Composer: Bob
Dylan Original
performer: Bob Dylan (1965)
First release: Stripped,
November 1995
Recording date: July
1995 Recording
location: L'Olympia, Paris, France (live)
Producers: Don
Was & The Glimmer Twins Chief
engineers:
Ed
Cherney & Chris Kimsey
Performed onstage: 1995,
1997-99, 2002-03


Probable line-up:
Drums: Charlie
Watts
Bass: Darryl
Jones
Electric guitars: Keith
Richards & Ron Wood
Lead vocal: Mick
Jagger
Background vocals: Keith
Richards, Darryl Jones, Chuck
Leavell, Bernard Fowler &
Lisa
Fischer
Organ: Chuck
Leavell
Harmonica: Mick
Jagger
Yeah
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't
you?
Yeah, people'd call, say "Beware doll, you're
bound to fall"
They thought they were just kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don't walk so proud
Now you don't talk so loud
About having to be scrounging your next meal
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Just like a rolling stone?
Come on
You went to the finest schools all right, Miss
Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in
it
Nobody taught you how to live out on the street
But now you're going to have to get used to
it
You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp but now you realize
That he's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And he say "Do you want to make a deal?"
Yeah, the princess on the steeple, all the
pretty people
Drink and think that they've got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts
You better take that diamond ring, you better
pawn it, baby
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags with the language that
he used
Now, go to him now, he calls you, you can't
refuse
When you've got nothing, you've got nothing
to lose
You're invisible now, you've got no secrets
to conceal
TrackTalk
It's a fantastic song. I did it once at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (1988). Bob Dylan was being inducted, and Paul Shaffer, during the jam, struck up the intro. But nobody was singing it. Bob never came up to the microphone. Finally me and Bruce (Springsteen) did it. Keith and I used to do it (years ago). I said to him, You used to play it in such-and-such tuning. I always boss him around (grins), tell him what to do.
I think Like a Rolling Stone was unusual
to do. We've never done a Dylan song before...(M)elodically I quite like
it. It's very well put together; it's got a proper three sections to it,
real good choruses and a good middle bit, and great lyrics. It's a really
well-constructed pop song, in my opinion... (I)'ts very much to the point,
it doesn't waffle too much. I sang it a lot of times on the European tour
- maybe 50 times. So I really got inside it, and I enjoyed it. I love playing
the harmonica on it.
We got over the built-in reticence. If he
had written Like a Beatles, we probbly would have done it straight
away. We've been playing that song ever since Bob brought it out; it was
like a dressing room favourite, a tuning room favourite. We know it really
well. It was just a matter of screwing up the courage, really, to get over
the feeling like we were riding on its back. We also realized that, hey,
we took our name from a Muddy Waters album, a Muddy Waters song. Suddenly
it didn't feel awkward to pay it.