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Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dyla
Greil Marcus saw Bob Dylan for the first time in a New Jersey field in 1963. He didn't know the name of the scruffy singer who had a bit part in a Joan Baez concert, but he knew his performance was unique. So began a dedicated and enduring relationship between America's finest critic of popular music— "simply peerless," in Nick Hornby's words, "not only as a rock writer but as a cultural historian"— and Bob Dylan, who in 2016 won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In Like A Rolling Stone Marcus locates Dylan's six-minute masterwork in its richest, fullest context, capturing the heady atmosphere of the recording studio in 1965 as musicians and technicians clustered around the mercurial genius from Minnesota, the young Bob Dylan at the height of his powers. But Marcus shows how, far from being a song only of 1965, "Like a Rolling Stone" is rooted in faraway American places and times, drawing on timeless cultural impulses that make the song as challenging, disruptive, and restless today as it ever was, capable of reinvention by artists as disparate as the comedian Richard Belzer and the Italian hip-hop duo Articolo 31. "Like a Rolling Stone" never loses its essential quality, which is directly to challenge the listener: it remains a call to arms and a demand for a better world. Forty years later it is still revolutionary as will and idea, as an attack and an embrace. How Does it Feel? In this unique, burningly intense book, Marcus tells you, and much more besides.
Hardcover
First published April 1, 2005
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About the author
Greil Marcus
44 books266 followersGreil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics. In recent years he has taught at Berkeley, Princeton, Minnesota, NYU, and the New School in New York. He lives in Oakland, California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 97 reviews
February 3, 2008
Pomposity reigns and if there are a set of Rock Criticism rules akin to the literary rules that James Fenimore Cooper violated so blithely to Mark Twain's delight, Marcus violates them all. Instead of research, he remembers. Instead of logic and measured insights, he flushes clichés, random associations, second person generalizations, and just plain old fashioned bullshit. “Dylan singing like William and Versey Smith chanting their version of the Titantic on the street in Chicago in 1927 and everyone agreeing that, yes, it sure was sad when that great ship went down, but everyone grinning, too, because it was such a great ship, and it went down, and they didn’t.” “The song was never the same after England, neither was Bob Dylan, and neither was his audience.” He compares the song to other songs, to movies, to books, to highways, rivers, oceans, to everything that, not just comes to mind because that would imply at least a cursory thoughtfulness, but everything that comes into his line of vision, sits on his bookshelf, has either the words "rolling" or "stone" in them, was littered on Highway 61, or, at his most painful, that he thinks might impress someone somewhere if he mentioned it. Blurbs from Nick Hornby, Jonathan Lethem, and Luc Sante suggest that either Marcus has written other books that aren’t drivel or that Blurb Whoredom, unlike rock criticism, has no rules to break.
September 14, 2016
Sure, it's pretentious as all hell. Sure, there isn't a central thesis. I don't much care.
John Updike once said of Vladimir Nabokov that "He writes prose the only way it should be written: ecstatically." The same adverb comes to mind when reading this book—Greil Marcus' attempt to grasp just what makes Bob Dylan in general, and "Like a Rolling Stone" in particular, so great. Marcus may be an esteemed literary and musical critic, but he is before all else a Bob Dylan fan, and this enthusiasm shows forth on every page. His prose reaches near-rhapsodic highs as he seeks to describe the essence of "Like a Rolling Stone", what it has meant both to him and to the rest of Dylan's audience, and why it is indeed The Greatest Song Ever Written. If you're already convinced of the song's status, you find yourself exhilarated by the rush of Marcus' powerful mutual affection, even obsession; if you're not, the sheer force of his conviction makes you believe in what he says without question. Very few people can write about music in a way that is musical; Marcus does so in a way that seems effortless, the power behind his words causing them to transcend the page and become their own kind of notes floating through the air.
Of course, if the book were solely about "Like a Rolling Stone" it would quickly peter out; no single song, even The Greatest Song Ever Written, can sustain a 250 page tome by itself. Fortunately, much of the book is less about the song and more about the subtitle, describing not only Dylan but all of America at the crossroads. Marcus weaves seamlessly back and forth between analysis of "Like a Rolling Stone" itself and reflections on what it represented for Dylan's artistic career, and from those reflections to further reflections on what Dylan's music represented for the entire culture of the 60s. In Marcus' view, the song is the lynchpin upon which that entire decade's culture hung, and if this isn't strictly true, it feels true, which for Marcus and for music in general is far more important than mere fact.
Marcus is frequently accused of pretentiousness, and this is an accusation with which I won't argue—it's the height of artistic pretentiousness to insist, without irony or artifice, that a single song can really represent the turning point for an entire culture. However, this pretentiousness does nothing to dilute the beauty, passion, and truth of his musings, and if anything only serves to render them more powerful and thrilling. By the time the book reaches its final chapter, a description of the numerous failed takes, and the single successful one, of "Like a Rolling Stone" on the day of its recording—a point to which Marcus has been building, but from which he has steadily held back, for the entire book—you're near breathless. Dylan the man is sick of his legend, and it's understandable—no one really wants to be considered the voice of their generation. But what a legend it is.
John Updike once said of Vladimir Nabokov that "He writes prose the only way it should be written: ecstatically." The same adverb comes to mind when reading this book—Greil Marcus' attempt to grasp just what makes Bob Dylan in general, and "Like a Rolling Stone" in particular, so great. Marcus may be an esteemed literary and musical critic, but he is before all else a Bob Dylan fan, and this enthusiasm shows forth on every page. His prose reaches near-rhapsodic highs as he seeks to describe the essence of "Like a Rolling Stone", what it has meant both to him and to the rest of Dylan's audience, and why it is indeed The Greatest Song Ever Written. If you're already convinced of the song's status, you find yourself exhilarated by the rush of Marcus' powerful mutual affection, even obsession; if you're not, the sheer force of his conviction makes you believe in what he says without question. Very few people can write about music in a way that is musical; Marcus does so in a way that seems effortless, the power behind his words causing them to transcend the page and become their own kind of notes floating through the air.
