Music Project 4 - 1965

"What's he doing?!?"
"He's plugging in!"
"He's gone electric!!!"
"BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
"BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Bob Dylan went and betrayed everyone.  One thing that defines "Folk Music" is the use of traditional instruments.  Dylan was a god in the folk scene and had become the "spokesman of his generation."  So when he went electric, it was seen by many of his fans as a complete betrayal of them and what they thought he believed in.  His first album to be released in 1965, Bringing it All Back Home (believe it or not, he came out with two albums in '65, the second of which was Highway 61 Revisited), contained Dylan backed by a full electric band for the first side.

Before we dive into the music though, what's happening around the world in 1965.  The US commits it's first official combat troops to Vietnam. By the end of the year 190,000 US troops have arrived. Here in the US the racial tensions continue to escalate.  Martin Luther King and more than 2,600 other protesters are arrested in Selma Alabama during demonstrations against voter registration rules (states in the South were passing laws making it more difficult for blacks to register to vote).  Black-nationalist leader Malcolm X was assassinated at a Harlem rally.  The infamous Watts race riots occurred in LA resulting in 34 deaths and over $200 million in property damages. (Watts will later be the site of a famous series of concerts championing Black pride.)  It was an ugly time in the US.  Young people were finding their own voice and rebelling against the establishment.  Music was a catalyst and a rallying point for these new countercultures.

Some truly landmark albums and songs were released in 1965.  The Beatles' Rubber Soul.  Otis Redding's Otis Blue, Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. The Rolling Stones with Satisfaction. The Byrds and The Who release their debut albums, John Coltrane's Love Supreme.  The truly great rock and roll music has started in earnest and it is going to come fast and furious from this point out.  Unfortunately that means I'm going to be leaving out a tremendous number of wonderful songs.  Please forgive me, and if there are some songs you really enjoy, by all means, go back and listen to whole albums, it's worth it.

A couple of vids now.  First one that describes the momentous musical shift exemplified by Bob Dylan's move to an electric sound.  I know it sounds tremendously silly, but it really was a big deal Video Link.

The Beatles 1965 tour was the pinnacle of Beatlemania in the US. It culminated with the largest concert held up until that point. The concert in Shea stadium is famous and infamous at the same time.  It proved that large-scale outdoor events could be enormously profitable, and it also proved that for concert goers it could be a miserable place to listen to music.  As Wikepedia describes:

The deafening level of crowd noise coupled with the distance between the band and the audience meant that nobody in the stadium could hear much of anything. Vox had specially designed 100-watt amplifiers for this tour and it was still not anywhere near loud enough, and so the Beatles used the house amplification system. Lennon described the noise as "wild" and also twice as deafening when the Beatles performed. Not being able to hear each other or even themselves, The Beatles just played through a list of songs nervously, not knowing what kind of sound was being produced. At the end of the show (during "I'm Down"), Lennon saw the whole show as being so ridiculous that he just began playing the keyboard with his elbows while the whole group laughed hysterically. 

Electronic music is coming folks.  Psychedelic music is coming (in fact the first use of it was for 1965 single The Trip by Kim Fowley.  But a hugely influential piece of music from this period was, surprisingly, the theme song for the Dr. Who television show.  The BBC Radiophonic Workshop composed this truly revolutionary piece.  By 1965 the song had been further produced and orchestrated, but it's remarkable for the early 60's. You can't tell me John, Paul, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Robert Fripp weren't watching.... As Pitchfork says: 

While Ron Grainer's swooping melody and throbbing beat have seen slicker arrangements over the decades, this first version is an incredible piece of primitive electronic music. Delia Derbyshire constructed it in 1963 by manipulating sounds from test tone generators and mixing them together almost note by note, yet the cobbled-together, almost mismatched timbres come together in a lumpy, throbbing-- and definitely futuristic-- whole. 

One more video.  To give just a little taste of the diversity of music making waves in 1965 we have Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Their album Whipped Cream & Other Delights reached number 1, which is pretty amazing given the dominance at the time of the British Invasion and Motown. It must be said that his success was at least partially a result of the music being featured on the TV show The Dating Game.  Here he is with A Taste of Honey.

