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This is about Bob Dylan and "Like A Rolling Stone".  Today I received in the mail two books from Amazon.com: Like A Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan at the Crossroads) by Greil Marcus and A Simple Twist of Fate (Bob Dylan and the making of Blood on the Tracks) by Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard.  This is really a great deal, by the way.  The two books together retail for $40, but on Amazon you can get them for $26 with free shipping.

I'm going to see Dylan, Merle Haggard and Amos Lee twice in the next three weeks, once at Borgata in Atlantic City with my son Scott and then the last night of the tour in NYC at the Beacon Theatre with my son Casey.  Maybe that last night Bob and Merle will finally sing a song together.

The Marcus book is about one song: "Like A Rolling Stone."  If ever one song deserved an entire book, this is the one.

I remember it well.  It was 1965 and I was home in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.  At that time I was lost and as wild as it was possible to be.  I had been a Dylan fanatic since 1961 when I attended William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri (just outside of Kansas City).  A bunch of us hung out with WJ's French professor, Phil Rotsch, who used to get wildly drunk and blast out Dylan and Edith Piaf.  He eventually was instumental in getting us and himself cashiered out of the school.

In 1965 I had transferred to Southwest Missouri State in Springfield, but I spent most of my time in Poplar Bluff, since I was in and out of school.  This was just before the Vietnam War really took off and I started some serious draft dodging.

I remember it well.  It was around noon, and my good friend Bill Morrow had just picked me up and we were heading to The Cottage Inn beer joint to start drinking.  Just as we turned onto Highway 67 North it came on, unannounced, on radio station KWOC (or it may have been KLID- there were only two). It hit like a thunderclap.

Bill was driving, and he was a Dylan guy also, but not quite like me.  I recognized Dylan immediately, and exclaimed, increduously, "that's Bob Dylan!"  I turned it up as loud as it would go, and we kept driving on past The Cottage Inn, and drove, and drove, and drove, because the song did not end! All singles then were 2-3 minutes.  There hadn't even been a four minute single- it was just unheard of.  Now, here was Bob Dylan not only singing on a six minute single, but singing the greatest record we had ever heard.  In Poplar Bluff Missouri! On KWOC (or KLID)!

If you had been following Dylan the lyrics weren't a total shock, but almost.  The most shocking thing was that it was mainstream, AM Top-Forty, News, Weather and Sports, and dead aimed right at the top spot.  And there was no doubt about where it was headed, in anyone's mind.

I rushed right down to Hayes Music, but Mrs. Hayes didn't have it yet. But she had already heard about it, and she was already getting calls for it, and she was already on the search for it.  I remember being surprised that anyone in Poplar Bluff except Bill and I had even heard of Bob Dylan.  And it wasn't on an album yet.  You couldn't get it, you just had to wait to hear it on the radio.

It was unlike anything we had ever heard, and it was pretty obvious to everyone that pop music had just been changed forever, although we certainly didn't think in those exact terms.  It was also pretty obvious, to be a little corny, "that something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" 

It was that good.  It was that shocking.  And, sorry kids, you really had to be there.