Of course, if the book were solely about "Like a Rolling Stone" it would quickly peter out; no single song, even The Greatest Song Ever Written, can sustain a 250 page tome by itself. Fortunately, much of the book is less about the song and more about the subtitle, describing not only Dylan but all of America at the crossroads. Marcus weaves seamlessly back and forth between analysis of "Like a Rolling Stone" itself and reflections on what it represented for Dylan's artistic career, and from those reflections to further reflections on what Dylan's music represented for the entire culture of the 60s. In Marcus' view, the song is the lynchpin upon which that entire decade's culture hung, and if this isn't strictly true, it feels true, which for Marcus and for music in general is far more important than mere fact.
Marcus is frequently accused of pretentiousness, and this is an accusation with which I won't argue—it's the height of artistic pretentiousness to insist, without irony or artifice, that a single song can really represent the turning point for an entire culture. However, this pretentiousness does nothing to dilute the beauty, passion, and truth of his musings, and if anything only serves to render them more powerful and thrilling. By the time the book reaches its final chapter, a description of the numerous failed takes, and the single successful one, of "Like a Rolling Stone" on the day of its recording—a point to which Marcus has been building, but from which he has steadily held back, for the entire book—you're near breathless. Dylan the man is sick of his legend, and it's understandable—no one really wants to be considered the voice of their generation. But what a legend it is.
June 7, 2022
Manchmal etwas überambitioniert und ausschweifend, daher "nur" 3,5*. Trotzdem bleibt das Buch in meiner ewigen Bibliothek *g*.
April 12, 2009
Greil Marcus has made his name as rock critic by insisting that the tide of History is directly mirrored by the pop music of the period. This can make for exhilarating reading, because Marcus is, if nothing else, an elegant stylist given to lyric evocation, but it is the same elegance that disguises the fact that he comes across a middling Hegelian; the author, amid the declarations about Dylan, The Stones, The Band and their importance to the spontaneous mass revolts of the Sixties, never solidifies his points. He has argued , with occasional lucidity, that the intuitive arrived at metaphors of the artist/poet/musician diagnose the ills of the culture better than any bus full of sociologists or philosophers, and has intimated further that history is a progression toward a greater day.
But what has been aggravating with Marcus since he left the employ of Rolling Stone and began writing full length books and essays for cultural journals is that he chokes when there's a point to be made--he defers, he sidesteps, he distracts, he rather gracelessly changes the subject. Again, this can be enthralling, especially in a book like his massive Lipstick Traces The Secret History of the 20th Century" where he assumes some of Guy DeBord's assertions in Society of the Spectacle and situates rock and roll musicians in a counter-tradition of groups that spontaneously develop in resistance to a society's centralized ossification and mounts an attack, through art, on the perceptual filters that blind the masses to their latent genius.
He never quite comes to the part where he satisfyingly resolves all the mounting, swelling, grandly played generalizations that link Elvis, The Sex Pistols and Cabaret Voltaire as sources of insight geared to undermine an oppressive regime, but the reader has fun along the way. Marcus wants to be a combination of Marcuse and Harold Bloom, and he rarely accomplishes anything the singular criticism either of them produced in their respective disciplines, political philosophy and literary criticism, but he does hit the mark often enough to make him a thinker worth coming back to.
One would wonder about the value of coming back to this man's store front, though, if his book Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. Marcus is one who has written so much about Dylan, or has absorbed so much material about him, that he can produce a reed-thin on one song and pretends that it is much, much more than what it really is. The problem is a lack of thesis, a conceit Marcus at least pretend to have with his prior volumes; depending entirely on third-hand anecdotes, half-recollected memories and a flurry of details gleaned from any one of the several hundred books about Dylan published in the last 30 years, this amounts to little more than what you'd have if you transcribed a recording of the singer's more intense fans speaking wildly, broadly, intensely amongst themselves, by passing coherence for Sturm and Drang. For the rest of us with a saner appreciation of Dylan's importance , Like A Rolling Stone is messily assembled jumble of notes, press clips and over-told stories; Marcus , obvious enough, attempts an impressionist take on the song, but the smell of rehash doesn't recede, ever.
But what has been aggravating with Marcus since he left the employ of Rolling Stone and began writing full length books and essays for cultural journals is that he chokes when there's a point to be made--he defers, he sidesteps, he distracts, he rather gracelessly changes the subject. Again, this can be enthralling, especially in a book like his massive Lipstick Traces The Secret History of the 20th Century" where he assumes some of Guy DeBord's assertions in Society of the Spectacle and situates rock and roll musicians in a counter-tradition of groups that spontaneously develop in resistance to a society's centralized ossification and mounts an attack, through art, on the perceptual filters that blind the masses to their latent genius.
He never quite comes to the part where he satisfyingly resolves all the mounting, swelling, grandly played generalizations that link Elvis, The Sex Pistols and Cabaret Voltaire as sources of insight geared to undermine an oppressive regime, but the reader has fun along the way. Marcus wants to be a combination of Marcuse and Harold Bloom, and he rarely accomplishes anything the singular criticism either of them produced in their respective disciplines, political philosophy and literary criticism, but he does hit the mark often enough to make him a thinker worth coming back to.
One would wonder about the value of coming back to this man's store front, though, if his book Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. Marcus is one who has written so much about Dylan, or has absorbed so much material about him, that he can produce a reed-thin on one song and pretends that it is much, much more than what it really is. The problem is a lack of thesis, a conceit Marcus at least pretend to have with his prior volumes; depending entirely on third-hand anecdotes, half-recollected memories and a flurry of details gleaned from any one of the several hundred books about Dylan published in the last 30 years, this amounts to little more than what you'd have if you transcribed a recording of the singer's more intense fans speaking wildly, broadly, intensely amongst themselves, by passing coherence for Sturm and Drang. For the rest of us with a saner appreciation of Dylan's importance , Like A Rolling Stone is messily assembled jumble of notes, press clips and over-told stories; Marcus , obvious enough, attempts an impressionist take on the song, but the smell of rehash doesn't recede, ever.
August 11, 2009
One stroll through the music section of any bookstore immediately brings to mind one question: Why are there so many freaking books on Bob Dylan? Why are there entire bookshelves devoted to this man and so few about other poets? Why are people not penning books about John Greenleaf Whittier?
(One answer: because Bob Dylan, in addition to having written some of the most astonishing songs in pop history, is the most astute and relentless self-mythologizer since his friend and mentor Johnny Cash; by many accounts, Dylan is apparently something of a prick who has made "never apologize, never explain" an accessory as necessary to his legend as sunglasses and motorcycle boots.)
