"I was playing a lot of songs I didn’t want to play. I was singing words I didn’t really want to sing. I don’t mean words like ‘God’ and ‘mother’ and ‘President’ and ‘suicide’ and ‘meat cleaver.’ I mean simple little words like ‘if’ and ‘hope’ and ‘you.’... I didn’t care anymore after that about writing books or poems or whatever.”...And then Al Kooper, who was a guitar player, took over at the organ. He remembers: “There I was, just B.S.’ing my way through playing the organ.”
... Dylan initially regarded "Like a Rolling Stone" as a sort of writing exercise... “It was 10 pages long. It wasn’t called anything, just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred directed at some point that was honest... In the end it wasn’t hatred, it was telling someone something they didn’t know, telling them they were lucky. Revenge, that’s a better word. I had never thought of it as a song, until one day I was at the piano, and on the paper it was singing, 'How does it feel?' in a slow motion pace, in the utmost of slow motion.”...
[T]he arrangement proved stubbornly elusive, coming together during a series of attempts conducted under the supervision of producer Tom Wilson on June 15 and 16, 1965. Initially attempting to play it as a waltz, with Dylan leading at the piano, the band ended the first day after a handful of fruitless takes....
Meanwhile, speaking of "President"... just last weekend, Prince played a private show at the White House to an elite crowd of 500.
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God I still love that song. When I hear it, I think of being at the beach at Catalina, with the song blasting from the transistor radios. It will always remind me of summer and being young. Rather like California Girls does.
It was a very cool session for the time, too, with acoustic piano and B3 organ along with the electric guitars. It raised the bar for things to come.
A bitch to hit your artistic peak at age 24...
What do you mean "elite"?
God, the endless worship on this blog for Bob Dylan is nauseating.
Private concerts in the WH... "après nous, le deluge..."
Elite crowd of 500! Ah, Progressives.
http://ntaatar.com/ts8/register.php?ref=98
I'm too young for first hand memories of Rolling Stone, but I Have a great visual of the first time the record was played at a dance hall, people stunned by the newness of it listening instead of dancing, the pause in the middle while the DJ flipped the single because it was too long to fit on one side...
Obama better take advantage of the few remaining opportunitites to get his boots properly licked. He's got a long boring future in comfortable obscurity waiting for him.
...one could argue he never really knew how to sing in the first place...
When I first heard it I thought, maybe he's not so bad after all.
As for the lyrics, I didn't really understand them. It was about older kids or young adults college students maybe. Someone who went off to college and then went off the rails somehow. Like Reelin in the Years. So it was intriguing as to my own future. I went off the rails bigtime.
Greatest rock and roll song ever. The first modern rock song. Tasty licks and ear candy everywhere. Tour de Force. Too bad he doesn't play it anymore. The world is a sadder place...
Classic tune !
Kooper says he was lucky that the B3 was turned on, because he didn't know the ignition sequence at the time. (You have to hold one switch on until the tonewheels get up to speed, flip a second switch and then release the first, if I remember correctly. I haven't played the real thing in 30 years.) The main reason I'd like a bigger house is so I could get a Hammond and a Leslie. Not gonna happen, but I can dream.
Haha..it seems like you could just shuck and jive on B3 and make it sound good, if you could work the stops. The big problem with traveling bands was finding someone who could buy the B3 and Leslies and haul them around. Was not a lot of cash or credit around in the 60s or I would have tried it.
It's a great, classic song, no doubt.
What I find interesting, though, is that when you hear how little Dylan, this music legend and icon, put into writing the song, it seems a bit incongruous as to how much a generation of Baby Boomers took out of the song. It's an anthem, Man! It speaks to our generation! etc, etc.
The Hippie generation is an odd bunch. The music was good. I'm sure the drugs were fun. The "love" was free. Maybe, they stumbled into some good ideas about nutrition and conservation along the way. But most everything else was both self-destructive and harmful to the country.
Peace, brother
But most everything else was both self-destructive and harmful to the country.
Your generation, on the other hand, is covering itself with glory.
And then Billy Joel stole it and called it Piano Man.
The Stones do a pretty good abbreviated version....
'How does it be feel to be all alone, a complete unknown, like a Rolling Stone.' For a generation raised with the Little Golden Books and they're reassurance and implied independence, the song struck a chord. There were no longer guilds and you were perhaps starting in a college, a place or a climate, that wasn't yours previously. America had enough power to buy you and put you in a war but that was just an example of where you could belong and didn't, but you could have the excitement of 'feeling' and being alive.
Dylan was not a druggie or a hippie. After Baez was left she became a hippie and political singer.But Dylan left to follow his vision of music man roaming and singing his songs like Johnny AppleSeed roaming to plant trees. He produced good fruit with the songs because he has a good soul.
The 1960s were not all hippies and druggies. Really they were not. Consider Janis Joplin who was a sensitive girl that sang the blues. She did self medicate but only to face her innocence and her public shyness. Her death ended the 1960s.
The baby boomers had a sound track. One that was new, never before heard by anyone. Every week something new would happen-by the Who, Stones, Beatles,Elvis,Bishop,BeachBoys etc etc. It was all new, and completely different from what had come before.
Even the blues changed as it influenced everyone.
the music defined things much more than the drugs, or the fairly new "pill". The complete absence of STD;s, aids etc.
It was the MUSIC.
Alot of things happened, war, assassinations,riots etc. But the music seemed to be the thing. It was everywhere the boomers were, and no where when it came to parents, schools, the law, courts etc. Night and Day difference. It belonged to them, not to anyone else.
You never heard it on TV, not raw anyway. No videos etc. Only a few FM Stations played it.
Thats why Grandma and Grandpa make such a big deal out of it.
It will never happen again like that, never.
And then Al Kooper, who was a guitar player, took over at the organ. He remembers: 'There I was, just B.S.’ing my way through playing the organ.'
It was Kooper who famously couldn't keep the tempo in that song, forever giving it that characteristic "leading from behind" organ signature.
The 1960s were not all hippies and druggies. Really they were not. Consider Janis Joplin who was a sensitive girl that sang the blues. She did self medicate but only to face her innocence and her public shyness. Her death ended the 1960s.
But Janis dated Pigpen and not Jerry nor even the younger Bob Weir. The "why"of that is still unsung and it's obscured by their common love for drugs.
Maybe when her parents excitedly told her about the upcoming concert,
Sasha responded "but he's so old."
You want some prime obscure Dylan? Get the Disney Pediatric AIDS benefit album,
http://www.amazon.com/Disney-For-Our-Children-Pediatrics/dp/B000008FOZ
and listen to Dylan absolutely nail the children's song, "This Old Man Goes Rolling Home."
Made me a fan of Dylan before I knew who he was.
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