Like a Rolling Stone

When Bob Dylan sat down to write Like a Rolling Stone, he had just returned from an exhausting tour of England. He felt the public’s expectations and the direction of his career were suffocating him to the point of considering leaving music altogether. Yet, from that state of exhaustion and discontent emerged a ten-page text, which he himself described as an initial “vomit.” It had no title, no song structure—just a buildup of ideas about a “constant hatred directed at a point that was honest.” It was at the piano, while working on that material, that the phrase “How does it feel?” began to take slow, deliberate shape, as if swimming through lava. This process, partially captured in footage from his stay at London’s Savoy Hotel, marked a turning point.

The recording of Like a Rolling Stone, which took place on June 16, 1965, at Columbia Studios in New York, was not straightforward. Initially, it was attempted in 3/4 time, but the essence eluded them. The breakthrough came when it was approached as a rock song, and session musician Al Kooper improvised a Hammond organ riff that became a defining element. Despite its length—over six minutes, long for the era—and its electric sound, which initially worried Columbia Records, the song was released as a single. Airplay in a music club and the intervention of influential DJs propelled it to the charts, reaching number 2 on the Billboard and number 1 on Cashbox, becoming a global hit. The magazine Rolling Stone ranked it first on its lists of the greatest songs of all time in 2004 and 2010.