Music Monday 60’s Gold: Bob Dylan and “Like A Rolling Stone”
Posted By RichC on July 21, 2025
It is not that I’m tired of listening to The Bridge or 70’s on 7 … but decided to change thing up and go for a little 60’s Gold. Not everything is to my liking, including the yacky-yak aging disc jockey, but I did enjoy Bob Dylan. So for today’s Music Monday, here’s “Like a Rolling Stone.”
| Bob Dylan “Like A Rolling Stone” | 1965 |
I’ve listened to the song for years and never really gave much thought to it or the viability as a “radio song” (because of it’s length — officially 5 min 59 sec) … but I have alway enjoyed the long song — just like Don McLean’s “American Pie” at 8 min 32 sec. It is “Bob Dylan” to me and my generation, even though people at the time wanted Dylan to remain true to folk music and not move into rock and popular music. It is interesting to learn a bit more:
Although CBS tried to make the record more “radio friendly” by cutting it in half and spreading it over both sides of the vinyl, both Dylan and fans demanded that the full duration of the recording should be placed on one side and that radio stations play the song in its entirety.
The success of “Like a Rolling Stone” was influential in changing the music business convention regarding the length of singles, whereby they were restricted to durations of less than three minutes. In the words of the magazine Rolling Stone, which took its name from the song and the 1950s blues song “Rollin’ Stone”, “No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time.”
Richard Austin, of Sotheby’s auction house, said: “Before the release of Like a Rolling Stone, music charts were overrun with short and sweet love songs, many clocking in at three minutes or less. By defying convention with six and a half minutes of dark, brooding poetry, Dylan rewrote the rules for pop music.”
Amazing … it has been 60 years!
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