North York Central Library Blog

This image is in the public domainThere are songs that demand we crank up the volume when they come on the radio. There are songs that make you drop whatever you’re doing, songs you give yourself up to completely. Bob Dylan’s Like a rolling stone is one of those songs. You can’t resist singing along, but not in the way you’d sing Kumbaya or This little light of mine. This song sounds like anger, confrontation, challenge, contempt. It could be the sing-along song for the enraged. It should have been included on the recordings that Voyager 1 and 2 are carrying out to the stars as messages for extraterrestrials. Physicist Stephen Hawking suspects that extraterrestrials would conquer and colonize us if they discovered our existence, but if they heard the searing in-your-face intensity of this song they'd turn their invasion fleet around and find some other planet to mess with. With all due respect to Chuck Berry, the cheery rock song Johnny B. Goode (also on the Voyager recordings) sure wouldn’t scare off those bug eyed monsters. 

Like a rolling stone was released on July 20, 1965. It was a watershed moment in music history. Defying the song length convention of commercial radio (three minutes or less), the song was more than six minutes long and like nothing anyone had heard before. The two drum beats that begin the song “sounded like somebody kicked open the door to your mind” Bruce Springsteen said, when he was inducting Dylan into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Mysterious lines of poetry burned through radio speakers to the sound of an improvised organ riff and Mike Bloomfield’s lead guitar: You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat / Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat. Who was the diplomat? Who was Napoleon in rags? Who was Miss Lonely?

Dylan performed the song for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival, on July 25, 1965, shocking some members of the audience by bringing a band on stage for his three song set. Some die hard folkies felt betrayed when the poster boy of their movement, who'd penned the folk anthem Blowin' in the wind, went electric. Some people in the audience booed. Myths have grown around this infamous rock and roll performance, including the oft repeated story of Pete Seeger, a beloved patriarch of folk music, threatening to sever Dylan’s electric current with an ax. You can see footage of Dylan’s performance at Newport in Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Dylan, No direction home.

A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine put together a list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Like a rolling stone was number one.

The Toronto Public Library collects sheet music for your use. Would you like to know how to play Like a rolling stone and other Bob Dylan songs? The two books below can help.

The best of Bob Dylan. (sheet music, including Like a rolling stone, All along the watchtower, Forever young, If not for you, Blowin' in the wind, Tangled up in blue.

The best of Bob Dylan chord songbook. (sheet music, including Like a rolling stone, All along the watchtower, Subterranean homesick blues, My back pages, Mr. tambourine man.

CD. Highway 61 revisited opens with Like a rolling stone.	Set of 6 CDs.
DVD. Directed by Martin Scorsese.	DVD. Critically acclaimed documentary directed by D. A. Pennebaker.

If you want to know more about Stephen Hawking's chilling thoughts on extraterrestrials, watch this DVD: