Preview

Like a Rolling Stone Anaylsis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
694 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Like a Rolling Stone Anaylsis
Like a rolling stone, written and sung by Bob Dylan was released in July 1965 as part of the album Highway 61 Revisited. The time period this song was released heavily impacted on the construction of the song. According to Dylan the basis of the song came from an extended piece of verse. In 1966, Dylan described the genesis of "Like a Rolling Stone" to journalist Jules Siegel.
“It was ten pages long. It wasn't called anything, just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred directed at some point that was honest. In the end it wasn't hatred, it was telling someone something they didn't know, telling them they were lucky. Revenge, that's a better word. I had never thought of it as a song, until one day I was at the piano, and on the paper I was singing, "How does it feel?" in a slow motion pace, in the utmost of slow motion.”
Like a rolling stone was well out of the norm for a folk song in the 60’s and most radio stations were hesitant to play his song to the public. This was because firstly it was over six minutes long, which was which was very long at the time and because it had a heavy electric sound because he used an electric guitar. When he performed this song for the first time he was heavily booed because of this.
Bob Dylan’s life at the time had a massive influence on the song as it was based on that Edie Sedgwick and the nature of Dylan’s relationship with her at the time of its writing and recording. The song is about a rich girl that thought she could stay rich forever who went to the best school but wasted time doing drugs and partying but when she is faced with the harshness of poverty she is struggling to cope with her life because she had never been taught how to live on the street. The girl in the song is most likely Edie Sedgwick as Edie had come from a wealthy California family but a difficult home environment. She went to Cambridge University, which was one of the best schools, but wasted her time doing drugs. She went through all her

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    White Angel Analysis

    • 1092 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The first thing that comes to mind reading the story is the repeated usage of music and drugs. Since the story is set in the sixties, the music was changing – much like the attitudes and beliefs of the people. Drug use was becoming more common and accepted. Music was filled with lyrics of love, peace, and happiness. In even the second sentence, we see the significance of music as their radios “sang out love all day long” (90). As the story goes on, we learn more about how important to the story the music is. The father is a high-school music teacher and plays the clarinet in the basement, the mother sings to herself as she works in the house, and Bobby plays a harmonica. If someone in the house isn’t making their own music, they are listening to a record. Specific songs are placed strategically to aid the tone and setting of the story. The lyrics support the storyline and set the mood. People in real life use music as a distraction from their problems - it has been shown to decrease stress and calm people down. Drugs provide detachment from reality. They allow the user to feel good even in the harshest of times. This…

    • 1092 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The song starts out with a strang questioning of reality: “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, No escape from reality, Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see”. They first two lines are rhetorical questions. They help establish the state of mind needed in order to continue with the song. The third line is a metaphor. It means everything is crashing down on him, and he cannot escape it. It seems to conclude that he is caught between a dream and awakening. The next couple set of lines are being used as transitions into the main part of stanza one, “I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy, Because I’m easy come, easy go, Little high, little low, Any way the wind blows, Doesn’t really matter to me, to me”. In the third and fourth line repetition is used in order to keep the lyrics flowing. The boy thinks his life doesn’t matter to anyone, his life is meaningless and the Earth does not care what happens to him. He does not care what happens next, he just wants it over; “any way the wind blows” him, he will go and it “doesn’t really matter” to him anymore. The next three lines show intent to kill by the boy, “Mama, just killed a man, Put a gun against his head, Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead”. The boy has finally come to terms of what he has…

    • 1458 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    "My Back pages" by Bob Dylan can be interpreted in any number of ways by any number of people for such is the beauty and artistry of his work. It possesses this quality which allows it to reach out and touch any individual who will permit it to do so. As far as what it is that these prose say to me I firmly believe that these lyrics are so elusive that their personal significance could change from moment to moment. As is such I will try to write quickly. In a general sense, with these verses Dylan is trying to say that the younger one is the more he thinks he knows but in reality he knows much less and as one approaches maturity he knows much more and is aware of that which he is in truth unaware.…

    • 899 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Rolling Stones are a British rock and roll band who rose to prominence during the mid-1960s. The band was named after a song by Muddy Waters, a leading exponent of hard-rocking blues. In their music, The Rolling Stones were the embodiment of the idea of importing blues style into popular music. Their first recordings were covers or imitations of rhythm and blues music, but they soon greatly extended the reach of their lyrics and playing, but rarely, if ever, lost their basic blues feel. The band came into being in 1961 when former school friends Jagger and Richards met Brian Jones. They named themselves after a song by Muddy Waters, a popular choice of name —at least two other bands are believed to have called themselves The Rolling Stones…

    • 247 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Bob Dylan Research Paper

    • 1719 Words
    • 7 Pages

    His next album 'Desire' came out in 1976, this album includes the songs 'Sara' and 'Hurricane', Dylan wrote this song about a boxer called Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, who he believed was wrongfully convicted of a triple homicide in 1967 and was serving life imprisonment. Dylan among other people popularised Carter's case, this lead to a retrial in 1976, he was convicted again.…