Like many suburban teenagers, I spent years as a Dylan fanatic--listening to the same dozen or so albums (including bootlegs) over and over and over again, hundreds of times, thousands of times. I don't regret that too much, because that was great music, and, besides, Dylan was my doorway to Baudelaire and Ginsberg and Howling Wolf and Hank Williams. I was almost equally devoted to Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, a grand work of imagination and perception that was every bit as much of a doorway into poetry, history, and music. Over the years I've read a few other Marcus books, and while they've always had their flaws, they were always interesting, always worthwhile.
Except for this one. This is the Greil Marcus book you were always afraid he might write.
With Marcus, there was always the danger that his flights of allusion and imagination might lead him right off into the deep end of the pool, and that he'd wind up wandering around the back yard of rock and roll spewing long ribbons of verbiage about The Platters and the last Sex Pistols concert and Doris Day and Chester Alan Arthur and Elvis's penis. And it finally happened, because this is a book that, frankly, needs a tin-foil hat. It isn't criticism, it's a combination of hero-worship and gushing logorrhea that occasionally veers over the edge of incoherence. Marcus always had a tendency to fill his prose with helium, but his earlier books always had a thesis to serve as a tether (fun vs. puritanism in Mystery Train; influence of the Symbolistes on punk in Lipstick Traces, the links to old-time music in Invisible Republic, etc.), whereas this book seems to be Tiger Beat for the intellectual class; one can't help think that if Marcus had just spent 10 minutes in Bob Dylan's crotch, he could have saved the life of many a pulp tree.
One of the main problems with this book is that if you don't already think that "Like a Rolling Stone" is the greatest song ever, you're not going to be convinced that it is. Rather, you're going to feel like there's a Monty Python fan in the room, nudging you in the arm and saying, "Oooh, oooh, this part is good, this part is good! Listen to this!" I mean, I've probably listened to "Like a Rolling Stone" hundreds of times, and I don't think it's even the best song, or one of the top four songs, on its own album, and nothing in this book made me think otherwise. Look, there's someone out there who feels the same way about Prince or Foghat or Squirrel Nut Zippers, and he could write a similar book, and the only difference would be that a book about a more recent song wouldn't feel like it was another gasp by Boomers telling each other how great the music was back then, man. You know, honestly, I would have preferred a book on Fountains of Wayne.
Oh, and as a final comment: I was at Dylan's new-Christian 1980 Warfield concert that Marcus considers a triumphant, transcendent artistic experience. It wasn't, though. It was shitty, is what it was. So much so that it made me realize that Bob Dylan was just a very talented guy who'd written, years before, some damn fantastic songs, and it was time to move on to X and Black Flag and Elvis Costello and the Talking Heads and....
(One answer: because Bob Dylan, in addition to having written some of the most astonishing songs in pop history, is the most astute and relentless self-mythologizer since his friend and mentor Johnny Cash; by many accounts, Dylan is apparently something of a prick who has made "never apologize, never explain" an accessory as necessary to his legend as sunglasses and motorcycle boots.)
Like many suburban teenagers, I spent years as a Dylan fanatic--listening to the same dozen or so albums (including bootlegs) over and over and over again, hundreds of times, thousands of times. I don't regret that too much, because that was great music, and, besides, Dylan was my doorway to Baudelaire and Ginsberg and Howling Wolf and Hank Williams. I was almost equally devoted to Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, a grand work of imagination and perception that was every bit as much of a doorway into poetry, history, and music. Over the years I've read a few other Marcus books, and while they've always had their flaws, they were always interesting, always worthwhile.
Except for this one. This is the Greil Marcus book you were always afraid he might write.
With Marcus, there was always the danger that his flights of allusion and imagination might lead him right off into the deep end of the pool, and that he'd wind up wandering around the back yard of rock and roll spewing long ribbons of verbiage about The Platters and the last Sex Pistols concert and Doris Day and Chester Alan Arthur and Elvis's penis. And it finally happened, because this is a book that, frankly, needs a tin-foil hat. It isn't criticism, it's a combination of hero-worship and gushing logorrhea that occasionally veers over the edge of incoherence. Marcus always had a tendency to fill his prose with helium, but his earlier books always had a thesis to serve as a tether (fun vs. puritanism in Mystery Train; influence of the Symbolistes on punk in Lipstick Traces, the links to old-time music in Invisible Republic, etc.), whereas this book seems to be Tiger Beat for the intellectual class; one can't help think that if Marcus had just spent 10 minutes in Bob Dylan's crotch, he could have saved the life of many a pulp tree.
One of the main problems with this book is that if you don't already think that "Like a Rolling Stone" is the greatest song ever, you're not going to be convinced that it is. Rather, you're going to feel like there's a Monty Python fan in the room, nudging you in the arm and saying, "Oooh, oooh, this part is good, this part is good! Listen to this!" I mean, I've probably listened to "Like a Rolling Stone" hundreds of times, and I don't think it's even the best song, or one of the top four songs, on its own album, and nothing in this book made me think otherwise. Look, there's someone out there who feels the same way about Prince or Foghat or Squirrel Nut Zippers, and he could write a similar book, and the only difference would be that a book about a more recent song wouldn't feel like it was another gasp by Boomers telling each other how great the music was back then, man. You know, honestly, I would have preferred a book on Fountains of Wayne.
Oh, and as a final comment: I was at Dylan's new-Christian 1980 Warfield concert that Marcus considers a triumphant, transcendent artistic experience. It wasn't, though. It was shitty, is what it was. So much so that it made me realize that Bob Dylan was just a very talented guy who'd written, years before, some damn fantastic songs, and it was time to move on to X and Black Flag and Elvis Costello and the Talking Heads and....
March 8, 2010
Making up for what it lacks in clear narrative with an unabashed fanboy mentality, Like a Rolling Stone... is one of those books that you can pick up and put down at will. None of the segments are very long, and there's no overwhelming need to keep reading. It's light and spends a lot of time rambling and flailing with Dylan adoration, but there are some gems among the essays. Though the ability to put it down and walk away probably leads to a large portion of the readership never returning, this is not a book that should be read in one go. It'll make you nauseous with repetition otherwise.
