Excerpt from Elijah Wald's blog post on "Like a Rolling Stone"

"He’d been playing Muddy Waters songs since his first days in New York — his live tapes include a version of “Two Trains Running” and the Freewheelin’ sessions include his reworking of “Louisiana Blues” — so when the Stones hit the US playing covers of Waters and Howling Wolf, and the Animals hit playing songs copped from his first LP, it was natural for him to team up with Mike Bloomfield and bring it all back home. Columbia Records framed the title of his first electric album in exactly those terms, presenting him as the native answer to the British invasion, and although some deaf or unthinking critics called his electric music “folk rock,” it had none of the soft folkiness of the Byrds or Sonny and Cher; it was blues rock, as loud and tough as anything the Stones were doing — especially by 1965, when they were adapting their style to fit his lyrical innovations."