    • 1719 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In contrast, the second group of people in the lyrics that the lyricist sees, beside himself, is the poor group. Line 6 (“I see the kids in the streets with not enough to eat”) literally says that many kids out there are suffered suffering from hungrinesshunger. This may happen because their parents have neglected them or simply just because their parents could not feed them. Not only starvation, line 24 (“That there are some with no home, not a nickel to loan”) also literally says that many people could not shelter themselves with roof, . mMoreover, do not , having have some money for their essential primary needs. Therefore, the lyrics implicitly answer Philosophy’s First Question (“What is there”) with: “There are people, and…

    • 1755 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bob Dylan’s passion for music started when “he began writing poems at the age of ten”(galegroup.com). Then he dropped out of the “university of Minnesota and then he moved to NY to meet his idol Woody Guthrie”(worldbookonline.com). Soon switching to electric guitar, Dylan began to like a wide variety of rock n’ roll, like Guthrie he was also a cultural singer and often sang about the “wrongs of society”(worldbookonline.com).…

    • 493 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    today's american dream

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “I wanna be a billionaire so fricking bad” (line 1). In line one the song clearly says how much the young generations want to be rich and have as much money as possible. “I swear the world better prepare for when I'm a billionaire” (line 8 and 9). Their dream after becoming rich is to show the world who they are and how they got to be there through the lyrics of their music. “I know we all have a similar dream, go in your pocket pull out your wallet, and put it in the air and sing” (lines 41, 42, and 43). On these three lines is shown how today’s generations are being taught that the only way to be successful is to sing or be an artist in some kind of way. Our dream used to be to become a better person through the opportunities that were given for everyone to get a better education and get a professional career through college. Our cultures and ideals are being changed with the existence of technology that includes the evolution on the devices people use to be able to listen to the music they like. The language and grammar in our music has been degrading throughout the years since rap started to appear in new songs. Before people used songs as a way to enlarge their vocabulary and a way to learn new…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    What initially draws almost any person to listen to a song? The beat of the song sets the tempo, and the tempo portrays many emotions to the audience. Slow beats usually display a damaging or dejected connotation; whereas, an upbeat tempo depicts an equally cheerful and composed nature of sensations. Third Eye Blind’s 1997 hit, “Semi- Charmed Life”, appeals to audiences due to the positive melody played throughout the entire song. Beneath the catchy upbeat melody, the song contains dark lyrics about a drug user's descent into an addiction to crystal meth and sexual activities; the lyrics paint a bleak picture of the life and problems that come with drug addiction.…

    • 1327 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    "It 's no problem of mine but it 's a problem I fight, living a life that I can 't leave behind. But there 's no sense in telling me, the wisdom of the cruel words that you speak. But that 's the way that it goes and nobody knows, while everyday my confusion grows."…

    • 2348 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are many images in the song that would create a picture of what the narrator is going through in life. The band uses the image of the narrator looking in the mirror to see if he’s still there as an example of a person trying to find his or her self because he/she have been bullied so often. Many struggle with finding a self-image after being abused so much, these people lack self-confidence and the courage to stand up to the bullies, which causes them to be more susceptible to being bullied. “Kids just love to tease, who’d know it put me underground at seventeen”. This line depicts the narrator being teased so much and the kids that did it not caring, that it put he/she in the ground at the young age of seventeen. Parents should never have to bury their children, but when kids that love to be bullies continuously scrutinize the innocent kids it causes the kids that are being bullied to react to the way they feel about themselves, this often leads to suicide. The narrator says “my parents had no clue that I ate my lunches alone in the bathroom”, this shows that that the only place he/she felt safe was in the bathroom alone. He/she did not have the strength to tell his/her parents because of how insecure they felt. Depression caused by bullying often goes unnoticed out of fear of what may come next if people speak their minds to others. Another image that could often be looked over is the image of the days not changing. The narrator…

    • 1259 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    She goes on to emphasize this through describing his family, a typical suburbia family. The oldest was just like him, a workaholic Type A person, the middle child was a girl and just like her mother, finally the youngest child was a troublemaker and was always trying to gain dad’s attention. At this point she puts an emphasis on how after he died the oldest had nothing to say about his father, so he went around asking neighbors about him, at this point she shows that he had no relation with them either. This draws attention to the fact that he was close to nobody and the cause was him striving for an “American Dream” that might not be as appealing as what it is cracked up to…

    • 564 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The a Team

    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The song says “And in her pipe she flies to the motherland and sells love to another man” implying that she is selling her body to feed her addiction. The artist also says “The worst things in life come free to us” meaning the pain and suffering that we experience in life, we don’t necessarily do anything to deserve.The text shows how people are willing to degrade themselves to get drugs which shows how much they rely on drugs in their daily lives.…

    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    NaS-last words

    • 1272 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Last words Performer: NaS Ft: Nashawn Introduction Nas was born in New York in September 14, 1973. His father Olu Dura, is a jazz and blues musician from Natchez, Mississippi. As a young child, Nas and his family relocated to the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, Queen. His neighbor, Willy "Ill Will" Graham , influenced him by playing records.…

    • 1272 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Even when the lyrics weren't in any way obscene people had that negative attitude toward the music and today people still have that some attitude about rock. Only now, that rock has changed a vast amount a person's attitude toward rock has probably gotten worse.…

    • 780 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays