‘Like A Rolling Stone’: The Bob Dylan song Bruce Springsteen says “changed my life”
Bob Dylan didn’t initiate the great American songwriting tradition. Before him were a couple of centuries of small-town folkies and, of course, iconic names like Woody Guthrie, Odetta and Lead Belly. However, his work in popularising folk and later fusing it with electric rock ‘n’ roll sensibilities and Beat poetry changed the course of pop cultural and musical history violently and permanently. Dylan’s influence swept the nation, inspiring innumerable subsequent stars, Bruce Springsteen included.
It might be a stretch to describe Springsteen as an instrumental or lyrical innovator. The Boss has confessed on many occasions to celebrating musical traditions in his material. However, his nuance lies in a summarising package. He covers all bases, from explosive stage persona to emotive lyricism and catchy instrumentation.
Like many of his generation, Springsteen’s first exposure to music was Elvis Presley. The youngster became entranced when he saw the King shaking his knees and belting out upbeat rhythm and blues songs on television. “I saw Elvis on TV,” Springsteen remembered in a past interview with Rolling Stone. When I first saw Elvis, I was nine, but I was a little young. I tried to play the guitar, but it didn’t work out, so I put it away.”
The guitar went away, but the dream never subsided, re-emerging in the early 1960s when The Beatles came along. “The keeper was in 1964, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ on South Street with my mother driving,” the Boss continued. “I immediately demanded that she let me out, I ran to the bowling alley, ran down a long neon-lit aisle, down the alley into the bowling alley. Ran to the phone booth, got in the phone booth and immediately called my girl and asked, ‘Have you heard this band called The Beatles?’ After that, it was nothing but rock ‘n’ roll and guitars.”
Presley taught Springsteen a lesson in stage command, and The Beatles inspired him to pursue his dream. But where did the knack for reflective, culturally pertinent songwriting come from? It all started with a question: “How does it feel?”
Indeed, there are few things in music more powerful than a 24-year-old Bob Dylan screaming those four words at you. They are eternally and universally resonant, whether you regard ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ from a political or broader existential standpoint.
Speaking to Rolling Stone on another occasion, Springsteen claimed that Bob Dylan’s 1965 Highway 61 Revisited hit “changed” his life. “I first heard Bob Dylan when he was on Top 40 radio, so that must’ve been ‘64/’65, and it was ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. That changed my life.”
‘Like a Rolling Stone’, like ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’, first met Springsteen’s ears in his mother’s car. “That snare shot sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind” Springsteen noted. “My mother, who was – she was no stiff with rock and roll, she liked the music, she listened – she sat there for a minute, she looked at me, and she said, ‘That guy can’t sing.’ But I knew she was wrong. I sat there, I didn’t say nothin’, but I knew that I was listening to the toughest voice that I had ever heard.”
Concluding his appraisal, Springsteen called Dylan a “revolutionary man” before comparing him to Presley. “The way that Elvis freed your body, Bob freed your mind,” he said. “And he showed us that just because the music was innately physical, it did not mean that it was anti-intellect. He had the vision and the talent to expand a pop song until it contained the whole world. He invented a new way a pop singer could sound. He broke through the limitations of what a recording artist could achieve, and he changed the face of rock and roll forever and ever.”
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