Like A Rolling Stone

July 23, 2021 —– Chart #101

Hello Musical Friends,

Welcome to Friday and the 101th edition of Chart of the Day. Woo Hoo! Today’s chart is a song written and recorded in 1965 by one of the greatest songwriters rock & roll has ever known. “Like a Rolling Stone” is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on July 20, 1965 by Columbia Records. Its confrontational lyrics originated in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England. Dylan distilled this draft into four verses and a chorus. “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 three quarter 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. 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 No. 2 in the US Billboard charts (No. 1 in Cashbox) and became a worldwide hit.

Critics have described the track as revolutionary in its combination of different musical elements, the youthful, cynical sound of Dylan’s voice, and the directness of the question “How does it feel?” “Like a Rolling Stone” completed the transformation of Dylan’s image from folk singer to rock star, and is considered one of the most influential compositions in postwar popular music. According to review aggregator Acclaimed Music, “Like a Rolling Stone” is the statistically most acclaimed song of all time. Rolling Stone magazine listed the song at No. 1 in their “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list. The song has been covered by many artists, from the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Rolling Stones to the Wailers and Green Day. At an auction in 2014, Dylan’s handwritten lyrics to the song fetched $2 million, a world record for a popular music manuscript.

In the spring of 1965, after returning from the tour of England documented in the film Don’t Look Back, Dylan was unhappy with the public’s expectations of him, as well as the direction his career was taking, 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 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.”

During 1965, Dylan composed prose, poems, and songs by typing incessantly. Footage in Don’t 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 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. 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.

For the recording session, Dylan invited Chicago blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield to play lead guitar. Invited to Dylan’s Woodstock home for the weekend to learn new material, Bloomfield 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. This would be the last song Wilson would produce for Dylan. In addition to Bloomfield, the 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, Griffin, and Langhorne had previously worked with Dylan and Wilson on Bringing It All Back Home.

When the musicians reconvened 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 in the studio as Wilson’s guest. When Wilson stepped out, 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 approached Wilson and told him he had a good part for the organ. Wilson belittled Kooper’s organ skills but did not forbid him to play. As Kooper later put it, “He just sort of scoffed at me … He didn’t say ‘no’—so I went out there.” Wilson was surprised to see Kooper at the organ but allowed him to play on the track. When Dylan heard a playback of the song, he insisted that the organ be turned up in the mix, despite Wilson’s protestations that Kooper was “not an organ player.”

There were 15 recorded takes on June 16. By now the song had 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.” Despite this, Dylan and the band recorded the song 11 more times.

The complete recording sessions that produced “Like a Rolling Stone”, including all 20 takes and the individual “stems” that comprise the four-track master, were released in November 2015 on the 6-disc and 18-disc versions of The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966.

You would expect that quite a few artists have covered Rolling Stone Magazine’s #1 rock & roll song of all time. Yes, you’re right. At least I put Dylan at the top of this list😊

Dylan live in 1965: https://youtu.be/a6Kv0vF41Bc

John Mayer in 2014: https://youtu.be/KJ97Kq1RZgU

Patti Smith Live in 2005: https://youtu.be/Xw4CtCF9gss

John Cougar Mellencamp: https://youtu.be/8YImr83a0cU

Seal & Jeff Beck: https://youtu.be/BSixn8MeN_s

Bob Dylan & Tom Petty: https://youtu.be/rcXPjhMMDRg

Green Day: https://youtu.be/8lpW2WJ5MPg

Bob Marley: https://youtu.be/-BBBMNjPblY

David Bowie: https://youtu.be/5ENoovVzTW4

Vanilla Fudge (1969) : https://youtu.be/Q0G_HLz55qU

Jon Bon Jovi, Seal, Robert Palmer: https://youtu.be/WItORHGuv9M

The Turtles: https://youtu.be/M_5jSftOWlU