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Like a Rolling Stone

1965 single by Bob Dylan

  • 24 min read
  • 12 chapters
"Like a Rolling Stone" (matrix/runout #ZSP 110938) sung and written by Bob Dylan; side-A label of the US 7-inch vinyl single release (cat #4-43346)
Columbia Records · Public domain

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Columbia Records, unhappy with the song's six-minute length and electric sound, hesitated to release it. A month later, a copy of "Like a Rolling Stone" leaked to a popular new music club, and influential DJs encountered it. It was then released as a single. Although many radio stations initially refused to play such a long track, "Like a Rolling Stone" reached No. 2 in the US Billboard charts (No. 1 in Cashbox) and became a worldwide hit.

Critics described "Like a Rolling Stone" as revolutionary in its combination of musical elements; the youthful, cynical sound of Dylan's voice; and the directness of the question "How does it feel?" The song completed the transformation of Dylan's image from folk singer to rock star. It is considered one of the most influential compositions in postwar popular music. Rolling Stone listed it at No. 1 on their 2004 and 2010 "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" lists. It has been covered by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. At an auction in 2014, Dylan's handwritten lyrics fetched $2 million, a record for a popular music manuscript.

Writing

In early 1965, after returning from the tour of England documented in the film Dont Look Back, Dylan was unhappy with the public's expectations of him and the direction his career was taking. He considered quitting the music business. In a 1966 Playboy interview, he said:

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 song grew out of an extended piece of verse. In 1966, Dylan described its genesis to journalist Jules Siegel:

It was ten pages long. It wasn't called anything, just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred directed at some point that was honest. In the end it wasn't hatred, it was telling someone something they didn't know, telling them they were lucky. Revenge, that's a better word. I had never thought of it as a song, until one day I was at the piano, and on the paper it was singing, "How does it feel?" in a slow motion pace, in the utmost of slow motion following something. It was like swimming in lava.

During 1965, Dylan composed prose, poems, and songs by typing incessantly. Footage in Dont Look Back of Dylan in his suite at London's Savoy Hotel captures this process. However, Dylan told two interviewers that "Like a Rolling Stone" began as a long piece of "vomit" (10 pages long according to one account, 20 according to another) that later acquired musical form. Dylan has never publicly spoken of writing any other major composition in this way. In a 1966 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. In 2014, when the handwritten lyrics were put up for auction, the four-page manuscript revealed that the full refrain of the chorus does not appear until the fourth page. A rejected third line, "like a dog without a bone" gives way to "now you're unknown". Earlier, Dylan had considered working the name Al Capone into the rhyme scheme, and he attempted to construct a rhyme scheme for "how does it feel?", penciling in "it feels real", "does it feel real", "shut up and deal", "get down and kneel" and "raw deal". The song was written on an upright piano in the key of D flat and was changed to C on the guitar in the recording studio.

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