Watch Cat Power Cover Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” On The Tonight Show
For decades, Cat Power’s Chan Marshall has been covering canonical rock songs, often deconstructing and radically reworking them. Last year, she performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall, where she restaged an iconic Bob Dylan show that didn’t actually take place at that venue. (Dylan, in the midst of going electric, played that show at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, but a widely circulated bootleg claimed that it actually happened at Royal Albert Hall.) Last week, Cat Power released the live album Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert. Last night, she sang Dylan’s most famous song on The Tonight Show.
“Like A Rolling Stone” was the big closer of his Royal Albert Hall bootleg — the one that he played right after someone called him “Judas” — and it’s also the song that ends Cat Power’s new live album. Last night, as Jimmy Fallon’s musical guest, Chan Marshall and her backing band took the song on. The band played the cover straight-up, doing a remarkable job at recreating the sloppy, electric immediacy of Dylan’s recording. But Chan Marshall doesn’t sing like Bob Dylan. Instead, she twisted the song’s words to fit her own voice, finding idiosyncratic ways to belt out a song that was already plenty idiosyncratic in the first place.
I’m old enough to remember the days when Chan Marshall barely seemed able to withstand the attention of a small club audience. That was a long time ago, but it’s wild to see Marshall pulling off a ballsy stunt like this for TV cameras. She sounds great doing it, too. Watch her performance below.
Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert is out now on Domino. Jimmy Fallon should’ve introduced that performance by just yelling, “Judas!”