Let's jump to the music now.  Pains me to leave some of these off.....


1) Sounds of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel

Simon & Garfunkel provide an excellent microcosm for the shift that occurred for many in 1965.  Their accoustic folk music release in 1964 really didn't do much and they had broken up.  I'll let Rolling Stone say what happened next:

Simon wrote this as an acoustic ballad, but  Simon and Garfunkel's first single version died. While Simon was in England, Wilson, who was producing Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," asked members of Dylan's studio band to add electric guitar and drums. Columbia released the amplified "Silence," which became a hit before Simon and Garfunkel had even heard it.

After it became a hit, they rushed Simon back from England, reunited him with Garfunkel and the rest is history.

From Pitchfork:

"Hello darkness, my old friend." Few songs sink their hooks into a listener as instantly as this classic ode to alienation. Paul Simon's tautly crafted lyrics unfold effortlessly as his harmonies with Art Garfunkel grow in emotional intensity. Those elements were already in place when the duo recorded "The Sound of Silence" for its folk-damaged debut, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. But after that album flopped and Simon and Garfunkel called it quits (for the first time), producer Tom Wilson took the folk frame of the original and added a rock edge. Inspired by the Byrds and Dylan's evolution to electric, Wilson overdubbed electric guitars, bass, and drums. Not only did the new version reach #1, those additions also helped shed the original's choirboy wimpiness. 


The Playlist will have the updated, folk-rock, version.  The video below is the original from 1964. Video Link

2) Mr. Tamborine Man - The Byrds

Hitting Number 1 in both the US and the UK, The Byrds managed to synthesize everything happening in music at the time.  They took a Bob Dylan song and added elements from both the Beatles and The Beach Boys.  As rateyourmusic says:

If the Beatles and Bob Dylan are two of the biggest musical influences on the Sixties, then the Byrds are the band that finally figured out how to "Beatleize" Bob Dylan. Founding members Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and Gene Clark were all veterans of collegiate folk groups, such as the Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and the New Christy Minstrels, before they joined forces to record a demo as the Jet Set that married Beatlesque harmonies with folkie guitar strumming.  The original founding trio then acquired mandolin player Chris Hillman as a bassist and Michael Clarke as a drummer, but Clarke was recruited less because of his musical ability than because of his resemblance to Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. 

The group failed at cashing in on the British Invasion after recording a relatively imitative Beatlesque single as the Beefeaters, but their luck changed when their manager Jim Dickson acquired an unreleased acetate of Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man.  Now renamed the Byrds, the group thought Dylan's 2/4 meter was unsuitable for a rock 'n' roll arrangement, but gradually came around as they started to rehearse the song in 4/4 time.  When Dickson brought in Bob Dylan to encourage the Byrds to perform their version of Mr. Tambourine Man, Dylan marveled, "Wow, man!  You can dance to that!"   

When it finally came time to record Mr. Tambourine Man, the producer Terry Melcher shoved aside all the members of the Byrds except Roger McGuinn with L.A. session musicians taken from a group known as The Wrecking Crew.  Despite Melcher's reliance on session musicians, the most important musical contribution came from the sole remaining group member, lead guitarist Roger McGuinn.  Inspired by the movie Hard Day's Night, McGuinn played a Rickenbacker guitar, just like the one George Harrison used in that film.  Then, after incorporating the Beatles' instrumental sound into a folk recording, McGuinn decided to use a rhythmic chord pattern partially inspired by the Beach Boys, Don't Worry Baby. With a fusion of the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and Dylan, Roger McGuinn on Mr. Tambourine Man effectively created the first synthesis of American folk rock. 

