Like a Rolling Stone, A Few Memories, Revisited

Notice anything unusual about this record sleeve? This was the 45 rpm of Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" which was released in the summer of 1965. Side One is Part 1 of the song and Side Two is Part 2.

If you weren't there in that time frame, when we were collecting 45s, you probably wouldn't have known about this unusual record that you had to turn over to hear the whole song. When you look on Wikipedia, they don't even show the first pressing of "Like a Rolling Stone," the single. Instead, you'll find a photo of another version of the 45, with this song on Side A and "Gates of Eden" on the B-side. 

The song has a legendary history. According to one Dylan interview, the song's reception by the public gave both the creator and his career a major boost. It also catapulted Al Kooper from being like a complete unknown to "that guy who created the memorable organ track on one of the great songs of history." Kooper was a 21-year-old guitar player who "just happened to be there." When the organ player was moved to piano, Kooper audaciously filled the empty seat at the organ. (Evidently "nature abhors a vacuum" even in a studio.)

It's no secret that Rolling Stone magazine took its name from the song and decades later named it #1 on its list of 500 Greatest Songs. (Fwiw, their most recent list bumped Dylan down to fourth with Aretha Franklin in the supreme slot.)

When I was in junior high school at Hillside School, Bridgewater, NJ, the school dances were held in the auditorium with a record player on the stage and a DJ making selections from stacks of 45s all laid out on a table. Every record was three minutes, and "Like a Rolling Stone" was six minutes. This meant you could slow dance for twice as long when this song played. Yes, this is kind of a strange song to dance to, but it was slow enough for a two-step, and who really cared what the lyrics were when we were 13. I would go ask Nancy Black if she would dance with me and it seemed like she always did. 

These were the days when teachers stood around the dance floor with rulers in their hands to make sure you were not closer than a foot apart. (They were probably used to measure hemlines as well, which were supposed to be no more than an inch above the knee, if I remember correctly.) For the record, I was too shy to talk to Nancy, either while dancing or while off the dance floor. 

The point of that story is this, though. It seems like I remember the DJ having to turn the record over to finish the song. And yet, according to Wikipedia, these 45s with two verses on the front and two on the back only circulated amongst radio disc jockeys, and the public got the pressing of a 45 with "Gates of Eden" on the back? Is my memory faulty? Can anyone definitively help me with that. 

Greil Marcus points out in his book about this song, subtitled Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, that Like a Rolling Stone was not the first record that took up two sides of a record. In 1959 In 1959 both Ray Charles ("What'd I Say") and the Isley Brothers ("Shout") released records that needed to be flipped. 

As for Nancy Black, if you see her, say hello. (She might be in Tangiers.)

* * *

The song became the opening track on one of the great albums of all time, Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan's mid-sixties albums opened whole new territory with regard to the possibilities of rock and roll. But that's another story. 

In 2014 the handwritten lyrics of this song sold for two million dollars. You can read more about that here:

 

Going Once, Going Twice, Sold! Two Million Dollars for Handwritten Draft of Dylan's Original Lyrics to Like a Rolling Stone

Flashback Friday: Off the Record, An Oral History of Popular Music

The late Tom Petty

Imagine that you have been invited to a huge party, and when you get there everyone is a somebody... a Somebody in the history of pop music. Who do you talk to first? Do you walk around looking for your favorites first? Or do you just saunter around talking with whoever you run into next?

 

That's what it's like to pick up the book Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music.

Obviously a party like that can only be assembled by someone with connections. In this case the author is Joe Smith, who happened to be president and CEO of Capitol Industries-EMI (the same ones who signed the Beatles, Dylan and so many more.) Before this he had been president of Warner Bros./Reprise and Elektra. A Yale grad who became a popular and successful disc jockey, Smith seems like just the right guy to gather all these other pop celebs under one roof.

The book is handled just right. There are no long interviews. Like the party, you can bounce around for a brief spell with Tom Petty, then George Harrison, Little Richard, Ray Charles. Over here is Dylan and is that Yoko Ono? Oh yes, talking with Joni Mitchell, Phil Collins and Ella Fitzgerald. Joan Baez, Robert Plant and James Taylor seem to be enjoying themselves over there with Tina Turner and David Bowie. Then you see the jazz guys, Lionel Hampton, Stan Getz and Dave Brubeck staring out the window onto the lawn where Quincy Jones is listening to Robbie Krieger, Mary Travers, Frankie Valli, Al Kooper and Herbie Hancock. Donovan pensively listens to John Fogerty and David Lee Roth. Judy Collins seems to be reminiscing with Graham Nash and Stephen Stills. Lou Rawls and Tom Petty can't seem to get enough of Henry Mancini.

O.K., you get the picture. And the stories they tell are fascinating because pop culture has played a role in all of our lives.

My bedtime reading ended with Mike Nesmith talking about the Monkees. They were not a music group, they were characters on a television show. The purpose of the show was not to end up with hit records, he says. But one day they're driving along in the car and hear that their song Last Train to Clarksville is #2 on the national charts. Nesmith says the very notion of it was bizarre. Suddenly everything changed.

Jimi

The Monkees were shipped to London to prepare for a road tour as a music group, but they weren't really sure about how they really felt, nevertheless they followed through. One strange quirk about the tour was having Jimi Hendrix open for them. Mickey Dolenz had heard Hendrix in a London club and made the recommendation, which Nesmith off-handedly thought was O.K., sight and sound unseen. When they arrive in Raleigh, North Carolina, to do their first gig, the Hendrix trio is mind blowing, even in appearance, but the teeny bopper screamers are there only for one purpose, and it's not the Experience of Jimi Hendrix.

Nesmith says he disguised himself and went into the crowd to snatch a listen. He'd never heard anything like it. "It was the most exhilarating, the most majestic, the most entertaining, the most fulfilling music I'd ever heard," said Nesmith.

But the mismatch was self-evident and after eight gigs Jimi had had it. The girls were chanting, "We want the Monkees," and in the middle of a song the most incredible guitar player of a generation left the stage in the middle of a song, disgusted.

For the record, this book offers a lot. It's real, it's intimate, up close and personal. Recommended.

You can find the book here on Amazon

Illustrations by the author