100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #14 Bob Dylan – Like A Rolling Stone

Released: 1965

Bob Dylan going electric sounds like one of those things which really shouldn’t have been a big deal, but it was. When the to that point folk aristocrat took to the stage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band the shock waves were palpable; the singer to double down on his heresy kept his plans a complete secret from the public.

Dylan had played rock n’ roll covers in high school of course, but supposedly found them not serious. To make the transition worth his while the electrified material would need to have gravity, and released prior to Newport his fifth album Bringing It All Back Home confirmed him as an extraordinary songwriter whether plugged in or not.

His next, Highway 61 Revisited ended any kind of debate. Like A Rolling Stone opened it, a six minute jolt of catharsis for a man who’d become jaded by expectation. After a torturous writing process the singer drafted in Al Kooper and blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield; of drummer Bobby Gregg’s work Bruce Springsteen commented “that snare shot that sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.”

In retrospect Bob Dylan going electric was a very big deal, but not for those who were most aggrieved at the time. From Like A Rolling Stone onwards the real beneficiaries were everybody else who dug popular music.