March 30, 2023
Yo soy fanS tardío de Dylan y lo leo con la misma actitud con la que leo poesía: asumiendo que las palabras no están coleccionadas al puro cuete, pero este hueón… Ponle #color
December 6, 2022
Le doy 3 estrellas porque no sé qué nota poner a este libro y es la que está en medio.
Por una parte, es un libro pretencioso hasta decir basta y NO quisiera echarme jamás a la vista a marcus greil (sin duda cualquier conversación con él terminaría en un monólogo de su parte). Y es que este libro es eso, un monólogo de marcus greil, 100% subjetivo, repetitivo y, en casos, radical.
Pero a pesar de todo, me ha gustado... su estilo pomposo me ha gustado, transmite su pasión por la música, por bob dylan y por like a rolling stone perfectamente, y aunque no quisiera tener jamás una conversación con marcus greil, sí que escucharía un podcast suyo. Me ha interesado muchísimo saber más de esa época de los 50-60 en estados unidos, con la influencia beat, la contracultura y todo lo que vino después. Y como like a rolling stone resume perfectamente todo ello.
Por una parte, es un libro pretencioso hasta decir basta y NO quisiera echarme jamás a la vista a marcus greil (sin duda cualquier conversación con él terminaría en un monólogo de su parte). Y es que este libro es eso, un monólogo de marcus greil, 100% subjetivo, repetitivo y, en casos, radical.
Pero a pesar de todo, me ha gustado... su estilo pomposo me ha gustado, transmite su pasión por la música, por bob dylan y por like a rolling stone perfectamente, y aunque no quisiera tener jamás una conversación con marcus greil, sí que escucharía un podcast suyo. Me ha interesado muchísimo saber más de esa época de los 50-60 en estados unidos, con la influencia beat, la contracultura y todo lo que vino después. Y como like a rolling stone resume perfectamente todo ello.
December 16, 2022
“I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above, "Have mercy, now, save poor Bob if you please" ”
En el centro del remolino hay una canción enorme y que no acaba, que gira (¿girará aún en alguna parte cuando ya no queden tocadiscos?).
Alrededor de esa canción, en el tiempo y el espacio –pero sobretodo en el tiempo– se mueve este libro, adelante y atrás. Quiere acercarse, ver y entender ese centro que lo arrastra y que lo aleja.
Hay muchos libros sobre bandas, movimientos, géneros o grupos. Pero no tantos que se dediquen exclusivamente a una canción. Marcus la narra y no puede sino fracasar a la hora de explicarla por más que, acertadamente o no, lo intente. Pero eso es lo de menos. El misterio está en el cruce de caminos y parece ser cosa del diablo alcanzar a resolverlo.
A pesar de las dificultades, nada le impide al autor desplegar sus enormes conocimientos sobre la canción, su autor, sus amigos, sus compañeros, su vida y sus tiempos. Tan erudito y meticuloso como enmarañado y caprichoso, Marcus recuerda las canciones que, como piedras de toque, pudieron haber llegado rodando hasta las orejas o la mente del autor de la canción, aquellas que puede que estuviesen en la canción antes de la canción. Describe, piensa y analiza la canción a través de todas aquellas que, en algún momento y de algún modo, pudieron acompañarla, rozarla, darle forma (las que sonaban, por ejemplo, a su lado en el mismo LP).
Recuerda también los números 1 que sonaron antes y después así como las revueltas políticas o estéticas –con sus muertos y sus víctimas respectivas– que, quizás, trazan o trazaron un cierto hilo de la Historia desde o hasta la canción, ese acontecimiento único e improbable que sucedió en un momento y un lugar.
La canción sigue sonando. Quien, si alguna vez pudiera, observase aquel centro verá entonces también eso que, de manera inevitablemente irónica, alguien recientemente ha llamado la “Filosofía de la Canción Moderna”.
(N.B.: las canciones no se pueden ver).
*La edición que leí es la editada recientemente por Kultrum pero aún no está en GR. Si algún librero me leyese…🙈
Kultrum lleva ya unos pocos años publicando tremendos textos musicales. Algo raro les pasó aquí o el corrector andaba despistado. Muchas erratas, un aparato bibliográfico y de notas bastante confuso y decisiones no muy comprensibles alguna que otra vez en la traducción incordian un poco de vez en cuando.
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above, "Have mercy, now, save poor Bob if you please" ”
En el centro del remolino hay una canción enorme y que no acaba, que gira (¿girará aún en alguna parte cuando ya no queden tocadiscos?).
Alrededor de esa canción, en el tiempo y el espacio –pero sobretodo en el tiempo– se mueve este libro, adelante y atrás. Quiere acercarse, ver y entender ese centro que lo arrastra y que lo aleja.
Hay muchos libros sobre bandas, movimientos, géneros o grupos. Pero no tantos que se dediquen exclusivamente a una canción. Marcus la narra y no puede sino fracasar a la hora de explicarla por más que, acertadamente o no, lo intente. Pero eso es lo de menos. El misterio está en el cruce de caminos y parece ser cosa del diablo alcanzar a resolverlo.
A pesar de las dificultades, nada le impide al autor desplegar sus enormes conocimientos sobre la canción, su autor, sus amigos, sus compañeros, su vida y sus tiempos. Tan erudito y meticuloso como enmarañado y caprichoso, Marcus recuerda las canciones que, como piedras de toque, pudieron haber llegado rodando hasta las orejas o la mente del autor de la canción, aquellas que puede que estuviesen en la canción antes de la canción. Describe, piensa y analiza la canción a través de todas aquellas que, en algún momento y de algún modo, pudieron acompañarla, rozarla, darle forma (las que sonaban, por ejemplo, a su lado en el mismo LP).
Recuerda también los números 1 que sonaron antes y después así como las revueltas políticas o estéticas –con sus muertos y sus víctimas respectivas– que, quizás, trazan o trazaron un cierto hilo de la Historia desde o hasta la canción, ese acontecimiento único e improbable que sucedió en un momento y un lugar.
La canción sigue sonando. Quien, si alguna vez pudiera, observase aquel centro verá entonces también eso que, de manera inevitablemente irónica, alguien recientemente ha llamado la “Filosofía de la Canción Moderna”.
(N.B.: las canciones no se pueden ver).