Allmusic says this about The Byrds debut album:

One of the greatest debuts in the history of rock, Mr. Tambourine Man was nothing less than a significant step in the evolution of rock & roll itself, demonstrating that intelligent lyrical content could be wedded to compelling electric guitar riffs and a solid backbeat. It was also the album that was most responsible for establishing folk-rock as a popular phenomenon


3) Papa's Got a Brand New Bag - James Brown

Up til now we've been listening to soul music from Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and James Brown.  Now we get introduced to the beginnings of Funk.  All hail the Funk. Or as rateyourmusic yells:

All hail the Alpha and Omega of the Funk 1.0!  If James Brown hadn't found a new bag, the man who sang Please Please Please, Try Me, and Prisoner of Love would be better known today as a balladeer instead of a funkateer.  If the Godfather of Soul hadn't popularized "jammin' on the one" on this single, legions of music we know today from hip hop to the Red Hot Chili Peppers wouldn't exist. 

Rolling Stone says this about their 71st Greatest Song of All-Time:

Arguably the first funk record, it's driven by the empty space between beats as much as by Brown's bellow and guitarist Jimmy Nolen's ice-chipper scratch. In a stroke of postproduction genius (you can hear the original recording on the Grammy-winning Star Time box set), Brown sliced off the intro to have the song start with a face-smashing horn blast, and sped it up just enough so it sounded like an urgent bulletin from the future.


The Dylan influence continues with the next couple of songs.  Remember what Dylan did, he made it ok, almost mandatory, for rock and roll to move personal and universal at the same time. "Satisfaction" and "My Generation" are both about being young and the frustrations of youth.

4) (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones

I thought about not including this since we have all heard the song plenty....but I just couldn't.  It's too important.  It changed Rock & Roll. It epitomizes Rock & Roll.  Just can't.

allmusic says this about the song:

"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is the Ur-Rolling Stones song: a pounding rocker with sneering vocals and lyrics, with a blues and soul base that nonetheless is used for a guitar-based song that is definitely rock, not blues or R&B. It was also one of the defining records of the its era, reaching number one around the globe and establishing the Rolling Stones as the second-biggest band in the world, behind only the Beatles. As with many Rolling Stones songs, the key hook is the guitar riff: a fuzz-toned, insistent series of ascending and descending notes that rates among the most captivating and memorable riffs in rock history. Set against a beat suitable for foot-stomping and hand-clapping, Mick Jagger delivers the verses in a hushed, ambiguous tone that hovers between commentary and sarcastic nastiness. The group approaches the verse with a series of increasingly urgent, tense harmonizations on the words "and I try" before exploding into the chorus: a cathartic release of all the frustration that has been building throughout the song, the opening fuzz riff reappearing in full force as Jagger half-screams the title (or most of it, at any rate) in a manner that compels the listener to sing-shout along. The chorus then turns into a stream-of-consciousness catalog of complaints about the irritations of modern life, touring, the media, and (of course) getting laid.

Rolling Stone calls it the 2nd greatest song of all-time.

5) My Generation - The Who

The Who, like everyone else, were trying to recreate the success of the Beatles.  But that wasn't their destiny.  Their individual talents were taking them in another direction.  While they had the pop sensibilities of Pete Townshend, their extraordinary rhythm section comprised of John Entwhistle and Keith Moon demanded a different approach and sound.  I'm going to link two videos of "live" performances from 1965.  The first is an attempt to capitalize on the Beatles sound. It's a fine pop song.  The second is the iconic My Generation, complete with bass solo from The Ox. I find the contrast of these two videos to be just wonderful.  The first is the happy sounding pop of The Beatles, Herman and the Hermits, Dave Clarke 5, etc.  The second is The fucking Who.  Keith Moon going nuts.  John Entwhistle thumping away.  Fantastic.

You certainly don't need to watch both of these through to the end.   In the first, note the guitar Pete is playing.  George Harrison of the Beatles was responsible for a TON of Rickenbachers being sold in the mid-60's.  The Byrds, The Who, everybody wanted that jangly sound that George had. Pete eventually went with an SG and others, but at the outset, everybody wanted to sound like George. Obviously nobody is playing in this one, but it's still fun and instructive.  Video Link

The second is from an early performance of My Generation.  Note the great bass solo (a relative rarity for the time) from Entwhistle, the manic energy of Keith Moon on drums.....and the open hostility from the band toward Roger Daltry.  The band had kicked him out, but brought him back as they started to become popular.  But during this performance they clearly still had issues.  It's hilarious. At the end Pete clearly just steps in front of Daltry and Roger throws his mic away in disgust.  Rock and Roll baby.

