LIKE A ROLLING STONE
Bob Dylan at the Crossroads
By Greil Marcus
PublicAffairs. 283 pp. $25
Bob Dylan is indisputably one of the most influential artistic figures of the latter half of the 20th century. By now, the Cliffs Notes version of his story is well-worn: In the early 1960s, he became the modern folk movement's iconic bard, only to confound his audience a few short years later with a shape-shifting transformation. In 1965, he fully turned on the electric guitars and became rock-and-roll's most enigmatic superstar. Along with the Beatles, he would forever alter the rock landscape.
In his new book, "Like a Rolling Stone," rock critic and cultural historian Greil Marcus focuses his critical laser on a pivotal moment in Dylan's career: the 1965 recording of "Like a Rolling Stone," Dylan's epic, electrified, six-minute squall, which rose to No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart. The impact of "Like a Rolling Stone," as Marcus convincingly argues, remains immeasurable -- an act of radical creation that would destabilize modern expectations of music as much as shape them.
By the mid-1960s, the rapidly evolving Dylan was breaking the rules of the mainstream and helping to pioneer a new way of writing and recording popular music. His lyrics -- a heady mix of cocky street jive, French symbolism and Beat verse -- were filled with challenge and abstraction, yet were addictive and singable. They were layered over pliable blues-based riffs that stretched twice as long as the standard pop hit of the day. In Dylan's hands, rock became an intellectualized art form that still bristled with the raw immediacy of early rock-and-roll.
Recorded on June 16, 1965, in Columbia Records' Studio A in New York, "Like a Rolling Stone" chaotically came to be during the sessions for Dylan's sixth record, "Highway 61 Revisited." Although he had already gone electric on his previous album, "Bringing It All Back Home" (released in March 1965), Dylan dramatically raised the stakes for a new kind of rock music with "Like a Rolling Stone."
In setting the studio scene, Marcus uses a number of evocative details, including a thumbnail sketch of the gifted young blues guitarist Michael Bloomfield -- who showed up with a new Telecaster guitar, bought expressly for the session, slung over his back -- as well as the recollections of Al Kooper, who by accident and sly insistence played organ on the recording and became a party to history.
"Like a Rolling Stone" was a raw beast that didn't conform to a controlled or expected musical arrangement. It took Dylan and his musicians two days and multiple, frustrating takes to nail the final recorded version. Marcus imagines them "circling around the song like hunters surrounding an animal that has escaped them a dozen times" until, shockingly, "they caught it."
Similarly, Marcus spends his book circling the song -- from cultural, poetic, political and musical angles -- attempting to penetrate its disquieting, enduring power. In trying to capture its elusive essence, he parses every aspect of it: the drum crack that kicks off the song; the split-second pause that follows; Dylan's opening words, evoking the ground zero of fairy tales, "Once upon a time"; the growing momentum and roiling collision of guitars, organ, piano, drums, harmonica, tambourine and bass; Dylan's vocals and lyrics; and that insistent question of a chorus that would sear itself into international consciousness: "How does it feel / Ah, how does it feel / To be on your own / With no direction / Home / Like a complete unknown / Like a rolling stone."
"It was an event," writes Marcus, who draws upon a wide variety of source material to bolster his case. Indeed, few who heard the song upon release were not knocked off balance. Marcus includes responses from Booker T. and the MG's guitarist Steve Cropper to Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner, and their words ring with wonder. Elvis Costello -- just shy of adolescence when he first heard the song -- recalls the startling properties it contained: "What a shocking thing, to live in a world where there was Manfred Mann and The Supremes and Engelbert Humperdinck and here comes 'Like a Rolling Stone.' "
It also landed like a bomb on a number of fans. Dylan, the great folkie hero, had not just confounded his audience; he had defied and ignored their expectations as well. Part of the result was an outraged backlash from some, including the booing that greeted the electrified Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival.
Although all of that is grist for Marcus, he is not a just-the-facts-ma'am kind of historian. While his scholarship is formidable and his book peppered with intriguing historical details, he's chiefly a cultural critic, not a strict biographer of events.
His 1975 musical treatise, "Mystery Train," remains one of the seminal texts of rock criticism, and he has brought his analysis to bear on everything from the Sex Pistols and avant-garde art movements ("Lipstick Traces") to the cultural afterlife of Elvis Presley ("Dead Elvis").
In "Like a Rolling Stone," Marcus displays a gift for couching the musical culture in its political era, weaving in references to the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam. With his deep knowledge of American music, he's also an interpreter when it comes to sussing out its sources. Looking for precedents for "Like a Rolling Stone," Marcus considers, among other things, the "long, dramatic story-songs made by Mississippi blues players Son House and Garfield Akers," in whose lengthy, near-mystical songs the young Dylan was surely well versed. He also includes elegant ruminations on the work of R&B singers Sam Cooke and Clyde McPhatter. These passages add insight to the greater Dylan discussion at hand.
Marcus's wide-ranging meditations are often bracing, but the ride takes some effort. His critical prose occasionally veers into heady, sometimes esoteric territory. That may prove heavy going for readers more inclined toward strictly straightforward narrative. Likewise, several overlong passages -- including a digression on the Pet Shop Boys -- would have benefited from judicious pruning.
Overall, though, Marcus's deep assessment of "Like a Rolling Stone" achieves a primary goal of important music criticism: to turn readers back into listeners as well, and send them reaching for their copies of "Highway 61 Revisited" to contemplate again -- or perhaps for the first time -- what all that fuss was about.