*La edición que leí es la editada recientemente por Kultrum pero aún no está en GR. Si algún librero me leyese…🙈
Kultrum lleva ya unos pocos años publicando tremendos textos musicales. Algo raro les pasó aquí o el corrector andaba despistado. Muchas erratas, un aparato bibliográfico y de notas bastante confuso y decisiones no muy comprensibles alguna que otra vez en la traducción incordian un poco de vez en cuando.
January 8, 2025
Im Alter von 25 Jahren schriebe Bob Dylan einen Song, der als einer der einflussreichsten Rocksongs gilt. 2004 wurde er sogar zum besten Song aller Zeiten gewählt. Greil Marcus erzählt in seinem Buch die Geschichte des Songs und der Zeit, in der er entstand.
Zitat
"How does it feel?
To be on your own
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling Stone?"
Wahrscheinlich kennen die Meisten diese Zeilen. Ich persönlich muss sagen, dass mir andere Lieder von Bob Dylan besser gefallen als dieses. Außerdem konnte ich mir nicht vorstellen, dass man über nur ein Leid ein ganzes schreiben kann. Generell gefällt mir die Musik aus den 60er Jahren sehr gut, deshalb war ich neugierig, was der Autor auch darüber erzählen würde.
Das Buch ist nicht nur die Geschichte des Lieds selbst, sondern auch die seines Autors. Für mich hat Greil Marcus den nicht sehr sympathisch beschrieben. Aber das muss er in meinen Augen nicht sein, denn das Werk spricht für sich selbst. Interessant fand ich, wie locker es damals noch auf Konzerten vor und hinter der Bühne zuging und wie Dylan gerade in England Probleme mit dem Publikum und der Öffentlichkeit hatte.
Trotzdem hat mir das Buch weder Song noch Autor näher gebracht. Ich kenne zwar die Geschichte und werde sicherlich auch dran denken, wenn ich ihn das nächste Mal höre. Zu mehr hat mir etwas Marcus' Buch gefehlt.
Zitat
"How does it feel?
To be on your own
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling Stone?"
Wahrscheinlich kennen die Meisten diese Zeilen. Ich persönlich muss sagen, dass mir andere Lieder von Bob Dylan besser gefallen als dieses. Außerdem konnte ich mir nicht vorstellen, dass man über nur ein Leid ein ganzes schreiben kann. Generell gefällt mir die Musik aus den 60er Jahren sehr gut, deshalb war ich neugierig, was der Autor auch darüber erzählen würde.
Das Buch ist nicht nur die Geschichte des Lieds selbst, sondern auch die seines Autors. Für mich hat Greil Marcus den nicht sehr sympathisch beschrieben. Aber das muss er in meinen Augen nicht sein, denn das Werk spricht für sich selbst. Interessant fand ich, wie locker es damals noch auf Konzerten vor und hinter der Bühne zuging und wie Dylan gerade in England Probleme mit dem Publikum und der Öffentlichkeit hatte.
Trotzdem hat mir das Buch weder Song noch Autor näher gebracht. Ich kenne zwar die Geschichte und werde sicherlich auch dran denken, wenn ich ihn das nächste Mal höre. Zu mehr hat mir etwas Marcus' Buch gefehlt.
January 27, 2019
I’m always slightly conflicted when I read Greil Marcus. On the one hand I always find his work entertaining and enjoyable, on the other hand a lot of the time I find him full of sh*t.
I fail to follow him as he tries to connect “Like a Rolling Stone” to works by the Pet Shop Boys. Nothing against the Pet Shop Boys but I just can’t connect those dots. Other times Marcus completely fabricates to make points that do not seem relevant. For instance, he claims that on the cover of the album “Highway 61 Revisited” the picture shows the man standing behind Dylan with the camera hanging from his shoulders and the “camera viewfinder pointing directly at the man’s crotch.” This was apparently shocking enough to provoke someone’s mom to throw the album out of the house on first sight. One look at the cover of this album and you can see that this is just not true. The camera is hanging down by the knees of the man and points to no one’s crotch symbolically or otherwise. I had to ask myself why Marcus wanted to make that stretch.
Having said all that, this book answers and illustrates exactly why the song “Like a Rolling Stone” is one of the most important songs of all time and provides a thorough biography of its creation if you can focus through all of the extra elaborations.
Marcus is always entertaining but maybe best suited to the editorial limitations of the magazine format.
I fail to follow him as he tries to connect “Like a Rolling Stone” to works by the Pet Shop Boys. Nothing against the Pet Shop Boys but I just can’t connect those dots. Other times Marcus completely fabricates to make points that do not seem relevant. For instance, he claims that on the cover of the album “Highway 61 Revisited” the picture shows the man standing behind Dylan with the camera hanging from his shoulders and the “camera viewfinder pointing directly at the man’s crotch.” This was apparently shocking enough to provoke someone’s mom to throw the album out of the house on first sight. One look at the cover of this album and you can see that this is just not true. The camera is hanging down by the knees of the man and points to no one’s crotch symbolically or otherwise. I had to ask myself why Marcus wanted to make that stretch.
Having said all that, this book answers and illustrates exactly why the song “Like a Rolling Stone” is one of the most important songs of all time and provides a thorough biography of its creation if you can focus through all of the extra elaborations.
Marcus is always entertaining but maybe best suited to the editorial limitations of the magazine format.
August 6, 2024
On one level, I'm in awe of Greil Marcus's brass neck - he just writes whatever he wants, leaping from one thought to the next, almost free-associating his cultural memories of Dylan and his various phases and performances. There were points where some of his ridiculous sentences made me want to throw the book across the room. And yet, he really does capture an amazing moment in popular music history, and makes a good case for Dylan being an endlessly fascinating influential genius.
March 14, 2008
Greil Marcus returns to one of his favorite subjects, Bob Dylan.
This time he takes on "Like a Rolling Stone," which he apparently considers as Dylan's masterstroke and probably the greatest song in Rock and Roll history.
Those unitiated to Marcus' work are warned against expecting a straightforward narrative. This is NOT a book for those with a casual interest. Instead, Marcus, in keeping with his usual method, writes for PhD's who live in record stores, delivering a rambling metaphysical analysis of the song and its origins. In the process he makes connections between the song and all manner of cultural events throughout history, some obscure, some less so. Some of these connections make sense, others sound like b.s. and more yet are impenatrable to all but those with vast backlogs of arcane information. Still, that's part of the fun. For Marcus, pop music is more than music. Its some sort of key to the universe. For those who share his passion, his works are a whole lot of fun. For those who don't, its going to seem overcooked at best. Count me with the former.
