DAD’S RAGIN’ FURY AS BOB’S LYRICS MADE ME LIKE A ROLLING STONE
By the hormonal age of 12 I was furious.
But the man who had shot white stripes of harsh reality across my young acned and blood-rush universe was even angrier.
It might have been the cider he drank sprawled across the couch.
But when Bob’s Like a Rolling Stone burst out of our telly – after it reached No 2 in the UK charts – Daddy vomited invective, fury, sheer hate. And it was all aimed at the new Voice of the World’s Wild Children.
And Bob careened and wheeled and spun and howled (better than any Norwegian painting) out of the tinny speaker as nubile girls in flowery pelmets gyrated on the flickering screen.
But there was a distinct fear in my dad’s bleary moustach-eod face. His eyes were burning with an emotion I don’t think he’d ever faced before …
Daddy had come face to face with the Young Generation of the 60s, they were marching on the dirty rainy streets he inhabited as a builder.
He didn’t like it.
But I did!
Then his handwritten lyrics for Like a Rolling Stone and the total escapist Mr Tambourine Man were sold. Rolling Stone alone is worth well over a million. While the Tambourine Man lyrics are set at half that.
The lyrics are written on parchment paper and feature scratched-out words. Blowing in the Wind lyrics with Dylan’s signature dated 2011 were expected to bring $150,000.
In June 2014, Sotheby’s sold a hand-written “Like a Rolling Stone” manuscript for $2.045 million, including the buyer’s premium. Sotheby’s said the document it sold was “the only known surviving draft of the final lyrics for this transformative rock anthem.”
But the lyrics were written on Roger Smith Hotel Washington, D.C. stationary.
But the next big Dylan auction will be on July 7 at Christie’s, when the new recording of “Blowin’ in the Wind” made on a new “Iconic Original” format pioneered by T Bone Burnett is put up for sale. It’s expected to sell between $725,000 and $1.2 million.
This is Dylan’s first studio recording of “Blowin’ in the Wind” since 1962. The new recording will only be available to hear at appointment-only listening sessions, first in Los Angeles on June 8, then in New York on June 15.
#BOBDYLAN #likearollingstone #burnett #blowinginthewind #tambourineman #auctionblock #auction
4 Replies to “DAD’S RAGIN’ FURY AS BOB’S LYRICS MADE ME LIKE A ROLLING STONE”
Tom Lubart
go to him he calls you, you can’t refuse .
3 comments
Iain Jones
I was sitting outside my grandmother’s porch idly listening to the new releases on a transistor radio my parents had bought me for my fifteenth birthday. It was a Sunday, that much I remember, and The moment that snare kicked in I was transfixed. Dylan literally snarled those opening lyrics and I was transfixed. I’d not heard anything like it before; and by the time Al Kooper’s Hammond organ kicked in on the chorus I realised this was possibly the greatest thing on vinyl I’d ever heard. I was aware of Dylan: Times They Are-A-Changin’ and Subterranean Homesick Blues were both known to me, but I was listening to Donovan at the time: Catch The Wind and Colours were both in my growing record collection. The Byrds Mr Tambourine Man was also in my collection. I was aware Dylan had written it and was fascinated by the lyrics – albeit clueless as to their meaning. I loved The Stones, The Animals, The Searchers, Kinks, Move, Who – The Fab Four left me cold at the time, couldn’t see the appeal that set schoolgirls screaming and swooning at their concerts.. Rolling Stone opened my mind to new lyrical possibilities. A new generation was already cottoning on to what Dylan had already achieved. I bought Bringing It All Back Home with what was left of my birthday money and that album blew me away – still does. But it was Like A Rolling Sone that opened my mind. My fav Dylan song? Maybe. it changes daily, but I’ve requested when my time comes that song is played at my funeral
3 comments
Bardbandit Michael
Would LARS have had the widespread influence that it did had it never been released as a single? Would it have been “just” a great song on a great album.
I was 15 when it came out. I couldn’t afford LPs at the time, singles were the main thing. They were affordable and accessible. You heard the songs on the radio, tv and the jukebox. It was quite an event when LARS was released. Nobody had ever put out a 6 minute single before. That alone garnered attention and was enough for me to play it in the listening booth and buy it. The song certainly had an impact like a smack in the face. I’d never heard anything so venomous on vinyl before, but it was heaven to my teenage ears and fodder for my youthful angst.
I didn’t really know what I was listening to, or what it all really meant, but I knew Like A zRolling Stone was important and I was compelled to listen to it. Did it change my life? Well, it did lead me to giving his LPs a listen and buying them when I could afford them. My life and they way I looked at the world and the way I listened to music did change as a consequence. I had recently dropped out of high school, but Dylan was where my real education began.