On this day in 1965, Bob Dylan released Like a Rolling Stone

Dylan had been hard at work since the release of his first album in 1962, writing another four full length LP’s before his famous switch to electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival in July of 1965. Like a Rolling Stone marked one of the first recorded tracks in which Dylan made use of his new electric sound.

The lyrics for the song came from an extended verse Dylan wrote in June of that year, upon his return from a particularly gruelling tour of England. The words were extended into four verses and a chorus, and many consider these lyrics to have a somewhat cynical and confrontational tone, reflecting Dylan’s exhaustion at the end of the tour. Just weeks later the song was recorded at his home in Woodstock as part of the sessions for his upcoming sixth studio album, Highway 61 Revisited. 

Radio stations were initially reluctant to play Like a Rolling Stone due to its extended runtime of over six minutes, but the song was such a hit that there was little choice but to allow it on the air. It quickly reached No. 2 on the Billboard charts, and became a world-wide hit from there. Critics praised Dylan’s emotive voice and the raucous rock sound, as well as the creative lyricism, in particular the directness of the chorus’ main refrain “How does it feel?”

Like a Rolling Stone has gone on to become Dylan’s most well-known song, and is considered revolutionary in the way it combines such varied instruments like the electric guitar, tambourine and harmonica. Many famous musicians such as members of the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Zappa and Elvis Costello recall being both amazed and inspired by the track. It’s longer runtime also opened the doors for other artists to stop limiting their songs to the more common and accepted three minutes that radio stations and record companies would push for.

Many consider the song to be Dylan’s best work, and it is consistently polled highly in lists for the greatest songs ever written. Rolling Stone magazine has twice placed the track at number one on their list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” in 2004 and 2010, and it only fell to number four in 2021. Its cultural significance is so great that a 2014 auction of the handwritten lyrics fetched a record $2 million.