How to play Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan
Introduced to new audiences in 2025 via Timothée Chalamet’s brilliant performance in A Complete Unknown, Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan is the song the film builds up to in the final scenes. An anthem for it’s time, Like a Rolling Stone slotted Dylan’s robust folk rhythm-guitar style seamlessly into the progressive electric ensemble sound of the day. The result bristles with energy and it’s still a great rhythm piece for steel-string players.
Chords: Principally, C F G and Dm plus suggested variations that follow the prominent bass notes.
Pick or Fingers? Use a pick to create the energy of tone and projection of the style of the original recording.
Acoustic or Electric? Definitely a steel-string number; Like a Rolling Stone encapsulates the controversy of the day amongst folk music fans about Dylan ‘going electric’ ; the electric guitar is the obvious choice but a steel-string acoustic will also sound good.
What are the chord with two letter names? Chord names that feature a forward slash followed by another letter name are describing a chord with a bass note (the lowest sounding note) that is not the tonic note. For instance, F/C is an F chord with the C bass note on the 5th string as it’s lowest note. Think of it as '“F over a C bass'“. There are two passages in Like a Rolling Stone that feature strong bass progressions and the chords suggested in those phrases will produce those bass lines if you are careful with your strumming technique.
How does the timing work? The rhythm slashes joined by two beams are ‘semiquaver strums’ ; these receive just a quarter-beat each. The intro rhythm can be counted as “1 2 and-a 3 and-a 4-e and”. The chorus rhythm is very similar and you can swap them for variation.
Relevant pages in Modern Guitar Chord Styles 1 : To learn more about the chords and rhythms used in Like a Rolling Stone check out pages 8, 10, 12, 19, 20 and 31.
Need a bit of help?
Modern Guitar Chord Styles 1 is the perfect companion for our song guides. It will teach you how to read the rhythm slash notation used in our charts (and in professional theatre and studio charts) and is specially designed to help beginners speed up their chord changes, master strumming patterns, and many other techniques.
