“I’ll let you be in my dreams, if I can be in yours.”
                                                                                 ~ Bob Dylan

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen . . . 

If you were banished to a desert island and could take along only one song to hear over and over again, what would it be?

My choice: “Like a Rolling Stone,” by Bob Dylan.

It’s a work of pure genius, which revolutionized popular music and officially marked the end of Dylan’s folk period. Even after more than forty years, the power and significance of this song have not diminished. “Like a Rolling Stone” affects me, perplexes me, challenges me. By its very nature, it gives me something new each time I hear it. The song feeds my intellect, and satisfies my craving for narrative structure, striking images, and intrinsic rhythm. Most important, this song makes me feel. And it goes deep.

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?

Though the invective seems to be directed at an unnamed young woman, Dylan’s continued use of “you” throughout the song engages the listener directly. The feelings of bitterness, regret, disillusionment, betrayal and pain are transferred to us whether we like it or not.

You said you’d never compromise 
You stare into the vacuum of his eyes . . .

After he took from you, everything he could steal . . .

We come of age in this song — the specific details contained therein matter less than our own memories of foolish pride, hypocrisy, being misled by false ideologies, or having a belief system destroyed. We’ve all taken things for granted, taken something at face value, or trusted our superiors, i.e., our government, only to discover, quite painfully, it really “wasn’t where it’s at.” 

Jann Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone Magazine, said in 1967, that the song is not necessarily about a rich person, but a “comfortable individual, or a comfortable society, suddenly discovering what’s going on. Vietnam — the society we’re talking about, and you realize, as you become aware, drug aware, socially aware, the disaster of the commercial society.”

Billboard once described Dylan’s songs as revealing a “painful awareness of the tragedy that underlies the contemporary human condition.” “Like a Rolling Stone” may just be the most telling portrait of our society ever created by an American artist. Who else has challenged the existing order in such a grand fashion?

Yet Dylan offers us hope, because ultimately this song is about liberation — freedom from past hang-ups, outworn beliefs, narrow thinking, lifelong fears. It is in this state of being invisible, stripped of all preconceived notions, with no secrets to conceal, that all of us, finally seeing clear, have everything to gain.

As John Hinchley states in Like a Complete Unknown (Stealing Home Press, 2002), “to be a rolling stone is to reclaim a sense of shame — of the boundaries of your own being — as the mark of your common humanity.”

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

The song also marked an apocalytic point in Dylan’s career. In an interview with Marvin Bronstein (1966), he said:

If you’re talking about what breakthrough is for me, I would have to say, speaking totally, ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ I wrote that after I had quit. I’d literally quit, singing and playing — I found myself writing this song, this story, this long piece of vomit, twenty 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 is what I should do.

“Like a Rolling Stone” was Dylan’s reaction to the pressures of fame, and frustration over being misunderstood, labeled, and peddled as the spokesperson for the social unrest of the 60’s. The socialite Dylan addresses in the song is really himself. As he examines his own conscience, he awakens ours.

A word about the sound of this song. Certainly the opening shot! of the drum beat, followed by the soaring notes of the Hammond organ, commands our attention instantly, but when we hear Dylan’s voice — of accusation, gloating, taunting, blaming, and sympathy, it sears unlike any other voice that preceded it. 

I am reminded that poetry began with voice, and remained an oral tradition for centuries, the only means people had of recording history, praising their creators, expressing their wonder, and entertaining themselves. The breath was considered sacred, as it represented the soul and spirit of humanity. 

In “No Direction Home,” the movie directed by Martin Scorsese, beat poet Allen Ginsberg, a longtime Dylan friend, talks about how Dylan became at one, or identical with his breath, like a Shaman with all of his intelligence and consciousness focused on a column of air. Part of Dylan’s genius is his ability to assimilate and reinvent, and his voice is part of his poetry, magical and primal.

Each song is rewritten with every performance. Dylan brings to the moment  whatever it needs — a different inflection, drawing out a note, switching the phrasing, changing the tempo. As it was in ancient times, with bards reciting epics, a Dylan lyric is dynamic by nature, sometimes ethereal and elusive. 

“Like a Rolling Stone” almost didn’t get recorded. For two days, Dylan, his studio musicians, and producer, Tom Wilson, struggled to tame the resistant beast. Dylan was after a “full” sound and went through take after take with no success. Finally, after 15 takes, “Like a Rolling Stone” was captured on tape, once and only once. Listening to the playback, they all knew, instantly, that something extraordinary had just happened. 

          
          June 1965, “Rolling Stone” recording session

I last heard Bob Dylan perform “Like a Rolling Stone” live about three years ago. He was wearing green, and standing at the organ (he hasn’t played guitar at his concerts for awhile now). His voice was ragged, but the college students who filled the arena clearly worshipped him. When the sharp drum beat that sounds like a gun shot signalled the last song, everyone rushed to the stage. I had waited for this song all night. There was the organ, and then that perfectly flawed voice. 

Once upon a time you dressed so fine . . .  

Tears filled my eyes. There’s just something about this song. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine named it the greatest song of all time.

Click here for the full lyrics and to hear an excerpt from “Like a Rolling Stone.”

What’s your desert island song?

P.S. Don’t forget I’m hosting Poetry Friday this week, in honor of Bob Dylan. Hope you’ll join us!