Bob Dylan Lyrics Sell for $2 Million at Sotheby's

Today at Sotheby’s Bob Dylan’s original hand-written lyrics for the 1965 epic Like A Rolling Stone fetched $2,045,000 to set an auction record for a popular music manuscript (est. $1/2 million). The lyrics, which sold to a private collector, were the top lot in the Rock & Roll History: Presley to Punk auction, the first dedicated music history sale at Sotheby’s for over a decade. Overall the sale brought $4,088,630 and included strong prices for material related to Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Joni Mitchell among others.

Richard Austin, Head of Books and Manuscripts at Sotheby’s New York commented: “The Holy Grail of rock lyrics has taken its rightful place as the most expensive popular music manuscript sold at auction. Like A Rolling Stone irreversibly changed both the career of Bob Dylan and postwar music history and I am thrilled to see so many collectors recognizing these lyrics importance as a work of 20th century cultural history.”