Robert Hilburn (born September 25, 1939) is a pop music critic and author. As critic and music editor at the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles have appeared in publications around the world. Hilburn’s memoir, Corn Flakes with John Lennon (And Other Tales from a Rock ’n’ Roll Life) was published on Oct. 13, 2009 by Rodale. He is a member of the nominating committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and lives in Los Angeles. (More from Wikipedia)
Prior to beginning work on his next album, Highway 61 Revisited, Wikipedia reports: “In May 1965, Dylan returned from his tour of England feeling tired and dissatisfied with his material. He told journalist Nat Hentoff: ‘I was going to quit singing. I was very drained.’ The singer added, ‘It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don’t dig you.’
“As a consequence of his dissatisfaction, Dylan wrote 20 pages of verse he later described as a ‘long piece of vomit’. He reduced this to a song with four verses and a chorus – ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. He told Hentoff that writing and recording the song washed away his dissatisfaction, and restored his enthusiasm for creating music. Describing the experience to Robert Hilburn in 2004, nearly 40 years later, Dylan said: ‘It’s like a ghost is writing a song like that. . . . You don’t know what it means except the ghost picked me to write the song.’”
(June 2013/2)
