“Dylan leads the group into the song with a strong, strummed theme on his electric rhythm guitar. Paul Griffin has a loose, free bounce on the piano; Kooper immediately has a high, clear tone. Dylan stops it: “Hey, man, you know, I can’t, I mean, I’m just me, you know. I can’t, really, man, I’m just playing the song. I know — I don’t want to scream it, that’s all I know — ” He takes up the theme again; Bloomfield and Gregg come in. The feeling is right all around; a rich ensemble is coming together.”
– Greil Marcus (Like a Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan at the crossroads)

I love Greil Marcus’s book on Bob Dylan’s song, Like a Rolling Stone, and therefore I’ve collected som clips on and about the book, including a very interesting YouTube-clip with Marcus talking about the book and the song.

Greil Marcus saw Bob Dylan for the first time in a New Jersey field in 1963. He didn’t know the name of the scruffy singer who had a bit part in a Joan Baez concert, but he knew his performance was unique. So began a dedicated and enduring relationship between America’s finest critic of popular music— “simply peerless,” in Nick Hornby’s words, “not only as a rock writer but as a cultural historian”— and Bob Dylan.

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