Wow, how did that happen? This week’s song of the week is No 48 of 2024; there are only four more to choose!
It has also, bizarrely, taken 48 choices to select a song from 83-year-old Duluth, Minnesota-born Robert Allen Zimmerman! Strangely, I also do not have a clear memory of my first encounter with this legend. However, I recall ‘avoiding’ him for most of my late teens/early twenties, i.e. during my punk phase!
As I write this, I remember that I first listened to him during my mid-twenties (around the early 1980s) during my folk phase when I bought his third album, The Times, They Are a-Changin’, released in 1964. I still have goosebumps thinking about the first time I heard Track Three, Side One: With God on Our Side! (all 7:08 of it!) Needless to say, I was converted and have since listened to most of his oeuvre.
My choice this week is from his next platter, released in 1965. It is Side One, Track One, and is a glorious 6:13 long. A story states that Dylan and his band were struggling to open the album/song and left the sound booth to take a call. During his absence, Mike Bloomfield, who had been hired to play guitar, suggested the off-beat drum note as a commencement point and that Dylan liked it when he heard it on his return! So, listen out for it!!!
And so, here it is Like a Rolling Stone, from Highway 61 Revisited, often voted the best single of all time to boot!
Love this song
A good choice.
A fabulous Dylan song, I heard about that drum beat too!