Like a Rolling Stone

During a grueling June 1965 session at Columbia Studios in New York, a young session guitarist named Al Kooper sneaked over to a Hammond organ (an instrument he barely knew how to play) and improvised the swirling, gospel-inflected chords that define the track. Driven by Mike Bloomfield's stinging guitar lines and a heavy rock backbeat, Bob Dylan unleashed a sneering, six-minute poetic assault on upper-class hypocrisy. The recording became one of the most influential rock singles of the era, pushing well past the three-minute radio boundary and pulling the folk revival decisively into the electric age.