"Like a Rolling Stone" is a song by American songwriter Bob Dylan. One of his best-known and most influential works, the song had its origin as a short story Dylan had written before developing it as a song and recording it in 1965.
Dylan stated in an interview with CBC radio in Montreal that he found himself writing "this long piece of vomit, 20 pages long, and out of it I took 'Like a Rolling Stone' and made it as a single. And I never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that was... that was what I should do. After writing that, I wasn't interested in writing a novel or a play or anything, like I knew like I had too much, I wanted to write songs."
The track was released as a single in July 1965, and also appeared on Dylan's album Highway 61 Revisited. At over six minutes in length, it was only tentatively played in its entirety on the radio, yet it managed to reach #2 on the charts. It received criticism by some of Dylan's fans for its harder rock sound, a noticeable difference from the artist's earlier folk music.
The song dramatically affected the music world and popular culture, as well as Dylan's image and iconic status. It has been covered by a number of artists, including a notable version by Jimi Hendrix.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked it the greatest song of all time. In his 1988 speech inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Bruce Springsteen recalled, "The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody had kicked open the door to your mind."
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