"Mr. Tambourine Man" is a song written by Bob Dylan, released as the first track of the acoustic side of his March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. The song's popularity led to Dylan recording it live many times, and it has been included in multiple compilation albums. It has been translated into other languages and has been used or referenced in television shows, films, and books.
The song has been performed and recorded by many artists, including the Byrds, Judy Collins, Melanie, Odetta, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Stevie Wonder among others. The Byrds' version was released in April 1965 as their first single on Columbia Records, reaching number 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the UK Singles Chart, as well as being the title track of their debut album, Mr. Tambourine Man. The Byrds' recording of the song was influential in popularizing the musical subgenres of folk rock and jangle pop, leading many contemporary bands to mimic its fusion of jangly guitars and intellectual lyrics in the wake of the single's success. Dylan himself was partly influenced to record with electric instrumentation after hearing the Byrds' reworking of his song during one of their rehearsals at World Pacific Studios in late 1964.
Dylan's song has four verses, of which the Byrds only used the second for their recording. Dylan's and the Byrds' versions have appeared on various lists ranking the greatest songs of all time, including an appearance by both on Rolling Stones 2004 list of the 500 best songs ever. Both versions received Grammy Hall of Fame Awards.
The song has a bright, expansive melody and has become famous for its surrealistic imagery, influenced by artists as diverse as French poet Arthur Rimbaud and Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. The lyrics call on the title character to play a song and the narrator will follow. Interpretations of the lyrics have included a paean to drugs such as LSD, a call to the singer's muse, a reflection of the audience's demands on the singer, and religious interpretations.
Composition "Mr. Tambourine Man" was written and composed in early 1964, at the same approximate time as "Chimes of Freedom", which Dylan recorded later that spring for his album Another Side of Bob Dylan. Dylan began writing and composing "Mr. Tambourine Man" in February 1964, after attending Mardi Gras in New Orleans during a cross-country road trip with several friends, and completed it sometime between the middle of March and late April of that year after he had returned to New York. Nigel Williamson has suggested in The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan that the influence of Mardi Gras can be heard in the swirling and fanciful imagery of the song's lyrics. Journalist Al Aronowitz has stated that Dylan completed the song at his home, but folk singer Judy Collins, who later recorded the song, has stated that Dylan completed the song at her home. Dylan premiered the song the following month at a May 17 concert at London's Royal Festival Hall.
Recording During the sessions for Another Side of Bob Dylan, in June 1964, with Tom Wilson producing, Dylan recorded "Mr. Tambourine Man" with Ramblin' Jack Elliott singing harmony. As Elliott was slightly off key, that recording was not used. Later that month he recorded a publisher demo of the song at Witmark Music. More than six months passed before Dylan re-recorded the song, again with Wilson in the producer's chair, during the final Bringing It All Back Home session on January 15, 1965, the same day that "Gates of Eden", "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" were recorded. It was long thought that the four songs were each recorded in one long take. However, in the biography Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades, Clinton Heylin relates that the song required six attempts, possibly because of difficulties in working out the playoffs between Dylan's acoustic guitar and Bruce Langhorne's electric lead. Alternate takes released on Dylan's Cutting Edge collection also reveal that early takes include drummer Bobby Gregg playing a tambourine-heavy rhythm, but Dylan found this too distracting and opted to continue recording with Langhorne alone. The final take was selected for the album, which was released on March 22, 1965.
In his book Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Oliver Trager describes "Mr. Tambourine Man" as having a bright, expansive melody, with Langhorne's electric guitar accompaniment, which provides a countermelody to the vocals, being the only instrumentation besides Dylan's acoustic guitar and harmonica. Author Wilfrid Mellers has written that although the song is in the key of D major, it is harmonized as if it were in a Lydian G major, giving the song a tonal ambiguity that enhances the dreamy quality of the melody. Unusually, rather than beginning with the first verse, the song begins with an iteration of the chorus:
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to. Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, In the jingle-jangle morning I'll come following you.
Interpretations William Ruhlmann, writing for the AllMusic web site, has suggested the following outline of the song's lyrics: "The time seems to be early morning following a night when the narrator has not slept. Still unable to sleep, though amazed by his weariness, he is available and open to Mr. Tambourine Man's song, and says he will follow him. In the course of four verses studded with internal rhymes, he expounds on this situation, his meaning often heavily embroidered with imagery, though the desire to be freed by the tambourine man's song remains clear."
