by Greil Marcus
This is a book about the iconic single, “Like a Rolling Stone”.
Greil Marcus can be kind of … dense. But this book was worth it for the epilogue! He describes every failed take – and brings it all back home how lucky we are to have that famous, miraculous, successful take that became the single. He finally clears up a mystery for me. I have the CUTTING EDGE deluxe edition, which contains all those failed takes where the tape was continuously rolling. You can hear someone at length describing all the chord changes, seemingly playing them on piano, for somebody’s benefit – but who is speaking? And to whom? The otherwise exquisite liner notes don’t say. If Marcus can be trusted – it’s Mike Bloomfield, speaking to the band at large; and it’s Bob on the piano. When I get enough time to myself, I’m going to sit down with the disk and the book together, now that I can place who is who and where… and feel like I am in the room where it happened.
Tytania 