friendly" by cutting it in half and spreading it over both sides of the vinyl, both Dylan and fans demanded that the full six-minute take be placed on one side and that radio stations play the song in its entirety. "Like a Rolling Stone"'s subsequent success played a big part in changing the music business convention that singles had to be under three minutes in length. The surreal cast of characters and Dylan's verbal inventiveness also represented an innovation in Top 10 singles. In the words of Rolling Stone, "No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time."
In 1966, Dylan told Ralph Gleason: "Rolling Stone's the best song I wrote." In 2004, speaking to Robert Hilburn
Robert Hilburn
Robert Hilburn is a pop music critic and author. As critic and music editor of the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles have appeared in hundreds of publications around the world...
, Dylan still felt that the song had a special place in his work: "It's like a ghost is writing a song like that, it gives you the song and it goes away. You don't know what it means. Except that the ghost picked me to write the song."
More than 40 years since its release, "Like a Rolling Stone" remains highly regarded, as measured by polls of reviewers and fellow songwriters. A 2002 ranking by Uncut
UNCUT (magazine)
Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...
and a 2005 poll in Mojo
Mojo (magazine)
MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...
both rated it Dylan's number one song. As for his personal views on such polls, Dylan told Ed Bradley
Ed Bradley
Edward Rudolph "Ed" Bradley, Jr. was an American journalist, best known for twenty-six years of award-winning work on the CBS News television program 60 Minutes...
in a 2004 interview on 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
that he never pays attention to them, because they change frequently. Illustrating his point was the 100 Greatest Songs of All Time poll by Mojo in 2000, which included two Dylan singles, but not "Like a Rolling Stone". Five years later, the magazine named it his number one song. Rolling Stone picked "Like a Rolling Stone" as the number two single of the past 25 years in 1989, and then in 2004 placed the song at number one on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" was the cover story of a special issue of Rolling Stone, issue number 963, published December 9, 2004, a year after the magazine published its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time"....
". In 2011, Rolling Stone again placed "Like a Rolling Stone" at the top of their list of "500 Greatest Songs Of All Time". In 2006, Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
placed it at number 4 on their list of "The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s".
Cover versions
Many artists have covered "Like a Rolling Stone", including Johnny ThundersJohnny Thunders
Johnny Thunders, born John Anthony Genzale, Jr. , was an American protopunk guitarist, singer and songwriter.He came to prominence in the early '70s as a member of the New York Dolls...
, David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, The Four Seasons
The Four Seasons (group)
The Four Seasons are an American rock and pop band who became internationally successful in the mid-1960s. The Vocal Group Hall of Fame has stated that the group was the most popular rock band before The Beatles...
, The Rascals
The Rascals
The Rascals were an American blue-eyed soul group initially active during the years 1965–72. The band released numerous top ten singles in North America during the mid- and late-1960s, including the U.S. #1 hits "Good Lovin'" , "Groovin'" , and "People Got to Be Free"...
, Judy Collins
Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins is an American singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records ; and for her social activism. She is an alumna of the University of Colorado.-Musical career:Collins was born and raised in Seattle, Washington...
, Johnny Winter
Johnny Winter
John Dawson "Johnny" Winter III is an American blues guitarist, singer, and producer. Best known for his late 1960s and 1970s high-energy blues-rock albums and live performances, Winter also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues legend Muddy Waters...
, Cher
Cher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
, The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
, Anberlin
Anberlin
Anberlin is an American rock band formed in Winter Haven, Florida in 2002. Since the beginning of 2007, the band has consisted of lead vocalist Stephen Christian, guitarists Joseph Milligan and Christian McAlhaney, bassist Deon Rexroat, and drummer Nathan Young.Members of Anberlin originally formed...
, Spirit
Spirit (band)
Spirit was an American jazz/hard rock/progressive rock/psychedelic band founded in 1967, based in Los Angeles, California.- The original lineup :...
, Michael Bolton
Michael Bolton
Michael Bolton is an American singer and songwriter. Bolton originally performed in the hard rock and heavy metal genres from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, both on his early solo albums and those recorded as the frontman of the band Blackjack...
, The Creation
The Creation (band)
The Creation were an English rock band, formed in 1966. The most popular Creation song was "Painter Man", which made the Top 40 in the UK Singles Chart in late 1966, and reached #8 in the German chart in April 1967. It was later covered by Boney M in 1979, and reached the #10 position in the UK...
