Positively Bob Dylan

On June 15, 1965 Bob Dylan, Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, bass player Russ Savakus, drummer Bobby Gregg and producer Tom Wilson recorded only one complete take of “Like A Rolling Stone” (after four false starts). On the following afternoon they recorded another three complete takes (11 attempts in all). And it should be take 4 that would change rock music forever.

40 years later “Rolling Stone” magazine ranks it “the greatest song of all time”. Now Bob, tell us how does that feeeel? Not bad for a 6-and-half-minutes track at a time where the usual single was about 2-and-half-minutes long. But it wasn’t the only thing that was unusual and new with this song. A lot has been written and said about it during the past 4 decades, now Greil Marcus tops it all with his new book “Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads“, where he dedicates nearly 300 pages to this one song: from its origins and context to the 2003 Italian rap version from “Masked & Anonymous”.

On November 8th 2004, 20 years after the legendary 1985 Live Aid concert events a 4 DVD set has been released. It features 10 hours of concert footage, documentary and the music videos to the benefit singles “We Are The World” (with Bob Dylan) and “Do They Know It’s Christmas”.
Dylan’s perfomance of “Blowin’ In The Wind” with Keith Richards & Ron Wood is included on disc 4. The original set consisted of two more songs, “Ballad Of Hollis Brown” and “When The Ship Comes In”. The complete set has been released on a rare 11 LPs + 7″ single bootleg box set.