Maybe we have to credit Albert Grossman. The svengali leveraged his relationships to get Dylan’s songs heard. Really, if there’d been no Peter, Paul & Mary, would there be a Bob Dylan?

But, despite Mr. Grossman’s voluminous connections, I’ve always believed the mark of a great songwriter is ANYBODY can sing his songs. There are some great players, some great singers too, but the truly exalted are the songwriters.

That’s why I believe Springsteen doesn’t belong in Dylan’s club, nor the Beatles’. Oh, he’s a passionate performer. But almost all of his songs, they need to be done by HIM! A thousand years from now, when today’s devices for playing back recorded sound have evaporated, when all we have is the printed page, will future generations be able to pick up guitars, instruments of the day, and play "Born To Run"? No, "Born To Run" is a record. Whereas "Like A Rolling Stone" is a SONG!

Oh, you might beg to differ if you’re familiar with the original, with Al Kooper on organ, as sui generis as the aforementioned "Born To Run". But if you were exposed to Michael Hedges’ take, you’d reevaluate.

Hedges’ version isn’t a slowed-down lounge version. It’s not like Aztec Camera’s "Jump". It’s a reinvention. As powerful as the original. With Hedges’ guitar adding emphasis that Dylan’s famous take lacks, delivering insight into the words that you heretofore missed.

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?

We’re not programmed as males to fail. Life’s supposed to be an endless ladder, which we’re climbing to ever greater heights.

People’d call, say, ‘Beware doll, you’re bound to fall’
You thought they were all kiddin’ you

You don’t see it coming.

Tom Freston lost his job this week. If you know Tom you know he’s a hip Mo Ostin. Not only a benevolent leader, allowing his troops to follow their own muse, he’s one of us. Albeit quite a bit richer at this point. If you listen to the buzz, you believe he lost his job because he didn’t play the Wall Street game. Do we want someone who plays the game? Isn’t that what rock and roll is ABOUT? NOT playing the game? Raising the middle finger to the establishment? But in the Reagan era the formerly revolutionary baby boomers compromised everything they believed in for the money. No one told them to beware. Everybody just kind of looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. And partook.

You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal

Tom Freston isn’t about to be scrounging. But I know so many former promotion men who are. They didn’t see it coming, as they shifted from label to label, there was always a chair somewhere. But then places to sit were being pulled from the game, at a rate of more than one per spin. I know one of these ex-major label domos who not only lost his house, but his health insurance, and then had heart failure.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Dylan sings this with a sneer. Hedges’ vocal has more the feel of commentary. As in what the fuck happened here? I’m not preaching to you, just the town crier. Wake up, THINGS ARE FUCKED UP!

You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it

I didn’t drink in high school, am I the only one?

The names of the prom queens, the hot babes, have now faded from memory, the girls whose teenage years were the best of their lives. As Albert Brooks said in that movie, "Looks fade." He also said, "But very slowly." Still, there’s always a crop of youngsters ready to replace you. To what degree is Paris Hilton envious of Lindsay Lohan, for her more than half a decade younger youth? Then again, neither of them went to the finest schools. Unlike the sixties, education is for chumps.

And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it

My parents paid the bills until my education ended. And then for a while thereafter. And when the money dried up, I was completely unprepared for society. I was taught to be the best I could be, to express myself, but there was no job description that fit that. I was about adventure, experiences, in a cold cruel world that just didn’t give a shit. Only took me thirty years to get used to it, to the degree I have.

You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

I’m trying not to compromise. It’s all I’ve got left, my integrity. I’ve got no children, no savings, no real estate holdings. I never sold out, and I’m finally getting steady on my feet. But I’ve got a constitution of steel. And I’ve paid the price, in body parts, for living on the edge. Live without money, and there’s a price.

But I escaped the temptation. The drugs my significant other used to numb her pain. With no one paying attention, your demons haunt you.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

It feels TERRIBLE! Which is why people apply to graduate school, look for insurance. They want a leg up. Not everybody can play for the Yankees, not everybody can be Paul McCartney, or Snoop Dogg. And you get so lost, so far from home, that you can’t find your way back. But it’s so foggy that you’re not sure where you’re going. It’s the human condition. But we used to have our family, our neighborhood, SOCIETY, to help us out. Now all we’ve got is the Internet. Just log on. You’ll find loneliness evident throughout.

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you

I’m uptight with help, I’m uptight bossing people around. They’re human beings, aren’t they entitled to what I have?

But those who are on the right side of comfort don’t give a shit about those who aren’t. They just want more. Lower my taxes. Raise yourself up by your bootstraps. As I close the door behind me.

You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you

You should get down in the pit, you should become engaged. Risk the bruises. Rather than driving an SUV and putting a helmet and kneepads on your kid for his playdate.

