Like a Rolling Stone : Bob Dylan at the Crossroads

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. Published on the 40th anniversary of its release and recording, Greil Marcus's 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's 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.