In 2004, Dylan gave a very interesting explanation of his writing technique in “Like a Rolling Stone: “I’m not thinking about what I want to say, I’m just thinking ‘Is this OK for the meter?’” There is a sense of wonder: “It’s like a ghost is writing a song like that. It gives you the song and it goes away, it goes away. You don’t know what it means. Except that this ghost picked me to write the song.”20
Recording
“Like a Rolling Stone” revolutionized the recording industry. Rolling Stone magazine said, “No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time.”50 Meaning that no other song released as a single had previously exceeded six minutes. Its success, however, does not rest on its 6:13 length. Critics described the song as revolutionary in its combination of musical elements: a brilliant arrangement between organ chords and guitar licks wrapping perfectly around Dylan’s vocal, and with an intensifying interpretation. “The song was written on an upright piano in the key of G sharp and was changed to C on the guitar in the recording studio.” Dylan said in 1988, “The first two lines, which rhymed ‘kiddin’ you’ and ‘didn’t you,’ just about knocked me out. And later on, when I got to the jugglers and the chrome horse and the princess on the steeple, it all just about got to be too much.”50 He later admitted that his inspiration for the chorus was the harmonic progression in Ritchie Valens’s “La Bamba.”
An early version of “Like a Rolling Stone,” dating from June 15, 1965, was subsequently released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991. The song was recorded in 3/4 time with Dylan at the piano, which is rather remote from the album version, but nevertheless very interesting. The final recording (the fourth of five takes) took place on the afternoon of June 16. Al Kooper: “[Tom] Wilson felt comfortable enough to invite me to watch an electric Dylan session, because he knew I was a big Bob fan. He had no conception of my limitless ambition, however. There was no way in hell I was going to visit a Bob Dylan session and just sit there pretending to be some reporter from Sing Out! magazine! I was committed to play on it… The session was called for two o’clock the next afternoon at Columbia Studios… Taking no chances, I arrived an hour early and well enough ahead of the crowd to establish my cover. I walked into the studio with my guitar case, unpacked, tuned up, plugged in, and sat there trying my hardest to look like I belonged.” Suddenly Dylan arrived with a curious person carrying a Fender Telecaster. Kooper: “It was weird, because it was storming outside and the guitar was all wet from the rain. But the guy just shuffled over into the corner, wiped it off with a rag, plugged in, and commenced to play some of the most incredible guitar I’d ever heard.”42 Annoyed, Kooper put his guitar away and ran quickly to the control room. He had just met the very talented Mike Bloomfield. A while later, in the middle of the session, Paul Griffin was moved from organ to piano. Although Kooper did not master the instrument well, Kooper sat down quietly at the organ. When Wilson discovered him, the take was about to start. “He really could have just busted me and got me back in the control room,” Kooper recalled, “but he was a very gracious man, and so he let it go.”6
At the end of the song, everyone went into the control room to hear the playback. After thirty seconds into the second verse of the playback, Dylan asked Tom Wilson to turn up the organ. Wilson’s response: “[T]hat cat’s not an organ player.” But Dylan wasn’t buying it: “Hey, now don’t tell me who’s an organ player and who’s not. Just turn the organ up.” Al Kooper comments, “That was the moment I became an organ player!”42
But most impressive was the influence the song exerted. Critics and musicians are unanimous. The critic Paul Williams: “Dylan had been famous, had been the center of attention, for a long time. But now the ante was being upped again. He’d become a pop star as well as a folk star… and was, even more than the Beatles, a public symbol of the vast cultural, political, generational changes taking place in the United States and Europe. He was perceived as, and in many ways functioned as, a leader.”51 According to Paul McCartney, “It seemed to go on and on forever. It was just beautiful… He showed all of us that it was possible to go a little further.”15 Finally, Bruce Springsteen, at the ceremony celebrating Bob Dylan’s entrance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1988): “The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind… The way that Elvis freed your body, Bob freed your mind. And he showed us that just because the music was innately physical, it did not mean that it was anti-intellect. He had the vision and the talent to expand a pop song until it contained the whole world. He invented a new way a pop singer could sound. He broke through the limitations of what a recording artist could achieve, and he changed the face of rock ’n’ roll forever and ever.”52
On July 20, 1965, more than one month before the release of the album Highway 61 Revisited, “Like a Rolling Stone” was released as a single with “Gates of Eden” on its B-side. The song would never have been selected as a single, but when the discarded acetate was played at the club Arthur in New York City, the audience was so enthusiastic that Columbia decided to make an exception. On August 14, “Like a Rolling Stone” reached number 2 on the US Billboard charts, just behind the Beatles’ “Help!” The song was number 3 in Canada and number 4 in the United Kingdom. “Like a Rolling Stone” is number 1 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”
Production
In 1978 Dylan told Ron Rosenbaum, “It’s the dynamics in the rhythm that make up ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and all of the lyrics.”20 The snare shot that starts the song like a pistol, and which so impressed the young Bruce Springsteen, was the initiative of the drummer Bobby Gregg, who had worked on the previous album. The rhythmic pulse of the whole is absolutely unstoppable; all the musicians contribute. The bass, probably played with a pick by Joe Macho Jr. (Clinton Heylin talks about Russ Savakus), is a real locomotive—a strong framework on which two rhythm guitars are grafted: Dylan (on his Fender Stratocaster) and Gorgoni. Paul Griffin’s piano brings, despite a big miss at 2:10, a very honky-tonk tone. Al Kooper’s organ, which gives the song its “color,” is remarkable not just for the sound, but also for the playing. Kooper wrote, “If you listen to it today, you can hear how I waited until the chord was played by the rest of the band, before committing myself to play in the verses. I’m always an eighth note behind everyone else, making sure of the chord before touching the keys.”42 Bloomfield, an outstanding guitarist, provides the required bluesy touch on his white Fender Telecaster while intervening cautiously in the service of the song. Bruce Langhorne, the famous “Mr. Tambourine Man” (according to Al Kooper), played tambourine. Bob provided an excellent vocal and an upbeat harmonica solo (in C). The result is the great impact the song had upon release: Dylan said that it was his favorite and the best he had written.