Rolling Stone says this about the 11th Greatest Song of all time:

Townshend opened the song with a two-chord assault that beat punk rock to the punch by more than a decade. Bassist John Entwistle took the solo breaks with crisp, grunting aggression — he had to buy three new basses to finish the recording, since his Danelectro's strings kept breaking and replacement strings weren't available. (He ended up playing the song on a Fender.) Roger Daltrey's stuttering, howling performance, Townshend and Entwistle's R&B-inspired backing vocals, and the upward key changes created a vivid, mounting anxiety that climaxed with a studio re-creation of the Who's live gear-trashing finales, with Townshend spewing feedback all over Keith Moon's avalanche drumming.

6) Out in the Street - The Who

Let's include a slightly deeper cut from The Who's first album.

Allmusic says this about their debut:

An explosive debut, and the hardest mod pop recorded by anyone. At the time of its release, it also had the most ferociously powerful guitars and drums yet captured on a rock record. Pete Townshend's exhilarating chord crunches and guitar distortions threaten to leap off the grooves on "My Generation" and "Out in the Street"; Keith Moon attacks the drums with a lightning, ruthless finesse throughout. Some "Maximum R&B" influence lingered in the two James Brown covers, but much of Townshend's original material fused Beatlesque hooks and power chords with anthemic mod lyrics, with "The Good's Gone," "Much Too Much," "La La La Lies," and especially "The Kids Are Alright" being highlights. "A Legal Matter" hinted at more ambitious lyrical concerns, and "The Ox" was instrumental mayhem that pushed the envelope of 1965 amplification with its guitar feedback and nonstop crashing drum rolls. While the execution was sometimes crude, and the songwriting not as sophisticated as it would shortly become, the Who never surpassed the pure energy level of this record.


7) Strychnine - The Sonics

I could have picked any number of songs from The Sonics debut "Here are the Sonics!!" The White Stripes wish they rocked this hard ;).  Throughout the history of Rock there is always going to be an undercurrent of bands that want to keep the music in it's rawest, purest form. Garage Rock, Punk, grunge...we'll get back to all of them.  They all listened to The Sonics...or should have.

rateyourmusic says this about the 45 with The Witch/Psycho double shot.

This 45 is an all killer, no filler one-two punch of garage rock from Tacoma, Washington that inspired the grunge movement both stylistically and geographically. Lead singer Gerry Roslie has raspy vocals that sound like gargling gravel, while the Parypa Brothers on bass and guitar used to attack their speakers with an ice pick in pursuit of the rawest sounds possible. Steadfastly refusing to acknowledges the changes wrought by the British Invasion, the Sonics had a sound that served as colossal F.U. to the Beatles, sticking to the standard pre-Beatles combo format of bass, guitar, organ, and snarling saxophone.  The saxophone might have made the Sonics sound retro at the time, but now they almost sound like a premonition of how punk rock and new wave made saxophones cool again (e.g., The Stooges, Fun House; X-Ray Spex, Oh Bondage Up Yours!).  Besides, the lyrical content on both the A-side and the B-side are all about how the wimmen are driving ya cray-ay-ay-ay-azy, which means that the Sonics had hipster misogyny down pat at least a year before the Rolling Stones caught on (e.g., Under My Thumb, Stupid Girl). 


8) "I've Been Loving You Too Long" - Otis Redding 

What to say about Otis.  With the passing of Sam Cooke in December of the previous year, fully a quarter of the songs on Redding's third album, Otis Blue were remake's of Cooke's songs. Cooke was Otis's idol and the tragedy of losing both of them at such a young age is one of music history's great injustices.  I could really list every song on this album as it truly is a classic in every sense of the word.  This is also the pinnacle of Stax records.  Otis really solidified the studio as a mover and shaker in the soul music world.  As allmusic says:

