“Like A Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan
I know, I know. Of all Dylan songs to review, why his biggest hit? In fact, why am I reviewing his music at all on an avant-garde music blog? I’m not really an avid listener of his records, or hoping to get more traffic on this blog by talking about a big artist. “Rolling Stone” isn’t even my favorite song on Highway (it’s all about Queen Jane Approximately). It is, however, the song that convinced me that Bob Dylan is one of the few people I feel comfortable calling a musical genius.
Let me explain. The word genius is often used to describe musicians capable of executing incredible feats of technical skill, but this definition much more accurately describes a musical virtuoso who has exercised tremendous discipline and dedication to their craft to achieve high levels of technical fluency. I think that real genius is the natural ability to project one’s personality into their art in a way that makes it profoundly moving regardless of whether they possess virtuosic skill or not. This latter definition pretty much sums up Dylan’s music in a nutshell. He explicitly lacks formal vocal technique and chooses to rely on his clumsy, but charming singing style to inject relatable imperfection and humanity into his music. The punk rockers of the 70’s expanded on this allegiance to style over skill, and succeeded in creating hyper-stylish music that insisted on being more cool than it was good. Even at its crudest moments, however, Dylan’s music never devolves into the kind of anti-music that the punks championed. His genius lies in his natural musical intuition which often leads him to regularly inject moments of sophistication and beauty in his otherwise meat-and-potatoes songwriting without even really meaning to.
The verses on “Like a Rolling Stone” are like chunks of long-winded poetry that Dylan barely manages to fit into the song. He probably has a rough sketch of how he imagines these lyrics should be delivered, but many of the rhythms these lyrics are sung with are usually improvised. Live versions of the song (the good ones with The Band in the late 60’s) differ pretty drastically from the studio version and feature tons of vocal improvisation and embellishments to the original melodies and syllable placements, but no matter how many creative liberties he indulges in, Dylan never sacrifices musicality for style or coolness. It would be too easy to abandon rhythm altogether while trying to cram the rambling lyrics of “Rolling Stone” into singable chunks, but Dylan handles the chaos with a deep and sophisticated grasp of rhythm that was virtually unknown in American pop music at the time. Rhythmically tricky, but tasteful melodies are hard enough to compose, yet he effortlessly improvises new ones every time he performs the song. He’s not afraid to take risks and let his improvisations go off the rails, but his musical recklessness seems to be constantly regulated by the affinity for strong melody and careful attention to singing diction and rhythm he developed as a folk singer-songwriter. It’s like he’s developed his songwriting to the point of being incapable of making uninteresting musical decisions. Genius.