After five takes on June 15, fifteen other attempts were recorded the following day, the fourth being the final. This is far from the legend that the song was cut in one take…
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
The promo single “Like a Rolling Stone” for radio stations divided the song almost equally on both sides of the disc, due to the three-minute calibration standard of radio stations of the time. DJs wishing to play the entire song, often at the request of listeners, simply flipped the vinyl over while live.
COVERS
“Like a Rolling Stone” became a worldwide hit. The song has been covered by many artists, including Jimi Hendrix (Live at Monterey, 2007), Johnny Winter (Raisin’ Cain, 1980), John Mellencamp (Bob Dylan: The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, 1993), Judy Collins (Judy Collins Sings Dylan… Just Like a Woman, 1993), the Rolling Stones (Stripped, 1995), and Patti Smith (Live at Montreux, 2012).
TWO MILLION DOLLARS, BABY
At an auction held in New York in June 2014, the original manuscript of “Like a Rolling Stone
” was sold for $2 million.
Tombstone Blues
Bob Dylan / 5:58
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar Mike Bloomfield: guitar
Al Gorgoni: guitar (?)
Frank Owens: piano Al Kooper: organ
Joseph Macho Jr.: bass (?)
Russ Savakus: bass (?)
Bobby Gregg: drums
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: July 29, 1965
Technical Team
Producer: Bob Johnston
Sound Engineers: Frank Laico, Pete Dauria, and Ted Brosnan
Genesis and Lyrics
“Tombstone Blues” is the second song on Bob Dylan’s album Highway 61 Revisited. The name of the song came from the historic city in Arizona, a symbol of the conquest of the American Wild West, where the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place in 1881. For the second time after “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Bob Dylan was inspired for the chorus by Woody Guthrie’s “Takin’ It Easy.” However, he quickly deviates from these models to set in place an irresistibly surreal story with a parade of the most disparate characters: the revolutionary hero Paul Revere, the outlaw Belle Starr, Jezebel the Queen of Israel, Jack the Ripper, St. John the Baptist, the director Cecil B. DeMille, blues singer Ma Rainey, and Ludwig van Beethoven. All this serves to better ridicule all opinion leaders, whether the commander-in-chief (Lyndon B. Johnson, president of the United States at the time), the king of the Philistines (the narrow-minded bourgeoisie), or pipers (peace movements). In the Biograph notes, Dylan said that at the time he used to go to a bar where police officers gathered after work, discussing sordid murder cases or fraud. “I think I wrote this song either in that place, or remembering some conversations.” And he adds, “I felt like I’d broken through with this song, that nothing like it had been done before… just a flash really.”12
Production
With Bob Johnston in charge, the production is marked by the use of reverb and delay effects, resulting in a brighter and clearer sound. The legendary sound engineer Frank Laico brought a slightly different color to the song.
“Tombstone Blues” is heavy rock with a slight touch of country from Bob’s acoustic guitar, without any doubt his Gibson Nick Lucas Special. Although the sound is partly obscured by Frank Owens’s piano part, it seems that another rhythm guitarist backed Dylan, probably Al Gorgoni. There is uncertainty about the bassist. Recording took place in two sessions on the same day. That the bass was played with a pick suggests that Joseph Macho Jr. is the performer. Al Kooper played the Hammond organ; Mike Bloomfield’s Telecaster provided a very bluesy, distinctive phrasing. None of Dylan’s future accompanists ever tried to imitate him, not even Robbie Robertson of the Band.
Finally, Bobby Gregg with his metronomic playing at the snare and hi-hat was responsible for the heavy sound, which gave the work a tension enhanced by the ever-present reverberation, an effect that would not have displeased John Bonham.
Michael Gray wrote, “Dylan could never have written ‘Tombstone Blues’ without Chuck Berry.”30 One thing is certain: this blues-rock song is a musical illustration of rural America, unlike “Like a Rolling Stone,” which represents urban sophistication.
