Did Bob’s Miss Lonely, his diplomats and Siamese cat, rock your world? They did mine!
It was on July 20 1965 that Bob released Like a Rolling Stone. It brought fear to the world and fury to my dad.
The single was stupendous, noisy, rallying, subversive, hectoring, finger-pointing, vicious, told it like it was (is?), frightened authorities and sent parents into despair.
It also galvanised fans into joining opposing camps.
On the one hand the folksy ear-cupping folk who believed history was more important than a psychedelic future.
On the other, a band of pop fans with their small faces and Lambrettas!
But they all missed the point all those years ago… Bob Dylan, with this 45 rpm disc, had created a multi-layered masterpiece. A long poem, a homage to Beat stream-of-consciousness, a coruscating look at society, the rich and poor, those empty and lonely people in clinging fogs of amphetamine and city street fumes.
But – and not many caught on back then – by putting the pulsating, raw and acoustic Gates of Eden on the B-side he had stayed true to his folk roots, gone 50/50 with the old and the new and protested with new sophistication.
And it pulled together so many forms of music it was a major step in his determination to create a living museum of the greatest from Phil Spector to John Jacob Niles.
Rolling Stone never made it to No 1, its rightful place in modern musical history, getting to No 2 in the US and No 4 in the UK.
But this song made Bob what he is still today – a hero and a villain and a rebel. So much a villain that insults were hurled at him and his band all over the world.
The worst was when the right-on folkies and pompous pointless protesters cheered the man who shouted ‘Judas!’ at Bob, a Jew.
Dylan’s response was “You’re a liar!” and them he turned to his band and shouted “play f—ing loud.”
Bringing it all back home
Bob hit his marketplace though as all the controversy raged, even in the dank dirty streets of big cities, like my hometown of Manchester in the UK.
Two-ups-and-two-downs, cobbled street cottages, high-rise council flats, aspirational semis, they all were throwing shadowy shapes of protest or perceived freedom.
Then Like a Rolling Stone made it onto Top of the Pops and the catalyst for the great divide between the old (man) and the new (kid on the block) burst from the tiny television screen in the corner of our lounge.
I was 12, I was hormonal. And 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 daddy vomited stream-of-consciousness invective, fury and sheer hate.
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.
Daddy had come face to face with the Young Generation of the 60s, they were marching on the streets he had inhabited as a handcart pusher.
He didn’t like Rolling Stone.
But I did!
And today the controversy remains … the world’s most incendiary protest song?
I think so – what do you think?
#BOBDYLAN #likearollingstone #burnett #blowinginthewind #tambourineman #auctionblock #auction
