Bob Dylan 'Like a Rolling Stone' Handwritten Lyrics

Twenty pages of 'vomit'

In 1965 Bob Dylan came home from the tour of England filmed in Dont Look Back, worn out and unhappy with what the public expected of him. He considered quitting the music business. 'I was very drained,' he recalled. 'I was playing a lot of songs I didn't want to play. I was singing words I didn't really want to sing.'

In June 1965 he wrote a long, extended draft. As he described it in 1966, it was 'this long piece of vomit, 20 pages long,' and 'out of it I took Like a Rolling Stone and made it as a single.' In another interview he put the length at 10 pages. He distilled it into four verses and a chorus. Accounts differ on where he finished it: one history places the shaping of the verses in Woodstock, New York, while the 2014 sale catalog, as reported, said he wrote the four pages in mid-June 1965 during a stay at the Roger Smith Hotel in Washington, D.C., whose letterhead the pages carry.

The draft shows the song taking form. The full refrain of the chorus does not appear until the fourth page. A rejected third line, 'like a dog without a bone,' gives way to 'now you're unknown.' The name 'Al Capone' sits in the margin with a line drawn to 'like a complete unknown,' and a discarded couplet reads '... dry vermouth, you'll tell the truth ...' Dylan also tried out other rhymes for 'How does it feel,' including 'it feels real,' 'get down and kneel,' 'raw deal' and 'shut up and deal.'

Into Studio A

Dylan recorded the song on June 15 and 16, 1965, in Studio A of Columbia Records at 799 Seventh Avenue in New York, with Tom Wilson producing. The first day produced five takes in a very different style, including a version in waltz time with Dylan on piano. The musicians did not reach the first chorus until the fourth take.

On June 16, Al Kooper, a 21-year-old session guitarist who was there as Wilson's guest and was not supposed to play, sat down at a Hammond organ and improvised the riff that became the song's signature. The band, including Mike Bloomfield on guitar, Paul Griffin on piano and Bobby Gregg on drums, recorded 15 takes that day. Dylan was 24.

Columbia was unhappy with a single of more than six minutes and with its loud, electric sound, and at first shelved it. Release coordinator Shaun Considine took a discarded acetate to a new Manhattan club, Arthur, and asked the DJ to play it. The song went out on July 20, 1965. Radio stations balked at its length, but it reached No. 2 on the Billboard chart, held off the top only by the Beatles' 'Help!'

Summer 1965

Five days after the single came out, Dylan played it live for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965, backed by an electric band, and many folk purists in the audience objected. It became the closing song of his 1965 and 1966 tours.

It was a summer of upheaval. Malcolm X had been assassinated in February. In March, state troopers attacked marchers in Selma, Alabama, and the first U.S. combat troops landed in South Vietnam. Three days after Newport, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced a sharp increase in troops and draft calls. On July 30 he signed Medicare and Medicaid into law, on August 6 he signed the Voting Rights Act, and on August 11 the Watts riots began in Los Angeles. Highway 61 Revisited, the album the song opens, came out at the end of August.

From Dylan's hand to the auction block

The manuscript left Dylan's hands early. The seller, never named, was described as a longtime fan from California 'who met his hero in a non-rock context and bought directly from Dylan.' The same seller also consigned Dylan's handwritten lyrics to 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall.'

The pages were offered at a rock and pop sale in New York, estimated at $1 million to $2 million. On June 24, 2014, they sold to an unidentified bidder for $2,045,000, including the buyer's premium. That was a world record for a popular-music manuscript, well above the $1.2 million paid in 2010 for John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to 'A Day in the Life.' The 'Hard Rain' lyrics brought $485,000 in the same sale.

The buyer has not been identified, and no later public sale of the manuscript was found for this page.

What makes it the draft

Four sheets, in pencil, on Roger Smith Hotel letterhead, with revisions, additions, marginal notes and small drawings. The head of the selling house's books and manuscripts department pointed to the 'numerous edits and changes' across the four pages as what makes them a working document rather than a fair copy.

Other handwritten 'Like a Rolling Stone' lyrics exist, but they came much later. Dylan wrote out and signed copies decades afterward, one reported as dating from 2004 and authenticated by his longtime manager, and one written in 2017. Those offered at auction were estimated or opened at a small fraction of the 1965 draft's price. The 1965 pages remain the only known draft from the song's creation.

The song that kicked open the door

The song completed Dylan's change from folk singer to rock star and helped end the rule that a hit single had to run under three minutes. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 1 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time lists in 2004 and 2010.

Inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, Bruce Springsteen described hearing it for the first time in his mother's car: 'on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody had kicked open the door to your mind.' Martin Scorsese's 2005 Dylan documentary took its title, No Direction Home, from the song's chorus.

The numbers

Recording sessions

June 15-16, 1965, Columbia Studio A, New York; 15 takes on June 16

Released

July 20, 1965

Peak chart position

No. 2, Billboard Hot 100 (behind 'Help!'); 12 weeks on the US chart

Length

More than six minutes

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs

No. 1 in 2004 and 2010

Timeline

1. Jun 1965

   After his England tour, Dylan writes a long draft and distills it into four verses and a chorus on Roger Smith Hotel stationery.

2. Jun 15, 1965

   First recording session at Columbia Studio A in New York; five takes, including a waltz-time version.

3. Jun 16, 1965

   Al Kooper improvises the organ part; 15 takes are recorded, and the familiar version is captured.

4. Jul 15, 1965

   Promotional copies go to DJs with the song split across both sides of the disc.

5. Jul 20, 1965

   Columbia releases 'Like a Rolling Stone' as a single.

6. Jul 25, 1965

   Dylan plays the song live for the first time, with an electric band, at the Newport Folk Festival.

7. Aug 1965

   Highway 61 Revisited is released with the song as its opening track.

8. 1988

   Bruce Springsteen inducts Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

9. 2004

   Rolling Stone ranks the song No. 1 of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, a ranking repeated in 2010.

10. Apr 30, 2014

    The manuscript is announced for auction in New York with a $1 million to $2 million estimate.

11. Jun 24, 2014

    Sells for $2,045,000, a world record for a popular-music manuscript.

The world in 1965

• Feb 21, 1965

  Malcolm X is assassinated in Manhattan.

• Mar 7, 1965

  Alabama state troopers attack civil rights marchers in Selma on Bloody Sunday.

• Mar 8, 1965

  About 3,500 U.S. Marines land in South Vietnam, the first American combat troops there.

• Jun 3, 1965

  Ed White makes the first U.S. spacewalk on Gemini 4.

• Jul 30, 1965

  President Johnson signs Medicare and Medicaid into law.

• Aug 6, 1965

  The Voting Rights Act is signed into law.

• Aug 11, 1965

  The Watts riots begin in Los Angeles.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Bob Dylan 'Like a Rolling Stone' Handwritten Lyrics is number 44 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (37 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The name 'Al Capone' is written in the margin of the draft, with a line drawn to the words 'like a complete unknown.'
• Al Kooper, who played the song's famous organ part, was a guitarist who was not supposed to play on the session at all.
• Promotional copies split the song across both sides of the record; DJs who wanted the whole thing had to flip it over.
• Columbia first shelved the song. It got out when a staffer took a discarded acetate to a Manhattan club and asked the DJ to play it.
• The record this manuscript broke was set by John Lennon's lyrics for 'A Day in the Life,' which sold for $1.2 million in 2010.
• The doodles on the draft include a hat, a bird and an animal with antlers.