Otis Redding's third album, and his first fully realized album, presents his talent unfettered, his direction clear, and his confidence emboldened, with fully half the songs representing a reach that extended his musical grasp. More than a quarter of this album is given over to Redding's versions of songs by Sam Cooke, his idol, who had died the previous December, and all three are worth owning and hearing. Two of them, "A Change Is Gonna Come" and "Shake," are every bit as essential as any soul recordings ever made, and while they (and much of this album) have reappeared on several anthologies, it's useful to hear the songs from those sessions juxtaposed with each other, and with "Wonderful World," which is seldom compiled elsewhere. Also featured are Redding's spellbinding renditions of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (a song epitomizing the fully formed Stax/Volt sound and which Mick Jagger and Keith Richards originally wrote in tribute to and imitation of Redding's style), "My Girl," and "You Don't Miss Your Water." "Respect" and "I've Been Loving You Too Long," two originals that were to loom large in his career, are here as well; the former became vastly popular in the hands of Aretha Franklin and the latter was an instant soul classic. Among the seldom-cited jewels here is a rendition of B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby" that has the singer sharing the spotlight with Steve Cropper, his playing alternately elegant and fiery, with Wayne Jackson and Gene "Bowlegs" Miller's trumpets and Andrew Love's and Floyd Newman's saxes providing the backing. Redding's powerful, remarkable singing throughout makes Otis Blue gritty, rich, and achingly alive, and an essential listening experience.

9) Love Supreme - John Coltrane

This is going to be a challenging listen for many of you.  This is Jazz with a capital "J".  Just let it flow over you.  You've already heard Coltrane on Miles Davis' cut So What in 1959.

Rolling Stone calls Love Supreme the 47th greatest album of all-time.

Two important things happened to John Coltrane in 1957: The saxophonist left Miles Davis' employ to join Thelonious Monk's band and hit new heights in extended, ecstatic soloing. Coltrane also kicked heroin addiction, a vital step in a spiritual awakening that climaxed with this legendary album-long hymn of praise – transcendent music perfect for the high point of the civil rights movement. The indelible four-note theme of the first piece, "Acknowledgment," is the humble foundation of the suite. But Coltrane's majestic, often violent blowing (famously described as "sheets of sound") is never self-aggrandizing. His playing soars with nothing but gratitude and joy. You can't help but go with him.

allmusic says:

Easily one of the most important records ever made, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme was his pinnacle studio outing that at once compiled all of his innovations from his past, spoke of his current deep spirituality, and also gave a glimpse into the next two and a half years (sadly, those would be his last). Recorded at the end of 1964, Trane's classic quartet of Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison stepped into the studio and created one of the most thought-provoking, concise, and technically pleasing albums of their bountiful relationship (not to mention his best-selling to date). From the undulatory (and classic) bassline at the intro to the last breathy notes, Trane is at the peak of his logical yet emotionally varied soloing while the rest of the group is remarkably in tune with Coltrane's spiritual vibe. Composed of four parts, each has a thematic progression leading to an understanding of spirituality through meditation. From the beginning, "Acknowledgement" is the awakening of sorts that trails off to the famous chanting of the theme at the end, which yields to the second act, "Resolution," an amazingly beautiful piece about the fury of dedication to a new path of understanding. "Persuance" is a search for that understanding, and "Psalm" is the enlightenment. Although he is at times aggressive and atonal, this isn't Trane at his most adventurous (pretty much everything recorded from here on out progressively becomes much more free, and live recordings from this period are extremely spirited), but it certainly is his best attempt at the realization of concept -- as the spiritual journey is made amazingly clear. A Love Supreme clocks in at just over 30 minutes, but if it had been any longer it could have turned into a laborious listen. As it stands, just enough is conveyed. It is almost impossible to imagine a world without A Love Supreme having been made, and it is equally impossible to imagine any jazz collection without it.

