Dylan Song by Song: "Like a Rolling Stone" Quiz

Answer: Highway 61 Revisited

"Highway 61 Revisited," Dylan's sixth studio album, was released August 30, 1965. The album followed "Bringing it All Back Home" and preceded "Blonde on Blonde."

"Steal Your Face" is a Grateful Dead album, while "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme" was recorded by Simon & Garfunkel. "Another Side of Bob Dylan" was Bob Dylan's fourth studio album.

Answer: false

At over six minutes, "Like A Rolling Stone" was deemed too long to be a successful single. Most radio songs of the time were only about three minutes. But after a copy of the song was leaked to a music club and was well received by some influential DJs, Columbia put the song out as a single. It was released with "Gates of Eden" on the B-side.

"Like A Rolling Stone" climbed to the number two slot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. It hit number one on the U.S. Cashbox Top 100 and number four on the UK Singles Chart. "It became the single biggest hit of his career," reports "Rolling Stone" magazine. "It upset a lot of traditional folkies in the process, but it turned Dylan into a rock star."

Answer: #1

The song topped the list in 2004 but dropped to number four on the 2021 re-vision of the list. In 2004, the magazine ranked Ray Charles "What'd I Say" at number 10. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles came in at #500 with "Shop Around." Smokey Robinson also came in at #50 with "The Tracks of My Tears." Bob Dylan had other songs in the top 100: "The Times They Are A' Changing" came in at #59, and "Tangled Up in Blue" at #68.

In the article containing the list, "Rolling Stone" wrote of "Like A Rolling Stone": "No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time."

Answer: Al Kooper

Dylan supplied vocals, electric guitar, and harmonica. Mike Bloomfield played electric guitar on the song, and Bruce Langhorne played tambourine. It was Al Kooper who supplied the Hammond organ. When Paul Griffin was moved from the organ to the piano for the song, Al Kooper stepped in on organ. "Rolling Stone" magazine reports: "Kooper knew so little about the organ that he didn't even know how to turn it on, but he was desperate to play on a Dylan song and when a distracted Wilson didn't give him a firm 'no', he. . . sat down at the instrument and was delighted to see Griffin hadn't turned it off." Robert Shelton, in his book "No Direction Home," reported that Dylan insisted: "Turn the organ up!"

Answer: Once upon a time

The phrase "once upon a time" has been used in fairytales and folktales for centuries and dates to at least the late 1300s. "Like A Rolling Stone," however, doesn't have a fairytale ending. Most fairytales ended with the phrase "and they all lived happily until their deaths" (or "happily ever after"). Dylan's song ends, instead, with the chorus:

"How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone."

Martin Scorsese would later use the phrase "No Direction Home" as the title for his 2005 documentary on Bob Dylan.

Answer: a dime

"Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?"

The song opens with these lines, which show the haughty nature of the subject before her fall from her privileged position. Al Kooper told "Rolling Stone" that when the song was recorded, "There was no sheet music, it was totally by ear. And it was totally disorganized, totally punk. It just happened."

Answer: meal

"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.
How does it feel, how does it feel?"

"Rolling Stone" reports that Bob Dylan said of this song, "I wrote it. I didn't fail. It was straight." The magazine describes Dylan's vocal performance on the song as "electrifying...his best on record." Through it, "Dylan proved that everything he did was, first and always, rock & roll."

Answer: Lonely

"Ahh you've gone to the finest schools, alright Miss Lonely,
But you know you only used to get juiced in it.
Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street,
And now you're gonna have to get used to it."

"To get juiced" is slang for "to get drunk." The song paints a picture of an entitled woman who has fallen from her position of privilege. These lyrics might be considered a prime example of schadenfreude - pleasure in someone else's misfortune.

Answer: alibis

This verse continues:

"As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?"

In an article titled, "50 Years On, How Does It Feel?" Lily Murphy speculates that the mystery tramp in these lines is Dylan himself: "Dylan arrived in Greenwich village to conjure up an image of himself as the downtrodden bard. "

Answer: Siamese

This interesting imagery occurs in the following stanza of the song:

"You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat,
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat.
Ain't it hard when you discovered that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal?"

Symbolically, Siamese cats have long been associated with pride, power, and royalty, and the choice of this particular cat perhaps further emphasizes the haughtiness of the subject of the song. Pop artist Andy Warhol said in his book "POPism" (which he wrote with Pat Hacket) that some of the people with whom he associated thought the "diplomat" in these lyrics was a hostile reference to him.

Answer: Napoleon

This verse continues:

"Go to him he calls you, you can't refuse
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose."

Napoleon Bonaparte was a 19th century French military leader, but it's long been debated who he is supposed to represent in this song. Lily Murphy argues in an article in "The Montreal Review" that the song is about Edie Sedgwick, who was a debutante in pop artist Andy Warhol's social circle, and thus Napoleon is Andy Warhol himself: "Dylan uses this image of Napoleon in rags to show to the world that Warhol, who portrayed the image of the beatnik struggling artist, was in fact a wealthy socialite who spoke elegantly and aloofly."

The website Songfacts notes, "Sedgwick and Dylan had a brief affair shortly before the musician married Sarah Lownds, and many say that this Dylan song was written about her. It should be noted that there is absolutely nothing beyond circumstantial evidence to support this idea, but the myth is so widely known that it's taken on a life of its own."

Answer: 2013

MTV was founded in 1981 and VH1 in 1985. Dylan did not release an official music video for "Like A Rolling Stone," however, until 2013. The interactive video came out on his website, bobdylan.com, and allows fans to flip through television channels as they watch people lip-sync the lyrics of the song.

Answer: Newport Folk Festival

Dylan had been a big draw at the folk festival in 1963 and 1964, but he shocked folk fans by coming onto stage and launching into an electrified rock song. Parts of the audience booed and told Dylan to get rid of the electric guitar. In his article "How Does It Feel," music journalist Greil Marcus writes, "It was the first time the singer known for his vagabond guitar and hobo harmonica had performed with a rock'n'roll band since high school." It was also the last time that Bob Dylan appeared at the Newport Folk Festival for 37 years.

Answer: false

The Rolling Stones were formed in 1962, and Dylan's song "Like A Rolling Stone" was released in 1965. In 1950, blues legend Muddy Waters released his song "Rollin' Stone" as a single with "Walkin' Blues" on the B-side. That's where Dylan got the title for his song, and where the rock and roll band The Rolling Stones got it from, too.

The Muddy Waters song contains these lyrics:

"I got a boy child's comin',
Gonna be, he gonna be a rollin' stone,
Sure 'nough, he's a rollin' stone."

In the first issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine, which was published in November of 1967, Jann Wenner wrote, "Muddy Waters used the name for a song he wrote. The Rolling Stones took their name from Muddy's song. 'Like a Rolling Stone' was the title of Bob Dylan's first rock and roll record. We have begun a new publication reflecting what we see are the changes in rock and roll and the changes related to rock and roll."

Answer: Jimi Hendrix

The Jimi Hendrix Experience covered the song live in October of 1968 as part of a six-set, three-night performance at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom. The song is included on the album "Winterland," a four-disc box set that was release posthumously in 2011. Jimi Hendrix also famously recorded a version of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," which turned out to be his highest ranking single in the United States.

Several other famous musicians have covered "Like A Rolling Stone," including David Bowie, Michael Bolton, Johnny Winter, John Mellencamp, The Rolling Stones, and Green Day.