This time he takes on "Like a Rolling Stone," which he apparently considers as Dylan's masterstroke and probably the greatest song in Rock and Roll history.
Those unitiated to Marcus' work are warned against expecting a straightforward narrative. This is NOT a book for those with a casual interest. Instead, Marcus, in keeping with his usual method, writes for PhD's who live in record stores, delivering a rambling metaphysical analysis of the song and its origins. In the process he makes connections between the song and all manner of cultural events throughout history, some obscure, some less so. Some of these connections make sense, others sound like b.s. and more yet are impenatrable to all but those with vast backlogs of arcane information. Still, that's part of the fun. For Marcus, pop music is more than music. Its some sort of key to the universe. For those who share his passion, his works are a whole lot of fun. For those who don't, its going to seem overcooked at best. Count me with the former.
December 10, 2016
Granted, Greil Marcus may not be the most objective or informative (in a facts and figures way) of rock writers, but I can't think of any other who writes with such passion and eloquence and can really get under the skin of the music in such a personal way. Only Marcus could pen a whole book dedicated to just one song - albeit a six-minute song which marked a definite milestone in the career of Bob Dylan and, along with the other songs on the album it starts, "Highway 61 Revisited", massively influenced the music scene overall; a listen to the subsequent Beatles' and Stones' albums - "Rubber Soul" and "Aftermath" respectively, will easily bear this out.
One of the most alarming facts that Marcus unearths - bearing in mind Dylan's capricious recording methods (whole songs being abandoned if the sessions were not proceeding well) - is that there was a very good chance that "Like A Rolling Stone" would not have been released at all.
One of the most alarming facts that Marcus unearths - bearing in mind Dylan's capricious recording methods (whole songs being abandoned if the sessions were not proceeding well) - is that there was a very good chance that "Like A Rolling Stone" would not have been released at all.
June 16, 2011
I list this under biography because it's the biography of a song. Marcus does what he does best here- his usual style is to start from a moment or a text (a novel or a song or a film, etc) and to then weave outward, building contexts and insights, paradoxes and symbols and so forth until the first instance of interpretation is now encompassing so much more than what was begun.
If this sounds like something which interests you, if you like the idea of art (using the word inclusively here) criticism as an art form in itself, and as a commentary- pop culture as subversive history- Marcus is brilliantly on point here.
People like to make a big show out of how hard or pointless it is to write about music- I've never bought into such thinking and Marcus' succinct yet lyrical writing is an evocative poetics.
March 21, 2012
Me compré la edición en español de este gran libro. Está hermoso, la traducción de Like a Rolling Stone apesta, pero el texto y el cuidado en el diseño de la edición vale cada centavo.
19 de Marzo de 2012: Tras la noticia (que ahorita sigue siendo rumor) de que Dylan regresa a México para principios de mayo, me puse ass on fire y con la calentura me volví a aventar éste libro, en dos noches. Greil Marcus es probablemente el mejor cronista roquero ever.
19 de Marzo de 2012: Tras la noticia (que ahorita sigue siendo rumor) de que Dylan regresa a México para principios de mayo, me puse ass on fire y con la calentura me volví a aventar éste libro, en dos noches. Greil Marcus es probablemente el mejor cronista roquero ever.
dnf
January 6, 2021I love Bob Dylan but this book is so pretentious. It's unreadable. Dylan was very open about not feeling like the voice of a generation, or someone to be admired and deified, and this book does all those things in the most annoying way imaginable. Just the language and sentence structure is enough to make me throw it down. I read Dylan's own Chronicles before this, and that was such a nuanced and interesting portrayal of the period, and this is a mess. Very bad.
February 27, 2017
Still reading and digesting in small doses, as other reviewers have suggested is the best approach. Glad to be in the middle of Marcus' book now in our new and reversionary Time of Trump, who's Inaugural was 2 days ago (as I write this, and so many of us still think we are in a nightmare from which we can't wake up).
Definitely a return to 1965, or something else?
Definitely a return to 1965, or something else?
December 26, 2012
Repetitive, over the top, meandering, thin, pompous--but despite all that, it just grew on me. I was more engaged in the end, the opposite of, say, Michael Gray's massive beaten dead horses...
June 6, 2023
I thought I was done with the book and then realized you actually have to read the works cited page. Most of the entries have annotations, as if we haven’t learned enough about Bob Dylan and 1965, the crossroads of the title and how Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” is the hinge point of western humanity, from buttoned-up Eisenhower conservatism to Nixonian chaos. Some people complain they recognize the words Greil Marcus uses, the language and the sentences he strings together, but they don’t really understand what he’s talking about. I’m not saying I understand it completely either, but I kinda think I do, in my own swirling associative let-it-wash-over-me kind of way. Or maybe I’m just rewriting the book as I go along, with lines like “It’s fun to imagine that half of the millions who were watching were wondering what the song was, and that the rest were so lost in the music they didn’t care — more likely, anyone who did care was split in half.” Sure, we’re split, we’re divided, cleaved like a log, of two minds, ambivalent. Split the binary and explore the roots. But I wouldn’t have the gumption to say it out loud.
One time I introduced myself to Greil Marcus, just after he’d received a standing ovation for his keynote address at the 2019 World of Bob Dylan Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was late in the evening, and he looked tired. I told him I admired his work, and name dropped some other scholars’ works. I rambled into something about Sly and the Family Stone, and a book about Sly Stone from the 33 & 1/3rd series. I guess I wanted Greil’s approval, his attention that might stand as a blessing for my hopes of becoming a music writer, something like him. What he told me was he didn’t like that Sly Stone book because, he said, “It didn’t teach me anything new.” I wasn’t teaching him anything new, either, it was clear, and he excused himself to go sit down.
After his 2023 World of Bob Dylan keynote, this time in the late morning, Marcus didn’t get the same standing ovation, and I didn’t bother trying to ingratiate myself to him afterward either. All the same, he won our hundreds of hearts by attending a full slate of panels that day, paying rapt attention, laughing and nodding along with us, and generally being complimentary and gracious about the whole thing. Frustrating, mesmerizing, and seriously cerebral, Greil Marcus is at the very least nice to have around.
