If you had a couple of million dollars to spare — I mean, don’t we all? — you could’ve easily been the proud owner of a rare piece of music history today. The last surviving draft of Bob Dylan’s lyrics for “Like a Rolling Stone” fetched $2.045 million at a Sotheby’s auction this afternoon.
Written in pencil on four sheets of hotel stationary, Sotheby’s described the item as “the only known surviving draft of the final lyrics for this transformative rock anthem.” Still, the sheets do feature some lyrics that didn’t make the final cut, including the phrase, “…dry vermouth/You’ll tell the truth” and an abandoned line about Al Capone. The lyrics also show Dylan’s various attempts to build a rhyme off of the “How does it feel” line with phrases like, “it feels real,” “does it feel real,” “get down and kneel,” “raw deal” and “shut up and deal.” The draft — written at the Roger Smith Hotel in Washington D.C. — also boasts some of Dylan’s stray thoughts and doodles.
The item was already expected to fetch between $1 million and $2 million at Sotheby’s rock and pop sale, dubbed, “History of Rock and Roll From Presley to Punk.” And while the seller was not identified, the auction house called him a “longtime fan from California” who bought the manuscript directly from Dylan.
Here’s a look at the full four pages, as released by Sotheby’s. Check out more photos of those very expensive lyrics here.
We may not be able to call Dylan’s prized draft our own, but at least we still have his incredible interactive video for “Like a Rolling Stone” to keep us busy for years to come.
