Customer Reviews

Like a Rolling Stone

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

A whole book about one song? If there's a song that deserves it, it's Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," but this is Greil Marcus, and there's a lot of history, social context and cultural detritus here beyond the song, no surprise. The first section of the book is on the social context into which the song was launched, the middle section is about the making of the song itself, and the last section is about its reception and effects.

I found some of Marcus's cultural commentary compelling and some not so compelling -- the highlights for me are the less disputable "facts" about the great song itself, recorded on June 15, 1965 and released on July 24, 1965. It stormed the pop charts, unprecedented for a 6-minute song, and reached #2 in the USA. What was #1, you ask? It was the Beatles' "Help!" Al Kooper's story of how he ended up playing organ is quite amusing, and Dylan's recruitment and use of Michael Bloomfield in the session is fascinating. Also superb is Marcus's account of the ensuing tour of the new electric Dylan, with the booing in the U.S. and the large-scale disruption of the U.K. concerts, some of it quite purposefully organized by the old British Communist Party, as it turns out, which controlled a network of stodgy folk clubs. "Like a Rolling Stone" was the last song every night on that tour, a perfect howl of anger for Dylan to wreak vengeance on his recalcitrant fans. (See my 9/5/04 review of the LIVE 1966 disc, the official release of the famous "Royal Albert Hall" bootleg of the Manchester concert.)

Once you realize the scope of Marcus's musings, it becomes clear that this book could have been much longer. He never devotes any attention to the fact that the song was an existentialist anthem, for instance, which might have involved analysis of the existentialists and their influence on Dylan. He doesn't have much to say about the class resentment that drives much of the song's powerful angry energy, or the vast and growing inequality in the the U.S. that might make that resentment more and more relevant at 40 years on, as the old New Deal programs are under full-scale assault by the president and congress. Dylan himself said "I was hungry, and it was your world" ("Just Like a Woman"), he also said "Papa's bankbook wasn't big enough" ("Tangled Up In Blue"), both references to the fact that he, a middle class boy, had entered a higher status world, and experienced class resentment. Much could have been made of the social context of the Vietnam War, and Dylan's refusal to address it. The turn from the left-wing politics of his folk period (for civil rights, against war) to the apolitical, surrealist stance he took in 1964-5 is never seriously tackled. Some of Marcus's musings are quite idiosyncratic -- of all the music that has followed "Like a Rolling Stone" he chooses the Village People and the Pet Shop Boys for special treatment. I would have chosen at least a thousand others first, but there you go, it's a wide world for cultural influence, and there's 40 years to work with. He mentions, and includes the entire text of, a great old early '70s comedy skit that they used to play on WXRT in Chicago with Dylan pitching a K-Tel album of Golden Protest. An Italian rap group's version of The Song from MASKED AND ANONYMOUS is analyzed at some length.

I can now easily imagine books about Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" quite different from this one. But they haven't been written. I'll close with a quote from Dylan himself from 2004:

"It's like a ghost is writing a song like that. It gives you the song, and then it goes away, it goes away."

Here lies a biography of a single song. Of course, not just any song, but the "how does it feeeeeel?" song that refuses to disappear since its release as a two-sided 45 in 1965. Has any other or, maybe a better question would be, can any other song receive the in-depth, subterranean, data mined, ultra-nuanced treatment that Greil Marcus gives to Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone"?

That the song remains legendary no one probably doubts. That it stands as one of the greatest rock songs ever recorded may also not meet with much dissidence. But over two-hundred pages on a single song? The idea alone entices a read.

So what happens in this book? And why should anyone read it? First off, this book likely won't appeal to those who don't see a connection between popular music, popular culture, how it potentially affects our lives as consumers/listeners, and how a song can take on a life of its own (which explains the "biography" moniker - this book really tries to capture the life the song took on all by itself). Some of the claims this book makes seem a little far out. Did "Like A Rolling Stone" contain seeds for a "strange revolution"? Does the song have, for lack of a better term, a metaphysical category all of its own (as some of the descriptions and rhapsodies in this book suggest) that seems unreachable and ineffable? Those who like to put on music, dance to it, and not think about it will probably close this book quickly. In other words, it's a heady book for those who want to dig into the mystique of popular music and theorize about what makes it tick. Marcus descends to levels of granularity that don't seem possible when chatting about popular music. Some of the chapters read thickly, and, without a share of Marcus' knowledge, some of the references approach the incomprehensible.