, David Gilmour
David Gilmour
David Jon Gilmour, CBE, D.M. is an English rock musician and multi-instrumentalist who is best known as the guitarist, one of the lead singers and main songwriters in the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has worked as a producer for a variety of...
, The Surfaris
The Surfaris
The Surfaris were an American surf rock band formed in Glendora, California in 1962. They are best known for two songs that hit the charts in the Los Angeles, California area, and nationally by May 1963: "Surfer Joe" on the A-side and "Wipe Out" on the B-side of a 45 RPM single.-Career:The original...
, John Mellencamp
John Mellencamp
John Mellencamp, previously known by the stage names Johnny Cougar, John Cougar, and John Cougar Mellencamp, is an American rock singer-songwriter, musician, painter and occasional actor known for his catchy, populist brand of heartland rock that eschews synthesizers and other artificial sounds...
, The Wailers, and Green Day
Green Day
Green Day is an American punk rock band formed in 1987. The band consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist and backing vocalist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool...
. Guitarist Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
, performing with The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience were an English-American psychedelic rock band that formed in London in October 1966. Comprising eponymous singer-songwriter and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist and backing vocalist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, the band was active until June 1969, in which...
, recorded a live version at the Monterey Pop Festival
Monterey Pop Festival
The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California...
. Hendrix was an avid fan of Bob Dylan, and especially liked "Like a Rolling Stone". "It made me feel that I wasn't the only one who'd ever felt so low ..." Hendrix said. After the second verse, Hendrix skipped to the fourth. Hendrix played the electric guitar, and music critic Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.-Life and career:Marcus was born in San Francisco...
described the atmosphere of the Hendrix recording thus:
The song has also been covered in various languages. Hugues Aufray
Hugues Aufray
Hugues Aufray is a French singer. He began his career singing in Spanish....
covered the song in French ("Comme des pierres qui roulent" (Aufray Trans Dylan, 1995)), Austrian Wolfgang Ambros
Wolfgang Ambros
Wolfgang Ambros is an Austrian singer-songwriter, most famously known for setting the then-new trend in the 1970s known now as Austropop. He is most famous for his song "Da Hofa" and "Schi foan"....
included an Austrian-German dialect version "Allan Wia a Stan" on his 1978 LP Wie Im Schlaf which reached position 8 in the Austrian charts for 8 weeks, German band Bap
Bap (German band)
Bap is a German rock group. With ten albums reaching the number one in the German record charts, Bap is one of the most successful rock acts in their home country....
created a dialect of Cologne version "Wie 'ne Stein" on its LP Vun drinne noh drusse and Lars Winnerbäck
Lars Winnerbäck
Lars Mattias Winnerbäck , is a Swedish singer and songwriter. He was born in Stockholm, but spent his childhood in Linköping, where he attended Katedralskolan. He moved back to Stockholm in 1996, the same year he released his first album, Dans med svåra steg...
did a performance of the song in Swedish titled "Som en hemlös själ", literally "Like a Homeless Soul". Articolo 31
Articolo 31
Articolo 31 is a popular band from Milan, Italy, melding hip hop, funk, pop and traditional Italian musical forms. They are one of the most popular Italian rock/hip hop groups.-Band history:...
recorded an Italian version titled "Come una Pietra Scalciata" (literally, "Like a Kicked-off Stone") for their 1998 album Nessuno. Articolo 31's version is a hip-hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
song which contains overdubs of a confused girl's voice, rapped parts and DJing. This version contains only three verses and is four and a half minutes long.
Charts
| Chart (1965) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Canadian RPM Singles Chart RPM (magazine) RPM was a Canadian music industry publication that featured song and album charts for Canada. The publication was founded by Walt Grealis in February 1964, supported through its existence by record label owner Stan Klees. RPM ceased publication in November 2000.RPM stood for "Records, Promotion,... |
3 |
| Dutch Singles Chart Dutch Top 40 The Dutch Top 40 is a weekly music chart, which started as the "Veronica Top 40", because the offshore radio station Radio Veronica was the first to introduce it. It remained "The Veronica Top 40" until 1974, when the station was forced to stop broadcasting... |
9 |
| German Singles Chart Media Control Charts The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie... |
13 |
| Irish Singles Charts | 9 |
| UK Singles Chart UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ... |
4 |
| US Billboard Hot 100 Billboard Hot 100 The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday... |
2 |
| US Cashbox Top 100 | 1 |
External links
- Lyrics at Bob Dylan's official website
- Vocal performance and speech intonation: Bob Dylan’s "Like a Rolling Stone" by Michael Daley, York University, Toronto