Mix Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ on ‘Cutting Edge’ Site
Bob Dylan released his new deluxe set The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965-1966 on Friday, examining the making of three of his greatest LPs – Bringing It Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde – with two, six or 18 discs of alternate takes, demo versions or rehearsal tracks. To celebrate this deep dive into these legendary sessions, Dylan and Sony Records have launched Studio A Revisited, a new site where fans can remix “Like a Rolling Stone” on their own using song stems and view an audiovisual history of the 1965 and 1966 sessions.
The microsite is divided into three areas: Jam Session, Listening Session and Singing Session. In Jam Session, users can choose between four unreleased song stems from “Like a Rolling Stone” – vocals and guitar, solo guitar, bass guitar and drums and organ – to create their own mix of the classic 1965 single. As the site generates each unique mix, it shares facts about the recording sessions including which take was used in the stems and what instruments were played specifically. Right now, only “Like a Rolling Stone” is available to remix; “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” is “coming soon.”
The Listening Session provides the “inside stories behind these legendary sessions” from Dylan’s winter 1965 sessions in New York to his winter 1966 visit to Nashville. On the timeline, fans can listen to how songs radically changed over the course of the sessions; for instance, the fall 1966 version of “Visions of Joanna” is much faster-paced and rocking than the rendition that appeared on Blonde on Blonde.
The Singing Session area of the site, which is not yet live, will allow fans to “interact” with Dylan’s lyrics to test how well they know the songs and can match up with Dylan’s complex phrasing. Fans will also be scored on their knowledge of Dylan’s lyrics from this era.
Studio A Revisited was created in collaboration with production studio Havas Worldwide’s Studio 6. “In the past, our relationship with our musical heroes was one-sided. They released music and we listened to it. But this no longer has to be where the experience ends,” Studio 6 Group Creative Director Can Misirlioglu said in a statement. “Studio A Revisited speaks to the part of all of us that wants to be in the room with Dylan, but on our own terms, in a way that’s accessible, intuitive and immediate.”