Tweeter and the Monkey Man were hard up for cash
They stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash
To an undercover cop who had a sister named Jan
For reasons unexplained she loved the Monkey Man
‘Tweeter & The Monkey Man’ was Tom Petty and Bob sitting in the kitchen, Jeff and I were there too, but they were talking about all this stuff which didn’t make sense to me – Americana kind of stuff. And we got a tape cassette and put it on and transcribed everything they were saying and wrote it down. And then Bob sort of changed it, anyway. That for me was just amazing to watch ’cause I had very little to do with writing that [song] at all – except Jeff and I remembered a little bit that [Bob] did that he’d forgotten – which became that chorus part. It was just fantastic watching him do it because . . . he had one take warming himself up and then he did it for real on take two. The rest of us had more time but Bob had to go on the road and we knew he couldn’t do any more vocals again, so we had to get his vocals immediately. And on take two he sang [it] right through, and then what he did was he changed some of the lyrics maybe in about four places he changed a couple of lines and improved them, and dropped these lines in and that’s it – just as it was done and written. And the way he writes the words down! Very tiny, like a spider’s written it . . . It’s just unbelievable seeing how he does it.
– George Harrison, to Roger Scott, 1989
There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth
Cleveland Stadium Cleveland, Ohio 2 September 1995 Opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum
Musicians:
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
Bucky Baxter (pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
John Jackson (guitar)
Tony Garnier (bass)
Winston Watson (drums & percussion)
Bruce Springsteen (guitar & shared vocal on Forever Young)
….would be Like A Rolling Stone because I wrote that after I’d quit. I’d literally quit singing and playing, and I found myself writing this song, this story, this long piece of vomit about twenty pages long, and out of it I took Like A Rolling Stone and made it as a single. And I’d never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that that was what I should do, you know. I mean, nobody had ever done that before.
~Bob Dylan (to Martin Bronstein – Feb 1966)
.. The sound is so rich the song never plays the same way twice
~Greil Marcus
The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody had kicked open the door to your mind
~Bruce Springsteen (Jan 1988)
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People call say ‘beware doll, you’re bound to fall’
You thought they were all kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal
Here are 9 great cover versions of “Like A Rolling Stone”
It’s not enough. By anyone else’s standards, of course, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live/1975-85 is an embarrassment of riches — five albums and ten years’ worth of barroom, hockey-arena and baseball-stadium dynamite; greatest hits, ace covers, love songs, work songs, out-of-work songs — the ultimate rock-concert experience of the past decade finally packaged for living-room consumption, a special gift of thanks to the fans who shared those 1001 nights of stomp & sweat and the best possible consolation prize for the poor bastards who could never get tickets.