Rubber Soul - The Beatles

10) Norwegian Wood - The Beatles
11) In My Life - The Beatles


With any other band we'd be talking about Rubber Soul as their pinnacle and still consider them one of the greatest bands of all-time.  With The Beatles, however, we're simply run out of superlatives.   As Consequence of Sound says of their 70th greatest album of all time:

It’s difficult to make one of the greatest albums of all time (understatement of this and the previous century). The Beatles made several, and Rubber Soul is undoubtedly amongst them. That tremendous bass and guitar to open up “Drive My Car”, courtesy of legends (again, an understatement) Paul McCartney and George Harrison. The only Lennon/McCartney/Starkey credit in the band’s discography, “What Goes On” is one of Ringo’s finest moments. “I’m Looking Through You” is one of McCartney’s finest offerings, with the scream of “You’re not the same!” providing one of the highlights of an album chock-full of them. However, this is John Lennon’s album. Picture Rubber Soul without the sitar-infused “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”, the somber “Nowhere Man”, the sensual “Girl”, the dark “Run for Your Life”, and arguably the greatest love song of them all, “In My Life”. It’s hard to imagine that later Beatles records actually managed to top it. 

Again, the crime is what I am leaving off. Rubber Soul demands a complete listen at some point.


11) Subterraneon Homesick Blues - Bob Dylan

Sometimes labeled the first rap song,

It seems fair to say that, when it was released in March 1965, Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was totally unexpected by most people, that it sounded like nothing anybody had ever heard before, and that it utterly transformed Bob Dylan's career and the history of popular music along with it. In January 1965, however, Dylan went into the studio with a five-piece electric band -- two guitars, piano, bass, and drums -- the same instrumentation he had used on "Mixed Up Confusion" a little more than two years earlier -- and cut some more rock & roll. The first product of this effort was "Subterranean Homesick Blues," released as a single and as the leadoff track of the album Bringing It All Back Home. In four lengthy verses, with no real chorus (though the line "Look out, kid" appeared in the second part of every verse) and no mention of the title, Dylan delved into a free association of rhymes and catch phrases. The song contained depictions of a variety of characters including Johnny, "the man in the trench coat," "the man in the coon-skin cap in the big pen," Maggie, "girl by the whirlpool," and others, and, in the second parts of each verse, various pieces of cautionary advice for the kid, including everything from "Don't try No Doz" to "try to avoid the scandals." It wasn't a protest song in the way that some of Dylan's earlier songs had been, but the lyrics clearly expressed social discontent, with lines like "Twenty years of schoolin'/And they put you on the day shift." Dylan spat out the words in a staccato rhythm while the band rollicked along in a ramshackle manner. The whole thing was oddly exhilarating, but "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was easily the strangest single Columbia Records had ever released. It was also a hit, at least a modest one, peaking just inside the Top 40, Dylan's first single to reach the charts. With the push of a hit single, Bringing It All Back Home became Dylan's first Top Ten album; two years later it would become one of his first LPs to go gold. This commercial success introduced the style of folk-rock, which became massively popular in 1965, as the likes of the Byrds, Cher, and the Turtles scored hits with Dylan songs, Dylan himself had more hits, and many other people copied the style. Dylan had combined the lyrical quality of folk music with the kinetic power of rock & roll, and things were never the same after that. Beyond the music business, the song's air of iconoclasm and paranoia turned out to be an accurate forecast of the rest of the 1960s. Its references to undercover law enforcement ("The phone' s tapped anyway," "Watch the plain clothes") were only too relevant to political activists, who were inspired by lines like "Don't follow leaders" and, particularly, "You don't need a weather man/To know which way the wind blows," which inspired a radical offshoot of the SDS to call itself the Weathermen. There have been only a handful of covers of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" over the years, among them a version by Nilsson on his 1974 Pussy Cats album and one by Red Hot Chili Peppers on their The Uplift Mofo Party Plan album in 1987. But the song remains a striking example of Dylan's work, which has turned out to be enormously influential.




12) Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan

While the song came out in the middle of the year, it would be remiss to have anything else as the closer for 1965.  Like a Rolling Stone changed the world. Musically and culturally.