While there has been speculation that the song is about drugs, particularly with lines such as "take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship" and "the smoke rings of my mind", Dylan has denied the song is about drugs. Though he was smoking marijuana at the time the song was written, Dylan was not introduced to LSD until a few months later. Outside of drug speculation, the song has been interpreted as a call to the singer's spirit or muse, or as a search for transcendence. In particular, biographer John Hinchey has suggested in his book Like a Complete Unknown that the singer is praying to his muse for inspiration; Hinchey notes that ironically the song itself is evidence the muse has already provided the sought-after inspiration. The figure of Mr. Tambourine Man has sometimes been interpreted as a symbol for Jesus or the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The song may also reference gospel music themes, with Mr. Tambourine Man being the bringer of religious salvation.
Dylan has cited the influence of Federico Fellini's movie La Strada on the song, while other commentators have found echoes of the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud.Tamarin, Jean, "Bringing It All Back Home", in Author Howard Sounes has identified the lyrics "in the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you" as having been taken from a Lord Buckley recording. Bruce Langhorne, who performs guitar on the track, has been cited by Dylan as the inspiration for the tambourine man image in the song. Langhorne used to play a giant, four-inch-deep "tambourine" (actually a Turkish frame drum), and had brought the instrument to a previous Dylan recording session.
Other Dylan releases
The Bringing it All Back Home version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" was included on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits in 1967 and several later Dylan compilation albums, including Biograph, Masterpieces, and The Essential Bob Dylan. The two June 1964 recordings, one with Ramblin' Jack Elliott and the other at Witmark Music, have been released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home and The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos 1962–1964, respectively. Outtakes from the January 15, 1965, recording session were released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 in 2015.
The song has been in Dylan's live concert repertoire since it was written, usually as a solo acoustic song, and live performances have appeared on various concert albums and DVDs. An early performance, perhaps the song's live debut, recorded at London's Royal Festival Hall on May 17, 1964, appeared on Live 1962-1966: Rare Performances From The Copyright Collections, while another early performance, recorded during a songs workshop at the Newport Folk Festival on July 24, 1964, was included in both Murray Lerner's film The Other Side of the Mirror and the DVD release of Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home. A live performance at New York's Philharmonic Hall dating from October 31, 1964, appeared on The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall. During his appearance at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965, after he was heckled by acoustic folk music fans during his electric set, Dylan returned to play acoustic versions of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"; this performance of "Mr. Tambourine Man" was included in The Other Side of the Mirror.
A live version from Dylan's famous May 17, 1966, concert in Manchester, England (popularly but mistakenly known as the Royal Albert Hall Concert) was included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert. Dylan's August 31, 1969, performance of the song at the Isle of Wight Festival appeared on Isle of Wight Live, part of the 4-CD deluxe edition of The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969–1971). Dylan played the song as part of his evening set at the 1971, Concert for Bangladesh, organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, featuring Harrison on electric guitar, Leon Russell on bass, and Ringo Starr on tambourine. That performance was included on The Concert For Bangladesh album, although it was excluded from the film of the concert. Another live version, from the Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975, was included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue and The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, while electric band versions from 1978 and 1981 appeared, respectively, on Bob Dylan at Budokan and the Deluxe Edition of The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981.
In November 2016, all Dylan's recorded live performances of the song from 1966 were released in the boxed set The 1966 Live Recordings, with the May 26, 1966, performance released separately on the album The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert.
The Byrds' version
Release "Mr. Tambourine Man" was the debut single by the American rock band the Byrds and was released on April 12, 1965 by Columbia Records, less than a month after Dylan's original. The song was also the title track of the band's debut album, which was released on June 21, 1965. The Byrds' version is abridged and in a different key from Dylan's original.
The single's success initiated the folk rock boom of 1965 and 1966, with a number of American and British acts imitating the band's hybrid of a rock beat, jangly guitar playing, and poetic or socially conscious lyrics. The single was the "first folk rock smash hit", and gave rise to the term "folk rock" in the U.S music press to describe the band's sound.
This hybrid had its antecedents in the American folk revival of the early 1960s, the Animals' rock-oriented recording of the folk song "The House of the Rising Sun", the folk influences present in the songwriting of the Beatles, and the twelve-string guitar jangle of the Searchers and the Beatles' George Harrison. However, the success of the Byrds' debut created a template for folk rock that proved successful for many acts during the mid-1960s.
Conception