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Friday, October 07, 2022

Looking closer : Songfacts = Bob Dylan Like a Rolling Stone - Greil Marcus et al



Never forget this was the song Bob and The Band sang after the idiot yelled out JUDAS! at Royal Albert Hall, London, UK in 1966

“I never heard “Like a Rolling Stone” as this spiteful putdown of some obnoxious rich girl who needed to be put in her place. Now I know lots of people have heard this as just that. I never heard it that way. It just never communicated to me that way. It was always somebody saying, “You’re in trouble. You need help. You don’t understand what’s going on. Other people might have a better idea of what’s going to happen to you and if you listen to them, you might be better off.” 
It’s not about any specific person, it’s just about anybody who suddenly finds themselves with the ground beneath their feet has disappeared and they’re floundering and there’s no connection that can be made and everything that you ever relied on has betrayed you, what are you going to do? How does it feel? It feels terrifying and by the end of the song it feels absolutely liberating. That’s what the song is about to me. So, it is a song about empathy. Dylan himself said, “I was trying to save somebody from drowning.” And, well, OK, even if he didn’t say that you can hear that.”

Greil Marcus

to me this song meant everything aimed at people one despised and found vacuous and shallow, relationships, friendship (supposed) backstabbers and people we cared not to associate with anymore it said something to me about all the venom and bile built up by bullies and the vainglorious  . . . . . . . . if it was about Andy Warhol and Edie it fits and makes sense but it was always going to be bigger, much bigger, than that    -   A.M.S. 

Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone songfacts


"I don't believe you! . . . . . . . . . You're a liar!"


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