One time I introduced myself to Greil Marcus, just after he’d received a standing ovation for his keynote address at the 2019 World of Bob Dylan Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was late in the evening, and he looked tired. I told him I admired his work, and name dropped some other scholars’ works. I rambled into something about Sly and the Family Stone, and a book about Sly Stone from the 33 & 1/3rd series. I guess I wanted Greil’s approval, his attention that might stand as a blessing for my hopes of becoming a music writer, something like him. What he told me was he didn’t like that Sly Stone book because, he said, “It didn’t teach me anything new.” I wasn’t teaching him anything new, either, it was clear, and he excused himself to go sit down.
After his 2023 World of Bob Dylan keynote, this time in the late morning, Marcus didn’t get the same standing ovation, and I didn’t bother trying to ingratiate myself to him afterward either. All the same, he won our hundreds of hearts by attending a full slate of panels that day, paying rapt attention, laughing and nodding along with us, and generally being complimentary and gracious about the whole thing. Frustrating, mesmerizing, and seriously cerebral, Greil Marcus is at the very least nice to have around.
January 31, 2025
How does it feel?
I found this in Zavvi's closing down sale a few years ago. I've read the author's Mystery Train a couple of times, and appreciated his wide-ranging grasp of the American musical scene coupled with his attention to historical detail. Both of these skills are put to good use in this book as he focuses on the lead-off track on Dylan's classic 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited , describing the recording session in detail, teasing out connections with other music and reviewing the song's historical significance (when it was released as a single, it reached #2 on the US charts and established Dylan as a pop star, in spite of it being six minutes long in a world where singles were invariably less than half this length). To this end, he collects together various comments about the song (the most memorable being Bruce Springsteen's, who said the opening "snare shot [...] sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind") which underline the innovation and originality of the song.
It's an interesting and pleasant read, although I thought the links with other songs were a bit tenuous in places (I'd agree with the other reviewer who found the final link to The Pet Shop Boy's "Go West" hard to fathom). And the fact that the last hundred pages were given over to a transcription of studio chatter during the session, a list of references and an index suggests that there was never really enough material here for a book. Perhaps it would have been different if the author had been able to supplement his interview of Al Kooper (who played at the session) by speaking to Dylan himself about his most famous song, but - perhaps not surprisingly - this didn't come to pass.
Originally reviewed 24 November 2010
I found this in Zavvi's closing down sale a few years ago. I've read the author's Mystery Train a couple of times, and appreciated his wide-ranging grasp of the American musical scene coupled with his attention to historical detail. Both of these skills are put to good use in this book as he focuses on the lead-off track on Dylan's classic 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited , describing the recording session in detail, teasing out connections with other music and reviewing the song's historical significance (when it was released as a single, it reached #2 on the US charts and established Dylan as a pop star, in spite of it being six minutes long in a world where singles were invariably less than half this length). To this end, he collects together various comments about the song (the most memorable being Bruce Springsteen's, who said the opening "snare shot [...] sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind") which underline the innovation and originality of the song.
It's an interesting and pleasant read, although I thought the links with other songs were a bit tenuous in places (I'd agree with the other reviewer who found the final link to The Pet Shop Boy's "Go West" hard to fathom). And the fact that the last hundred pages were given over to a transcription of studio chatter during the session, a list of references and an index suggests that there was never really enough material here for a book. Perhaps it would have been different if the author had been able to supplement his interview of Al Kooper (who played at the session) by speaking to Dylan himself about his most famous song, but - perhaps not surprisingly - this didn't come to pass.
Originally reviewed 24 November 2010
April 14, 2022
Gives a good insight into the world (society, culture, America and music scene) as it was when like a rolling stone was released. This helps provide a better understanding of why this song was so revolutionary and changed music forever. Also an insight into why its not just about a woman but also society itself, particularly Bob's generation and the hippie, love not war, we can change the world movement of that time. Before the summer of love even took place it was starting to crack, Dylan knew it all along and this is a soundtrack to that, aimed at those who truly believed a song could change things. The realisation that those in power will continue to gain wealth, kill JFK and get away with it, continue an unjust war in Vietnam, but not just the fear and anger of this fact but the freedom it brings knowing you are nothing and have nothing to lose.
Also a great part towards the end about idiot wind and how that is the same song but without the freedom and excitement of rolling Stone, just the fear and anger.
Also a great part towards the end about idiot wind and how that is the same song but without the freedom and excitement of rolling Stone, just the fear and anger.
December 26, 2022
No Wonder Dylan Hates Critics
Whatever small virtues Greil Marcus displays here, none of them are holy. This rambling, incoherent diatribe/history of the above song is full of itself, pretentious like Private Eye's Pseud's Corner, proves Dylan right once more. His critics, both terrible and flattering, are full of it.
Whatever fragments of insight are on offer - and there are a few - the effect is ruined by the OTT language and ideas on display. What is unforgivable is the dismissal of Mike Bloomfield, clearly America's best white blues guitarist of the mid-1960's - envied by all, especially Clapton. Without this album, no one would remember him. This insult rankles. So does his insane praise of the Pet Shop Boys whose fey recordings are adored by Marcus. I felt sick reading these passages. It is no great feat to recall the impact of this track, one everyone loves and noticed, but the treatment here is just pathetic.
So Bob, you were right again - these guys don't have much to say, and however artfully they try, its not worth the effort.
Whatever small virtues Greil Marcus displays here, none of them are holy. This rambling, incoherent diatribe/history of the above song is full of itself, pretentious like Private Eye's Pseud's Corner, proves Dylan right once more. His critics, both terrible and flattering, are full of it.
Whatever fragments of insight are on offer - and there are a few - the effect is ruined by the OTT language and ideas on display. What is unforgivable is the dismissal of Mike Bloomfield, clearly America's best white blues guitarist of the mid-1960's - envied by all, especially Clapton. Without this album, no one would remember him. This insult rankles. So does his insane praise of the Pet Shop Boys whose fey recordings are adored by Marcus. I felt sick reading these passages. It is no great feat to recall the impact of this track, one everyone loves and noticed, but the treatment here is just pathetic.
So Bob, you were right again - these guys don't have much to say, and however artfully they try, its not worth the effort.