Still, this rather short book bloats with interesting historical tidbits about Dylan, the song, the origins of the song, multifarious perspectives on the song, readings of the song's lyrics, the recording of the song, and some of its concert history. Some of these contain new information (songs in which "Rolling Stone" have appeared, the history of Highway 61 - the actual physical highway, the pop and culture scene of the early 1960s - for those of us who weren't there, at least). Others will seem very familiar to hard core Dylan fans (the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where the crowd booed Dylan, Al Kooper sneaking into the studio, the infamous "Judas!" remark). The book's epilogue contains almost a play-by-play of the recording session for the song. It reveals glimpses of how it almost got away from the group. But was take 4 an "accident" as Marcus claims?

A few things don't receive mention: Dylan included a strange and sloppy version of "Like A Rolling Stone" on the monolithic and bizarre "Self-Portrait". What was that all about? And what about Dylan's song "Highway 51 Blues" from his first album. What highway was that and can any connection be drawn from that song to the 1965 album? Also, Marcus quotes the line "Highway 61, go right past my baby's door" on page 167. This line appears in the song "Highway 51 Blues" but as "Highway 51, go right past my baby's door." Did he mix the two up or is there some assumed and implied historical knowledge in that passage?

It's hard to describe what this book offers. For one, it contains loads of philosophical speculation about the song. It also bequeaths a wealth of information on this single subject. So much so, that upon finishing it, the loads of information mingle in the brain with other facts and snippets of the song (try not singing "how does it feeeel" continuously). Is the song as significant as Marcus makes it out to be? The answer to and degree of that question depends on the person asking it. In the end, this book is not for everyone. It's a specialist's book. Those who find themselves wondering about how a song goes from studio to legend or how an artist deals or struggles with a song as it takes on legendary water will likely love every page. Those that want to dance or groove should close the book and turn on their stereos. Nonetheless, it may also shine a light on the phenomema of popular music and its mystical and capricious side. There's more to a great song than notes, after all.

I have read (elsewhere) that at the height of his reign as King of Greenwich Village in 1963-64, Bob Dylan literally couldn't order lunch without fans looking for a deeper meaning in his words. "Gimme a ham and cheese on pumpernickel, hold the mayo, please." "What does he MEAN by that?" After reading this book, I have to wonder if Greil Marcus was among those who were so obsessed.

Which is not to say I didn't like the book. Marcus' evocation of what transpired in Columbia's Studio A on June 16, 1965 is quite possibly the best account I've ever read of any recording session. He really makes a gallant effort not only to describe the atmosphere at the creation of "Like A Rolling Stone" down to its minor details, but to demonstrate how many seemingly irrelevant circumstances played as much of a part in the song's greatness as the words and chords did. I would have liked to hear more about how Al Kooper (whom Marcus interviewed extensively for the book) created his fabled organ riff out of scratch, reportedly without having ever played the instrument before; but of course that subject has been covered extensively elsewhere.

Marcus' analysis of the music as well as the words is also impressive, although sometimes he necessarily resorts to "it's just brilliant because it is." In discussing the gunshot-like drumbeat that opens the song, he acknowledges that numerous other songs have used the same effect (notably The Beatles' "Any Time at All," which preceded "Like A Rolling Stone" by almost a year, and Dylan's own "From a Buick 6"), but concludes, "I am sticking to my guns. There is nothing like it." I agree, and I must admit I couldn't explain why any better than Marcus does.

The problem is, none of this occurs until about 80 pages into the book. Before that point, there are some interesting thoughts on earlier works like "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream;" but you also have to slog through a chapter length recount of Dylan's movie, "Masked and Anonymous," which is unnecessary if you've seen the movie and impenetrable if you haven't. His setting of the stage for the music world that "Like A Rolling Stone" changed is also less than convincing. Yes, as he notes, the top 40 in the spring of 1965 had its share of inanities from the likes of Herman's Hermits and Gary Lewis and the Playboys. But every era in music history has produced some wonderful songs and some terrible ones, and there's nothing unusual about the latter being the bigger hits. (If anything, the `60s probably had the lowest rate of that unfortunate phenomenon in rock history.) "Like A Rolling Stone" was magnificent, but it wasn't nearly that earth-shattering.

The book rambles on for about 50 pages after the story behind the song, but what follows is more worthy than what came before. His account of Dylan's 1965-66 tour is quite good, and if he sheds no new light on the "Did they boo him at Newport?" controversy, he also doesn't repeat any of the many discredited rumors about that fateful performance. His analysis of "Desolation Row" is also terrific, if not really relevant to the book's official subject.

It's worth reading, but be prepared to want to yell "A sandwich is just a sandwich, Mr. Marcus!" on occasion.

Greil Marcus is back and returning 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.