I like what Consequence of Sound says about the album Highway 61 Revisited:

The sneering put-down “Like a Rolling Stone” is arguably rock and roll’s greatest revelation, but Highway 61 Revisited is perhaps best described by a lyric from the album’s own “Ballad of a Thin Man” on which Dylan sings, “Because something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is.” This record is nearly an hour of mostly electrified blues that places the listener in a room with no less than Jack the Ripper, Lady Jane Grey, and Einstein disguised as Robin Hood. From the surreal romp of the title track to the delicate strumming of the record’s epic closer, “Desolation Row”, precise meaning always seems just out of reach, and yet a nerve is always touched somehow. The language, both musically and lyrically, of Highway 61 Revisited is poetic, sarcastic, and ironic—tongues that have always spoken to some essential part in the human makeup. And while listeners may never quite get Dylan, everyone comes away with something worthwhile.

rateyourmusic on the song:

Like a Rolling Stone represented Dylan's version of the raucous organ-fueled rock that he heard in the Animals version of House of the Rising Sun, a remake that forced Dylan to drop the song from his concert repertoire.  The song had its genesis in a 10-page poem that Dylan had written while fueled on amphetamines, but he successfully distilled the word salad down to its essence.  Even so, the song still had a running time of 6 minutes, which made Columbia understandably reluctant to release it as a single, but the song proved so popular on Top 40 radio that it opened up radio station formats to longer songs in a way that made everything else from Macarthur Park to Hey Jude to the album version of Light My Fire possible. 

When Bruce Springsteen was asked about the first time he heard the song, he said it sounded as if "somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind."  When Paul McCartney recalled the first time he heard it, he said, "It seemed to go on and on forever.  It was just beautiful...  He showed it was possible to go a little further." Frank Zappa said that, when he heard it, "I wanted to quit the music business, because I felt: 'If this wins and 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 the way that they should have." 


Rolling Stone on their Greatest Song of All-Time.  Number 1.

The most stunning thing about "Like a Rolling Stone" is how unprecedented it was: the impressionist voltage of Dylan's language, the intensely personal accusation in his voice ("Ho-o-o-ow does it fe-e-e-el?"), the apocalyptic charge of Kooper's garage-gospel organ and Mike Bloomfield's stiletto-sharp spirals of Telecaster guitar, the defiant six-minute length of the June 16th master take. No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time.

Yet Dylan obsessed over the forward march in "Like a Rolling Stone." Before going into Columbia Records' New York studios to cut it, he summoned Bloomfield, the guitarist in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, to Woodstock to learn the song. "He said, 'I don't want you to play any of that B.B. King shit, none of that fucking blues,' " recalled Bloomfield (who died in 1981). " 'I want you to play something else.' " Dylan later said much the same thing to the rest of the studio band, which included pianist Paul Griffin, bassist Russ Savakus and drummer Bobby Gregg: "I told them how to play on it, and if they didn't want to play it like that, well, they couldn't play with me."

Just as Dylan bent folk music's roots and forms to his own will, he transformed popular song with the content and ambition of "Like a Rolling Stone." And in his electrifying vocal performance, his best on record, Dylan proved that everything he did was, first and always, rock & roll. " 'Rolling Stone' 's the best song I wrote," he said flatly at the end of 1965. It still is.

Pitchfork might say it best, IMO:

"Like a Rolling Stone" is one of Dylan's strangest and most enthralling moments, a big, shambling statement that hovers on the verge of total dissolution, threatening to shimmy your record player (and, potentially, your entire life) off the shelf and onto the floor. One minute in, when Dylan finally hits the chorus, glibly hollering "How does it feeeel ?" to an unnamed subject (or possibly himself), his sneer is so convincing it's difficult not to feel deeply ashamed of everything you've ever done, but still desperate for five more minutes of lashings.

It's hard to overstate the cultural heft of "Like a Rolling Stone", which puttered to #2 on the pop chart (the first song of its length to do so) and hovered there for nearly three months. In 2005's Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, Greil Marcus exhausts 200 pages dissecting the socio-political context and lyrical nuances of "Like a Rolling Stone", ultimately christening the track "a triumph of craft, inspiration, will, and intent," and, more importantly, "a rewrite of the world itself." Certainly, the song transforms every time it's played, expertly adapting to new generations and new vices, just wobbly and amorphous and dangerous enough to knock us over again and again.


PLAYLIST
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