The song “Like a Rolling Stone” is considered to be Bob Dylan’s best work. In its time it conquered the top of most English-language charts and took the leading places in the ratings of authoritative music publications. And Rolling Stone magazine even gave it the first place in their list of the greatest rock hits of all time.
To some rock music lovers, this choice may seem incomprehensible and unjustified. No way – I didn’t agree with that at first, either. But it all falls into place when you find out that Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” didn’t get this spot for the drive you expect from the #1 rock hit, but for its virtuosity and sarcastic and cynical lyrics that ultimately had the biggest impact on the rock music world.
This song managed to break the commercial foundations of decades-old record companies. It is the first track over three minutes long to be released as a single. Also “Like a Rolling Stone” is almost the only song of the 60’s that won the love of listeners not by its snotty romantic lines, but by the lyrics about the fall from the top of the social ladder down into the slums.
Well, for Bob Dylan himself “Like a Rolling Stone” became a “ticket” to the world of rock music and the beginning of a new turn in his musical career.
Like a tumbleweed – from folk singer to rockers
In 1965, Bob Dylan seriously considered leaving the music scene. Four years as a folk singer, the breakup with his solo artist Joan Baez, and a major UK tour that had just ended had him so exhausted that the musician decided to take a break and start composing.
In his attempts to create either a poem or a poem, Bob blotted out about 10-20 pages (even the musician himself mentions different data in his interviews), until one of the composed lines (“How does it feel?”) sounded like a melodic tune (at that moment he happened to be at the piano).
Subsequently, Dylan, like a sculptor, cut away the extra pieces of textual marble, reducing the original version to four verses and one chorus, and soon moved into the studio.
He invited several session musicians to record, including Michael Bloomfield and Al Kooper. In the beginning there were some difficulties: Dylan wanted to get away from the traditional blues sound, there were no sheet music, and the tune was only in his head, so the invited musicians had to play the song by ear. As a result, the basis of the melody was formed as a result of chaotic improvisations.
After trying several variations of the sound and sitting Cooper at the organ, the musicians finally played a version of “Like a Rolling Stone” that has been capturing the hearts of music lovers for over half a century. It went on to define the way Bob Dylan performed for years to come.
Breaking Bad
The song “Like a Rolling Stone” did not become an instant hit. It, in a sense, had to fight for a place in the sun. The marketing and sales department of Columbia Records almost killed the song in the beginning, putting it on the list of cancelled releases. They absolutely refused to release it as a single. The reason was the length of the record and Dylan’s chosen sound.
But their decision changed after the celebrities of the music world listened to “Like a Rolling Stone” literally to the holes, while admiring it at the same time. The label’s releasing coordinator (Shawn Considine) brought the record with the track to the elite Arthur club and asked the disc jockey to play it. The audience ended up asking to play the track again so often that the disc wiped out over the course of the evening.
The next day, the director of several dozen of New York’s top radio stations called the record company and demanded a copy of the record for radio airplay.
After that, the label had no choice but to go against its marketing views. On July 15, radio stations received the records with the long-awaited composition. Due to the peculiarities of the recording (half of the song was on the A side and the rest on the B side), initially only part of the song was on the air (the DJs were too lazy to turn the record over). But under the pressure of the audience, they started to broadcast the full version of the song.
And already on July 20, 1965 the song was released as a single in the version that Bob Dylan originally gave them. On the second side of the record, the song “Gates of Eden” was recorded.
Confession
Afterwards Bob Dylan’s hit “Like a Rolling Stone” repeatedly proved that the initial reluctance of the label to release the single was wrong.
The song was endlessly played on the radio stations, it stayed on the second place in the Billboard chart for 12 weeks in a row (the first place was taken by The Beatles with the track “Help!”), and the critics recognized it as the best Bob Dylan’s song.
Besides the 1st position on the Rolling Stone chart, the hit was #4 on VH1’s list of the “100 Greatest Rock Songs”, electronic publication Pitchfork also ranked it #4 among the 200 most important songs of the 60′s, and Mojo magazine put the track on top of the 100 best songs of all time.
Some believe that Rolling Stone magazine gave the song the top spot because they borrowed the title from it. However, that is not true, because the title was either in honor of the bluesman Muddy Waters’ song of the same name, or it was taken from the proverb “A rolling stone gathers no moss”. Either way, Dylan’s song had nothing to do with it.
“Like a Rolling Stone” is one of the few rock songs with its own biography. In 2005, music critic Greil Marcus published a book recounting the two-day recording of the track.
The value of the hit also proves the fact that in 2004 the handwritten sheets with the lyrics of the song were sold at the Sothebys auction for more than 2 million dollars.
But most importantly, the song put an end to the condemnations of Dylan for his departure from folk. If his first performance in Newport with his debut “heavyweight” album “Bringing It All Back Home” was met with a barrage of whistles and shouts of “Judas”, the two subsequent records “Highway 61 Revisited” (with the legendary hit on board) and “Blonde on Blonde” proved that the musician was on the rock path seriously and permanently. The three long-players would later be called the “Great Rock Trilogy.”
The Meaning of the Hit
Unlike most of the hits of the 60-s, “Like a Rolling Stone” has nothing to do with the love feelings, adored by the music lovers of the time.
The phrase “rolling stone” is an idiomatic expression, literary translated as “tumbleweed. In Dylan’s song, it refers to a “tramping tumbleweed.”
The Bob Dylan song – “Like a Rolling Stone” tells the story of an arrogant socialite who has fallen to the bottom of social life and become a vagabond, a loss of naivety, a harsh life experience and duplicity. And the story contains both sarcasm and pity for the heroine who has fallen from fairy tale to harsh reality.
Although the lyrics of the track are not dedicated to anybody in particular, they were seen as a reference to the people around the musician. For example, the line about the diplomat who carried on his shoulders a Siamese cat (“your diplomat who carried on his shoulders a Siamese cat”) was compared to the producer Andy Warhol, and the fallen socialite was compared to the model Edie Sedgwick. However, the majority of Dylan’s biographers agree that the song was not dedicated to anyone in particular, but was based on a collective image and a bit of autobiography.
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