Music News

Dylan reveals inspiration for Like a Rolling Stone

By Nate Mecredi
Bubble News Music Editor


Bob Dylan says the inspiration for his first major pop hit “Like a Rolling Stone” was none other than Richard M. Nixon.
“I was watching him on TV one day, and he just looked like the kind of guy that would “throw the bums a dime in his prime,” said Dylan through a publicist.
It was a startling revelation for an artist known for his inscrutable lyrics and songs that can seem to be about anything or nothing, both at the same time.
In a rambling press statement, Dylan underscored that very inscrutability when he also admitted that the inspiration behind “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” was a story he read about someone named Hollis Brown, and that the inspiration for the “Ballad of Hollis Brown.” actually came from reading the story of Hattie Carroll.
Admitting that the muse that inspires him, can be as “crazy as a loon sometime,” Dylan also admitted that “The Times They Are A-Changin” had curiously come at a time when he said he didn’t think times were changing much at all.
The statement seem to be an attempt by Dylan to put a damper on the sense of mystery that surrounds many of his songs. He claims now that “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” came to him when he was standing in line at a bakery, and the woman ahead of him couldn’t decide what pastry to buy.
“I wrote ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’ while riding on a motorcycle, and ‘Motorpsycho Nightmare’ while riding on a train,” the statement says. Dylan also admitted the ‘Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream’ was only his 75th. “I do tend to exaggerate things at times in my songs,” he confesses in the statement.
Ironically, one song everyone had thought they new the inspiration for is not correct. “Queen Jane Approximately” was not, according to the statement, was not a song about the romance he and Joan Baez had at one time, but about a Queen Jane that Dylan swore for a time had actually ruled England in the 18th century.
When told of this revelation, a publicist for Joan Baez quoted the female icon as saying, “Then tell that little ferret to stick ‘Diamonds and Rust’ up his skinny ass.”