You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat

How good were those times? You know the ones, in the bathroom high on cocaine. Gathering at Studio 54, being a part of the scene, do you look back on those days fondly or cringe that you were so hedonistic, wasting your time and youth trying to be where it was at, when now it’s clear it wasn’t there at all.

Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal

My father had suspicion. He’d lived on the bottom. He knew the scum there ready to victimize you. But I wanted to be free, I wanted to live in the mud, have nothing. Little did I know everybody with nothing wanted something.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Do you feel anymore? Are you entitled to feel? What are you supposed to say to someone who says he hates his job? Can you be part of the fabric yet feel so alienated that you believe you’re a party of one, hovering off to the side, clueless and powerless?

Dylan was singing about this alienation. But alienation is for pussies today. It’s a nation of winners. But not everybody can be a winner.

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made

What’s it like to be a winner, can you tell me? What’s it like to be a famous face? Are you as flippant as you appear? Or are you really just as conflicted and confused as me, looking for connection and understanding? Are you truly having fun at the club, or are you nursing a pain that won’t go away. Is where they say it’s at actually the place?

Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you’d better lift your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe

God, if only America’s corporations donated all the money for Christmas gifts to charity. All the endless trinkets, so others will feel good about you, sent so you won’t commit a social faux pas. What do people do with these gifts they didn’t ask for and can’t really use? They don’t soothe one’s soul, they don’t keep one company at night. But in this world he with the most totems, he with the most houses, wins.

You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used

Could this be the hip-hop stars?

Can we begrudge them for the money when they’re lucky to be alive?

It’s not only Fitty, think back on "Hoop Dreams"…to make it to eighteen is an achievement for a black man in the ghetto.

Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse

Nobody can refuse. It’s all stimulation, all gratification, all the time.

When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose

One of Dylan’s most famous lines. Is it optimistic or pessimistic? Is it about taking a chance or being irrelevant?

If you’ve got nothing in today’s society, if you’ve got no chips, you can’t even play. So the fact you’ve got nothing to lose is irrelevant.

But those with something… They frequently wish they had nothing, so they’d have the freedom to be who they truly want to be.

You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal

This is the American condition. While you’re in school everyone’s telling you to do this and that. But once you reach eighteen, once you’ve graduated from college, you’re on your own, focus shifts to those still being educated. But you’ve still got so much to learn.

Want to see people who feel invisible? Just go into the apartments and houses of singles while they watch TV every night. Especially those over thirty, who don’t fit in at the club anymore. They’re society’s cast-offs. Not married, not in a relationship, no kids, they’re losers, no matter how many accoutrements they’ve got. Who cares about these people? Other than their parents and friends informing them they’re on the verge of spinsterhood? NOBODY!

How does it feel
How does it feel

I went to a Labor Day party and spoke with an old friend from my hometown. He’s a lawyer, but he lives to go to the gig, and practice his guitar. He sees more shows than most people in this business. He’s looking for something, a fulfillment, an answer, even though we know it’s not there, otherwise we’d still be out every night, and in front of the stage instead of behind it. And after listing every axe he had, as we were speaking of guitarists, I asked him, was he familiar with Michael Hedges?

To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Michael Hedges was on his own in his 1986 BMW 325es. A ten year old car for an itinerant musician with albums in stores across America. And, coming home from a gig, he slid on a patch of ice, skidded off the pavement, down an embankment, to his death.

That’s final. Tell me all about heaven, reincarnation, but no one from the other side has ever rung me up. That’s just a construct to deal with the scariness of the end, which comes for everybody.

I told my old buddy I’d e-mail him a couple of Hedges tracks. So I fired up iTunes and started listening. I played his brilliant cover of Peter Gabriel’s "Come Talk To Me", but then I settled in on one of my top five Napster downloads of all time, Hedges’ cover of "Like A Rolling Stone".

Rather than being edgy like the original, Hedges’ take draws you in. The guitar is a counterpoint, as he slowly sings the lyrics, telling an instructional story to the audience.

How does it feel? Do you feel?

Are you home tonight?

Don’t go to the iTunes Music Store, don’t go to Rhapsody or SpiralFrog. Fire up a P2P program and download Michael Hedges’ cover of "Like A Rolling Stone". It was cut at the High Sierra Music Festival at Bear Valley, California on July 6, 1997.

The show wasn’t simulcast on MTV. I’m unaware of any DVD. It was just for the people in attendance. But modern technology now makes it available to you.

Ain’t it hard to discover that you’re not really where it’s at? Even though you desperately want to be there? Buy some clothes, go to a fancy restaurant, try to fill your emptiness. Or listen to some music.

Maybe you’ve got a soft jazz record that works for you, maybe you don’t want anything in your face. Maybe you’d rather go to a club and tie one on. But if you’re more baffled by life than confident, if you’re looking for answers, insight, listen to Michael Hedges’ rendition of "Like A Rolling Stone". Admit it, you’ve got nothing. You’ve got nothing to lose.