In a move “sure to ignite debate“, Rolling Stone Magazine just picked 500 top rock songs of all
times–their number one choice is Bob Dylan’s 1965 “Like a Rolling Stone.”
What a great choice–the song that kicked down the wall separating
“folk music” from the excitement of rock. How gorgeous it felt,
to the folk purist I had become, to get
Dylan’s permission for music I secretly longed for.
Even more important were the lyrics–and not
just because Dylan rhymes “didn’ you” with “kiddin’ you.” He was yelling a wake-up call to a generation of kids drifting
into deep water, all telling each other that nobody ever drowned.
I can remember so many kids from my generation who just went under
and never came up again. I
remember the doctor’s son in my grammar school class, one of the
cute-naughty boys the rest of us sighed for. He decided to “try” Viet
Nam, died there of a heroin overdose. I remember Linda, teaching her
parents a “lesson” by hanging out with wild and crazy guys–I was
in college when I heard one of them shot her. Less
spectacularly, I remember many kids who partied away four (or five, or
six) years of college, until Mom and Dad decided to stop wasting money.
I
remember Lucinda*, the night before a test, telling me, “I wonder if my
middle-class fear of failure will force me to study.”
It would have, if she’d been listening to Bob Dylan.
* She was a psych major.