Bob Dylan 'Like a Rolling Stone' lyrics sell for record $2m

The folk star's manuscript has overtaken John Lennon's as most expensive

Singer songwriter Bob Dylan performs on stage (Getty Images)

Bob Dylan’s lyric manuscript for “Like A Rolling Stone” has become the most expensive ever sold.

The working draft for the folk singer-songwriter’s classic hit, written in his handwriting, fetched just over $2 million (£1.2 million) at Sotheby’s auction house. The winning bidder is an anonymous buyer who reports say is a long-time Dylan fan from California.

Sotheby’s has confirmed that the manuscript is “the only known surviving draft of the final lyrics for this transformative rock anthem”.

The four sheets of Roger Smith Hotel paper features notes, revisions and doodles of an antlered animal, a bird and a hat, The Hollywood Reporter reports.

One abandoned lyric refers to US Prohbition gangster Al Capone.

“Like A Rolling Stone” can be heard on Dylan’s 1965 sixth studio album Highway 61 Revisited. He wrote the track aged 24 about a debutante who is rejected from her upper class circles and becomes a loner.