who is the song like a rolling stone about
Like a Rolling Stone During 1965, Dylan composed prose, poems, and songs by typing incessantly. Footage in Dont Look Back of Dylan in his suite at London's Savoy Hotel captures this process. However, Dylan told two interviewers that "Like a Rolling Stone" began as a long piece of "vomit" (10 pages long according to one account, 20 according to another) that later acquired musical form.[8] Dylan has never publicly spoken of writing any other major composition in this way. In an interview with CBC radio in Montreal, Dylan called the creation of the song a "breakthrough", explaining that it changed his perception of where he was going in his career. He said that he found himself writing "this long piece of vomit, 20 pages long, and out of it I took 'Like a Rolling Stone' and made it as a single. And I'd never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that was what I should doÂ ... After writing that I wasn't interested in writing a novel, or a play. I just had too much, I want to write songs."[9]
The Rolling Stones Oldham saw little future for an act that lost significant songwriting royalties by playing songs of what he described as "middle-aged blacks", limiting the appeal to teenage audiences. Jagger and Richards decided to write songs together, the first batch of which Oldham described as "soppy and imitative".[61] Because the band's songwriting developed slowly, songs on their first album The Rolling Stones (1964; issued in the US as England's Newest Hit Makers), were primarily covers, with only one Jagger/Richards original—"Tell Me (You're Coming Back)"—and two numbers credited to Nanker Phelge, the pen name for songs written by the entire group.[62] The Rolling Stones' first US tour in June 1964 was, according to Wyman, "a disaster. ... When we arrived, we didn't have a hit record [there] or anything going for us."[63] When the band appeared on the variety show The Hollywood Palace, that week's guest host Dean Martin mocked both their hair and their performance.[64] During the tour they recorded for two days at Chess Studios in Chicago, meeting many of their most important influences, including Muddy Waters.[65][66] These sessions included what would become the Rolling Stones' first No. 1 hit in the UK, their cover version of Bobby and Shirley Womack's "It's All Over Now".[67]