“Tombstone Blues” was the second of three songs recorded on July 29, 1965. The eleventh and final take was chosen, although, according to some sources, a session on August 4 was held to record an insert. If that is the case, the insert is difficult to identify.
Bob Dylan played “Tombstone Blues” for the first time onstage at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York, on August 28, 1965, accompanied by Robbie Robertson, Al Kooper, Harvey Brooks, and Levon Helm.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
There is a rare version of “Tombstone Blues” performed by Bob Dylan, Mike Bloomfield, and a chorus provided by the Chambers Brothers, included on Bloomfield’s box set From His Head to His Heart to His Hands (2014).
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
Bob Dylan / 4:09
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Mike Bloomfield: guitar
Paul Griffin: piano (?)
Frank Owens: piano (?)
Al Kooper: piano
Joseph Macho Jr.: bass (?)
Russ Savakus: bass (?)
Bobby Gregg: drums
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: July 29, 1965
Technical Team
Producer: Bob Johnston
Sound Engineers: Frank Laico, Pete Dauria, and Ted Brosnan
Genesis and Lyrics
“It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” is a perfect example of Bob Dylan’s awesome power to adapt the blues to his own songwriting sensibility. Here, specifically, he is exploring the Louisiana blues with a tempo generated by lazy slap drumming accompanied by honky-tonk piano. Dylan’s harmonica part evokes Slim Harpo, and his drawling voice seems to come straight out of the bayous. The image is of traveling, specifically the mythology of train traveling and the character of the train brakeman—an image also found in Appalachian music. Most importantly, there is humor in wordplay: “It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry.”
The song can be interpreted as an allegory of someone who is sexually frustrated. The lines of the second verse, “Don’t the sun look good / Goin’ down over the sea? / Don’t my gal look fine / When she’s comin’ after me?” is adapted from, “Don’t the clouds look lonesome shining across the sea? / Don’t my gal look good when she’s coming after me?” from “Solid Road” by bluesmen Brownie McGhee and Leroy Carr (recorded on April 25, 1962, under the title “Rocks and Gravel,” but not used at the time).
Production
“It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” demonstrates how Dylan worked in the studio in the mid-sixties. There are two versions of this song. The earlier version carries the working title “Phantom Engineer Cloudy” and was recorded in ten takes on June 15. This version was released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3. Al Kooper remembers that the band cut the song several times in different arrangements, at different tempos and even with different lyrics. “It was a long time… before I realized that ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’ was not called ‘Phantom Engineer.’”12
This early version has an upbeat rock tempo, highlighting the immense talent of Mike Bloomfield as a blues guitarist. The second session was on July 29. Dylan was unsatisfied with the result. During the lunch break, he reworked the song alone on the piano. An hour later, the musicians all rerecorded a new version at a slower tempo, less funky, more bluesy, and perhaps more inspired. It is a blues song with a touch of nostalgia. Bob, who had finally found the interpretation he was looking for, played acoustic guitar and provided a superb vocal performance and an unusual harmonica solo in D flat, probably one of his best at the time. The introduction for the guitar is reminiscent of “Corrina, Corrina” on the album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Dylan is accompanied by Mike Bloomfield, who plays with restraint and sobriety; by Bobby Gregg’s hypnotic, shuffling drumbeat; and by a battered bass whose strings “curl” as the bassist puts all his heart into his performance (presumably Joseph Macho Jr.). There is also a honky-tonk piano part, probably played by Paul Griffin. Al Kooper, who had left his organ aside, was at the second piano. The result is much better than the early version, which was not lacking in feeling. The master take is the last out of seven recorded on July 29. Besides the rhythm and atmosphere of the piece, the lyrics also changed. The “ghost child” of the second verse has become “brakeman”—a nod to the father of country music Jimmie Rodgers’s “The Singing Brakeman”?
“It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” is the first song among Dylan’s works to bear the seal of producer Bob Johnston. “I get the best possible sound that I could ever get on each instrument… Once they’re even, I let ’em play. I don’t want four engineers in there,
‘Bring the guitar up, turn the bass down,’ you know? I just let them play, and when we get ready to mix, what will take six months for somebody else takes me three or four hours. Because I can’t get a better sound than I get on each instrument.”45 Bob Dylan, backed by members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Al Kooper, played “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965. The song was part of Dylan’s controversial set (see page 160).
Dylan performed the song at the Concert for Bangladesh relief organized by George Harrison on August 1, 1971. There is another live version on The Bootleg Series Volume 5: Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue (2002).
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen’s group Steely Dan called their first album Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972) after a line from “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.”
ORIGINAL VERSION
One can hear the song “Jet Pilot” on Biograph, which, according to Cameron Crowe, is the original version of “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” “Jet Pilot” was recorded after Highway 61 Revisited and during sessions for Blonde on Blonde.
From A Buick 6
Bob Dylan / 3:19
Musicians
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Mike Bloomfield: guitar
Al Kooper: organ
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 25
