“Like a Rolling Stone” is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in July 1965, by Colimbia 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 3/4 time. A breakthrough was made when it was tried in a rock music format, and rookie session musician Al Kooper improvised the Hammond B2 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.
Dylan performed the song live for the first time within days of its release, when he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965, in Newport, Rhode Island. 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. Al Kooper, who offers a different version of the crowd’s reaction, claims that it was due to the length of the set they had just played, being only 15 minutes while other artists had done 45 minute sets
Critics have 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?”. It 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 statistically the most acclaimed song of all time. RollingStone listed it at No. 4 on their 2021 “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” lists. It has been covered by many artists, from theJimi 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.
