Originally written 18th August 2015.
Bob Dylan wrote the song “Mr. Tambourine Man” in the early part of 1964. He recorded it the following year for the album Bringing It All Back Home. That same year, The Byrds recorded their own version of the song. Their version hit the top of the Billboard charts and remains the only Dylan song to ever reach number one.
The version included with this short article is based on Dylan’s rendition. However, I have included the notes for the interlude between the chorus and the verses from The Byrds’ version, should anyone want to play around with that. In the original version, Dylan played the song with a capo on the third fret. This makes it sound a minor third higher than the chords suggest, but of course, one should choose the pitch that suits the singer’s range. Personally, I find it difficult to sing the song in F, so I lower it slightly and place the capo on the second fret. Dylan tuned his low E-string down a whole step to D. I imagine the purpose was to increase the possibilities for interesting bass lines in the accompaniment. In any case, it works well to utilize the low E-string (tuned to D) when playing both the D and A chords, and to occasionally strike a Dsus2 or Dsus4 to embellish the D chord.
Many have speculated that the song’s lyrics are about drugs, but Dylan has corrected that himself. Seeing Bruce Langhorne arrive at the recording studio with a large Turkish drum adorned with bells sparked certain impressions in Dylan and became the inspiration for the lyrics. The lyrics are pure genius, like most of Dylan’s writing, and I believe they have much more depth than if they were simply about an acid trip. This same Bruce played the counter-melody heard in Dylan’s 1965 recording.
One can, of course, ponder endlessly what Dylan meant, and there is no guarantee that such speculation hits upon what he was thinking when he wrote it. The lyrics were written following the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans. The song begins with the chorus, where the narrator speaks to the man with the tambourine, asking him to sing so the narrator can be carried away. Right from the chorus, one gets the feeling that the song is about loneliness.
The first verse continues to deal with loneliness, and one senses emptiness and weariness. It’s easy to imagine the narrator being tired in soul and body after the previous day’s festivities, with these feelings emerging as the calm set in. It was the second verse that sparked ideas about the song being about drugs, but I believe the lyrics simply refer to a desire to escape from everything—a longing many feels when under great pressure and wanting to find relief. In those moments, it’s good to have someone you can trust completely and follow blindly to a better place. The “Tambourine Man” is a reference to such a person. One could also imagine the tambourine man as a personification of music in general, acting as the remedy for worry and exhaustion.
