"Like A Rolling Stone" is the single defining song of the rock'n'roll genre. With this one song
a lacerating set of imagery was sitting at the top of the US singles charts. The song strips all pretentions and artifice away and challenges the listener to confront the raw, basic realities of existence. It reminds a lost materialistic Western world that "when you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose".
In Dylan's definitve studio original the song is a defiant claim of victory on the part of the disenfranchised, contemptuously stripping away the defences of the worldly. Napoleon In Rags cannot be ignored. Dress codes and fine schooling are irrelevant in the face of our true natures. Ultimately there are no secrets to conceal. This is powerful stuff in a world which is even more repressed and materialistic now than in 1965.
Dylan himself never bettered the studio original. Jimi Hendrix took it on at Monterey, adding the cry of black America to the cry for honesty. It continued to sound confrontational and triumphant, set ablaze by his searing guitar. He was to do even greater things with "All Along The Watchtower" in 1968, bringing the Biblical apocalypse alive in sound.
The next major cover of "Like A Rolling Stone", by the remarkable Spirit, gave a whole new slant on the song. It comes at the end of Side Two of "Spirit Of '76", a double album which celebrates the forthcoming bicentenary in terms of a rock'n'roll retrospective. It features covers of Hendrix and The Stones which outstrip the originals while kicking off with a heartbreaking "America The Beautiful / The Times They Are A Changin'". In the midst of all this "Like A Rolling Stone" is presented as a sad contemplation of the battles which have been fought, and a weary acknowledgement of just how hard a road it is for those of us who want to follow the promise of rock and live more honest lives. The mood is poignant and the guitar solo is heartbreaking. This is an elegy for the hope that things could be better.
California repeats the feat on Side 4 with an epic, slow, brooding version of "Hey Joe". The sadness is eeked out via a hush, reverent vocal and a series of lingeringly lyrical guitar solos which lament the dying of the light. What else can follow this apart from "The Star-Spangled Banner", this time done not as per Hendrix but straight and sincerely. This brings to a close an album which is massive in scope and a vital post-sixties statetement.
So Dylan cut the peerless original, but Randy California made it meaningful all over again. Just one of the many workd of genius by that great artist.
