Chronicles of a Rolling Stone

What hits you first is the orderly chaos: the strident strumming of the guitar, the wash-and-wail of the organ, the drums alternating between rim shots, rolls and piledriver snare, the tambourine, almost demure in comparison, keeping time. And the voice, somewhere between a sneer and a fullthroated scream of vindication, taking aim at some haplessly anonymous figure and firing bullets fashioned out of sheer poetry. That’s what hits you first, hits you all through its six minutes (unprecedented, let’s remember, for a single in those days), and hits you every time you listen to Like a Rolling Stone. The first of its kind then, rarely equalled since.

That’s basically why Rolling Stone magazine (no relation) voted it the greatest rock ’n’ roll song of all time. You know all the stories. How there was no sheet music, the sessions players winged it through; how Al Kooper, whose organ work sears the sensibilities as much as the acid dripping (now there’s a pun for you!) from Dylan’s voice, had never played that instrument before the recording. The lyrics, with Siamese cats, diplomats, Napoleon in rags… a Bloody Mary — double vodka and Tabasco — of images and insults, the perfect balance between the gentle put-down of To Ramona and the Uzi-spray of Positively Fourth Street.

What hits you later — and especially if you happen to glance through the Rolling Stone list — is the song’s greatness in the context of those times. There are eight — count ’em — songs from 1965 in the top 50, including No. 2, the Rolling Stones’ (again, no relation) Satisfaction. And none of the other seven songs would have been possible without the Zim. They were influenced by Protest Dylan — People Get Ready, My Generation; by Cynical Dylan (Satisfaction); and by Introspective Dylan (Yesterday, In My Life, Help and its twin, The Tracks Of My Tears).

And none of these songs match up lyrically, emotionally, musically, influentially to Like a Rolling Stone. Given its anarchic qualities, little wonder that Kooper called it “punk”. Years later, Johnny Rotten, the face of punk as we know it, would celebrate the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne with his version of God Save the Queen, beginning thus: “God save the Queen/this fascist regime.” You don’t need headphones to hear Dylan’s fingerprints all over that. Dylan’s own reaction to Rolling Stone’s celebration of Rolling Stone? “It’s a temporary thing, one week one song is No. 1, next week it’s another.” I think I’ll stick my neck out and say he’s wrong here… This one’s No. 1 for all time.