Marcus, especially in this book, reminds me of James Agee. Not Agee the reactionary film critic, but the ecstatic Agee of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - the way he could look deeply and lovingly at a sharecropper's cabin and find every splinter and stain luminous and profoundly human and dignified. Check out Agee's riff about listening to Beethoven with your head crammed into the speaker and cranking it up until it hurts. When Marcus digs into his obsessions it can be like that, revealing details of perception and levels of feeling that you can't imagine having missed.

On the downside, Marcus also shares Agee's tendency to lapse into rambling and grandiosity, and the words can pile up and stumble over themselves, leaving you wondering what the hell he's talking about. He has so many ideas and passions, and wants to draw connections between his subject and so many other things. When it works it can be fascinating, but sometimes it's a bit of a stretch, and you wish he would at least not try to cram them all into one sentence/paragraph/page. In this book especially, I often found myself wishing for a stronger editorial hand to rein him in and clear up some of the log jams. It raises an interesting question about how far you can push journalism in the direction of literature and have it still be effective. After all, Agee's great tome began as a magazine article that got out of hand...

But I like to watch Marcus' mind at work, even when he goes off the deep end. He's one of my favorite writers to argue with; I may occasionally think he's full of it, but I admire the effort. When so much music writing is either lame fanboy drivel, shallow blurbage, or arid academic nonsense, it's a pleasure to read someone both passionate and scholarly who is prepared to dig so deeply, to stake a claim that this music (whatever it is - in this case Dylan's) really matters.

This reader thought he knew this era-shattering Dylan song and its contexts; but this book kept enriching it start to finish, and showed as well how it nearly did not happen, could have easily been abandoned in the drafts of the studio or the maze of putting Bloomfield and Kooper in on it. I was a CT kid in the shadows of Forest Hill concert, and in truth I was applauding that electric guitar like it was some Blakean breakthrough into the heavens of poetry, same thing when I heard the Byrds sing Turn Turn Turn or Tambourine Man. Re Dylan, Marcus keeps raising spectral contexts out of the airwaves, shows how the song breaks into the `great time' and afterlife of music created by Sam Cooke and Robert Johnson. This books shows how Dylan was using the top 40 as an access into that depth of folk-pop poetry coming out of the future, making a future America happen in the present, endure as a legacy and obligation. I can see how a poet such as Dylan would be grateful for such a reading, breaking his poetry into the invisible republic of the spirit.

This is about Bob Dylan, based on the title of his most famous song, or maybe about his music and others who also sang his songs. Or maybe it is about the culture and trends of that time, or about the uncertainty of American cultural identity. I don't know. I was left puzzled and a bit frustrated.

The author writes very impressionistically, and it is sometimes hard to tell what he is talking about. He includes some interesting details about particular songs and their performances, but this is not a chronological epic. The author jumps around and uses creative associations and metaphors.

Thus it is difficult to relate one song to another, one event to another, to get a picture of what was really happening in Dylan's life and music or in the culture around him, to which his music supposedly speaks. I kept feeling like something was about to happen, to be revealed, to unfold dynamically out of the somewhat surreal scatter of events, people, places and songs. But it never happened.

No culminating event occurred; no point was ever made. No summarizing reflection ever arrived to clarify the muddle and tie the pieces together.

Marcus seems to present some keen insights about Dylan (real name Robert Zimmerman) and the times, and many other music groups and songs, events and places, trends and impressions, but most of the time it is not clear just what the insight is.

Maybe that is the insight, as a commentary on the times and the spirit Dylan is thought to represent. Is this an ode to one song; a tribute to the writer-singer? A personal flight of skittish memory clips?

Somewhat frustrating reading on what would have been a good topic.

Unless you are so into Dylan you just can't miss anything, I wouldn't recommend this book. This author gets really out there, perhaps trying to be prophetic or mysterious like Dylan himself. I learned a few things I didn't know. It's more a psycho - cultural - spiritual - abstract muse on the times and how the song fit the changes of the times than anything else. I had the sense the author may have been a bit high when he wrote it.

This probably a 4 1/2 star book. Marcus is an eminent Dylanologist. He was part of a symposium on Dylan at the Skirbal, near LA.
Marcus not only dissects the Highway 61 Sessions, but goes deeply into a discussion of Blues and R& B Music. He discusses Clyde McPhatter and the various groups that Clyde was part of, which pleased me greatly. (You can Still find the Drifters "White Christmas" on Juke Boxes today.)
Though I didn't understand the section on takes. It seems that none of the 15 takes were satisfactory, so what take was released? 16Th?

There are many interesting facts regarding the cultural and musical importance of this song and many good anectodes from the studio. However, the interesting parts could have made a decent magazine article (and have already) while the rest is quite rambling and bloated. Still, a decent enough book and if you don't know much about the song or its importance, not a waste of time.