Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan At The Crossroads, by Greil Marcus

Micro-criticism, anyone? In The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles, Dominic Pedler devoted a lengthy chapter to a single chord: the ringing ssshhhannnggg which heralds "A Hard Day's Night". Here, Greil Marcus, the grand master of rock criticism, goes one better by devoting an entire book to a single song.

This year marks the 60th birthday of the author and the 40th anniversary of the song: the six-minute epic with which Bob Dylan forever altered the courses of both his career and his art. It was held off the US No 1 spot only by The Beatles' "Help!" and subsequently performed by both Jimi Hendrix and, in a nicely self-referential touch, The Rolling Stones.

Any truly great rock record – "Like a Rolling Stone", "Anarchy in the UK", "Smells like Teen Spirit" – is both inescapably of its time and endlessly contemporary. "Like a Rolling Stone" was a moment – Marcus analyses each attempt to record the song, revealing that not only did Dylan and his musicians fail to nail it in takes preceding the one we know, but were also unable to recapture it – but it was an eternal moment.

Marcus has the armaments of a critic – a formidable knowledge of art, politics, literature and cinema – and the instincts of a poet. His ability to create the most startling cross-cultural connections can lead either to the most penetrating of insights or up a blind alley. I'm still trying to figure out how he ended up at the Pet Shop Boys' version of The Village People's "Go West". His approach is lateral rather than literal, which is just as well, since literal-mindedness is the deadliest trap in the path of anyone attempting to discuss Dylan.

Marcus sidesteps the temptation to unpack every line and image. To quote His Bobness, he makes "no attempt to shovel the glimpse into the ditch of what each one means", or detail every turn in America's internal and external wars. Instead, he takes both song and artist on their own ground: the music, Dylan's voice, and how this most cataclysmic of rock eruptions functions in psychic and political space.

There is a much duller book that could have been written about this moment. Thank whatever deity governs these matters this is not the one Marcus wrote. Instead, he has given us a livelier and more provocative book than you have any right to expect from a 60-year-old man writing about a 40-year-old record.

Charles Shaar Murray's 'Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and postwar pop' has been reissued by Faber

Buy any book reviewed on this site at Independent Books Direct - postage and packing are free in the UK