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Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone was recorded at Columbia Records studio on Seventh Avenue in New York and released on July 20, 1965.
Dylan said when he wrote the song it was ten 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.
With this song Dylan became “a public symbol of the cultural, political and generational changes taking place in the United States and Europe,” write Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon in their definitive masterpiece Bob Dylan All the Songs. The song became a worldwide hit.
Like a Rolling Stone, said Paul McCartney, “seemed to go on and on forever. It was beautiful. He showed all of us that it was possible to go a little further.”
Dylan himself said it was favorite song and the best he’d ever written. The original manuscript of the song was sold for $2-million at an auction in New York in June, 2014.
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People call, say, “Beware doll you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal
How does it feel?
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
Nobody’s ever taught you how to live out on the street
And now you’re gonna have to get used to it
But now you realize, he’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say, “Do you want to make a deal?”
How does it feel?
To be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone
On the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you
Never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discover that he really wasn’t where it’s at?
After he took from you everything he could steal
How does it feel?
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone
They’re all drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you better take your diamond ring, you better pawn it babe
And the language that he used, go to him now he calls you
You can’t refuse, when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
How does it feel?
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone