Like a Rolling Stone

Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads by Greil Marcus: 'Marcus seems to understand Dylan and the song intuitively. His ideas burn with a fierce intelligence and the song takes on a new life in that crucible.' (Hanif Kureishi)

In 1965, one song defined a generation caught the questing spirit of the era and changed the rules of the possible in popular music for all time. This book captures the heady atmosphere of the recording studio in 1965 as witnessed by many clustered around the mercurial genius from Minnesota.

Sardonic, bitter, threatening, compassionate, gleeful, and most of all loud, 'Like a Rolling Stone' is much more than a song. Six minutes and six seconds in length, it was released by Dylan despite the received wisdom of the day as to what constituted a single.

Originally published on the 40th anniversary of its release and recording, Greil Marcus' extraordinary book reconstructs the context in which the song first appeared, in terms of Dylan's own career (his controversial transformation from folk singer into rock n roll singer) and the world at large (Vietnam, the Watts Riots, the burgeoning counter-culture of the time). This is itself the stage for Marcus' recreation of the song on the page - its emergence from fragments, its words, its sound, its discovery of itself.
An analysis and critique of an artist at the height of his creative powers, it affords a unique insight into the mistakes, inspirations and bloody mindedness that come together only in the very highest cultural moments.