The 1965 song Neil Young knew could never happen again: “You can’t keep that”
The magic of rock and roll was never lost on Neil Young.
He knew that some of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time came from being present in the moment and capturing something magical, and he knew that the minute that corporate suits got involved was usually when everything started going to shit. He was never going to be the one to cower to what those people wanted, and he knew that all of his heroes would have done the exact same thing in his position.
Granted, Young probably didn’t need to shoot himself in the foot as many times as he did whenever someone asked him for a more rocking album. Everybody’s Rockin’ is a decent joke once you know what the album is all about, but the fact that the entire record was nothing but old-time rock and roll songs wasn’t exactly what anyone would have wanted to hear as he entered the 1980s.
Even if it wasn’t that great, though, Young made his point. He wasn’t going to be the kind of musician someone could manipulate every single time he made a new record, nor was he going to try to blend in with the sounds of the times. Whatever he played needed to come from his heart first, and that came from him listening to what people like Bob Dylan had to say when he was starting out.
Dylan already had the reputation of preaching from a pulpit, but he wasn’t the kind to really tell people how to live their lives. He was there to observe what the rest of the world was doing and say his piece on it, regardless of what people thought about it, but he needed a bit more for people to pay attention. The folk world couldn’t get enough of him, but he knew that this way towards rock and roll history was only going to come when he had an electric guitar in his hand.
And while ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ was one of the most contentious songs in his catalogue for the longest time, Young could see exactly what he was doing. Dylan had been the leader of the revolution for so long that by the time that he let his guard down and started making tunes that fell more in line with rock and roll, it felt a lot more earned than someone plugging in directly after The Beatles came to town.
Since the song was also all about people who have become disillusioned with themselves, Young felt that there weren’t too many people who could have written something that blunt ever again, saying, “I heard Bob’s voice, and I went, ‘This is Bob, you know, this is the essence of his feeling and everything. The moment that he was delivering that song is so powerful, you can’t keep that.’ That comes and goes through you. You can’t strive to be that, there is no way you own it.”
And Dylan would probably say the exact same thing. He didn’t see himself as the same singer as he got older, and even if he had a few decent songs that reflected where he was at any given moment, it made no sense for him to try to play those same songs with the kind of conviction that he had when he was still in his 20s.
He was far from the same person that was willing to stand up to everyone and anyone, but that doesn’t put any less shine on ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. Dylan was the vessel that the song was able to pass through, and even if he isn’t the same person, what matters to him is being able to still make songs that manage to resonate as well as those did another lifetime ago.
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