November 6, 2017
I'm not sure how to accurately review this book. Parts of it I enjoyed (especially the epilogue, which is basically an overview of the recording process for the song, take by take), but other parts felt rambling - and Marcus had a habit of jumping from one decade to the next. One minute you're in 1965, and the next you're in the 2000s, reading about a Dylan-themed radio contest and a movie Dylan did not long after. (And boy, does Marcus love his footnotes.)
I guess what I mean to say is that is Marcus writes like this in every book, I'm not sure if I'll continue reading his work. But I did enjoy the more technical parts, and the historical moments going on when "Like a Rolling Stone" was hitting radio. I just wish it were more organized. Disorganized writing is why I often shy away from music biographies and lean more towards the memoirs.
I guess what I mean to say is that is Marcus writes like this in every book, I'm not sure if I'll continue reading his work. But I did enjoy the more technical parts, and the historical moments going on when "Like a Rolling Stone" was hitting radio. I just wish it were more organized. Disorganized writing is why I often shy away from music biographies and lean more towards the memoirs.
March 7, 2023
Greil Marcus has a wonderful skill of expressing his ideas ab out artists and their works and at times it feels like you might be drowning in beautiful and provocative language. His work is filled with insights, stories, gossip, quotes, recollections and minutia, and depending on the depths of one's interests it can be a treasure trove or or an overwhelming tsunami of debris. Reading this book has oversaturated me and, like after viewing the lousy documentary "The Day the Music Died," I do not want to hear either "Like a Rolling Stone" or "American Pie" for a long while.
I wish Marcus was able to reveal the reason why Tom Wilson was fired and Bob Johnston was hired to replace him as producer of "Highway 61 Revisited."
I did love hearing the stories of Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield's participation in the music.
But really, this is a book for the diehard fan.
I wish Marcus was able to reveal the reason why Tom Wilson was fired and Bob Johnston was hired to replace him as producer of "Highway 61 Revisited."
I did love hearing the stories of Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield's participation in the music.
But really, this is a book for the diehard fan.
August 7, 2024
An origin story of "Like A Rolling Stone" from writing to the recording of Highway 61 Revisited from the self-titled "premiere" music critic Greil Marcus
The Good: My feelings about the Eden Prairie Poet are not a huge secret to anyone who knows me, "Like A Rolling Stone " is essential Mr. Zimmerman and I love that the actual recording session was transcribed into this book as I enjoy seeing how the sausage is made.
The Bad: There are a lot of moments where the author Pats himself on the back about his own genius, taking credit at times for the success of "Like a Rolling Stone" when he had nothing to do with the writing, playing or singing process at all.
C+
I love the subject matter, but the way he went about it was disappointing.
"When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose. You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal."
The Good: My feelings about the Eden Prairie Poet are not a huge secret to anyone who knows me, "Like A Rolling Stone " is essential Mr. Zimmerman and I love that the actual recording session was transcribed into this book as I enjoy seeing how the sausage is made.
The Bad: There are a lot of moments where the author Pats himself on the back about his own genius, taking credit at times for the success of "Like a Rolling Stone" when he had nothing to do with the writing, playing or singing process at all.
C+
I love the subject matter, but the way he went about it was disappointing.
"When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose. You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal."
August 20, 2025
El texto de Marcus es un péndulo literario. En un extremo tiene partes con descripciones excelentes sobre la escena musical apuntalada de datos y rankings musicales que obliga al lector al uso de Spotify para tener todas las referencias de manera fresca a medida que se avanza en el libro. Sin embargo, en el otro extremo está el intento de hacer un análisis literario de las letras y las canciones de Dylan que solo no lleva a un aburrimiento extremos, donde el autor abusa y extrema la interpretación, a veces, exagerada y sin coherencia. Mientras que en la mitad hay partes que son correctas pero no aportan mucho en el dinamismo de la historia. En definitiva, un libro correcto, pero no tan bueno.
August 14, 2023
The idea of dedicating a book to the most beautiful rock song of all time is fascinating. The reconstruction of the song's recording sessions is really interesting. Nice idea of the song that has a life of its own. But too often the book gets lost in bizarre reflections bordering on the understandable.
L'idea di dedicare un libro alla più bella canzone rock di tutti i tempi è affascinante. La ricostruzione delle sessioni di registrazione del brano è davvero interessante. Bella l'idea della canzone che ha una vita propria. Ma troppo spesso il libro si perde in bizzarre riflessioni al limite del comprensibile.
L'idea di dedicare un libro alla più bella canzone rock di tutti i tempi è affascinante. La ricostruzione delle sessioni di registrazione del brano è davvero interessante. Bella l'idea della canzone che ha una vita propria. Ma troppo spesso il libro si perde in bizzarre riflessioni al limite del comprensibile.
November 17, 2023
Unlike, apparently, everyone that Greil Marcus knows, I don’t specifically remember when I first heard “Like a Rolling Stone.” I do, however, remember the first time I read one of his books, the magnificent _Lipstick Traces_.
I don’t think this book makes as strong a case for the world-historical importance of its subject as that one did, but it’s still an enjoyable read. And, for what it’s worth, for years I have skipped “Like a Rolling Stone” whenever I listened to _Highway 61 Revisited_, because it had become, in my mind, almost a parody of Dylan’s brilliance, a small-minded, too-long, and perhaps misogynist rant against some random rich lady. I no longer do, or think that.
I don’t think this book makes as strong a case for the world-historical importance of its subject as that one did, but it’s still an enjoyable read. And, for what it’s worth, for years I have skipped “Like a Rolling Stone” whenever I listened to _Highway 61 Revisited_, because it had become, in my mind, almost a parody of Dylan’s brilliance, a small-minded, too-long, and perhaps misogynist rant against some random rich lady. I no longer do, or think that.
December 12, 2021
I read /Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads/, by Greil Marcus:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
Ms. Marcus discusses the changing times and music in the 1960s, partially through the lens of Bob Dylan, his lyrics and music, and in particular, Like a Rolling Stone (which entered the charts July 24th, 1965).
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
Ms. Marcus discusses the changing times and music in the 1960s, partially through the lens of Bob Dylan, his lyrics and music, and in particular, Like a Rolling Stone (which entered the charts July 24th, 1965).
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