Bob Shannon's Behind The Hits: Stories: Mr. Tambourine Man

FIRSTS
The first folk-rock song

The Byrds

The song that changed the face of rock music (it launched the Byrds, convinced Dylan to "go electric;" and started the folk-rock movement) was inspired by a folk guitarist named Bruce Langhorne. Bruce who? Let Dylan explain it: "Bruce was playing with me on a bunch of early records. On one session, [producer] Tom Wilson had asked him to play tambourine. And he had this gigantic tambourine. It was, like, really big. It was as big as a wagon wheel. He was playing and this vision of him playing just stuck in my mind."

Dylan never told Langhorne about it (Bruce had to read it in the "Biograph" album liner notes, like the rest of us). He wrote the song and recorded a version with Rambling Jack Elliot that actually got to the Byrds (known as the Jet Set at the time) before it was ever put on a record.

ROGER McGUINN: "Our manager, Jim Dickson, was a friend of Dylan's... back in the Village. He was also a friend of Dylan's road manager, Victor Maimudes. So Victor sent a copy of the dub of 'Mr. Tambourine Man', which had Dylan and Ramblin' Jack Elliott singing on it. It was in 2/4 time, like a country kind of sound; Ramblin' Jack was singing high harmony in the background and it was sort of loose, sort of fun. It had all the verses. So Dickson was convinced this was gonna be a pop hit."

The band wasn't, though. Particularly McGuinn. He liked it okay, but he saw no Top 40 potential in it. Besides, he had a personal grudge. He'd been trying to make it as a folksinger in Greenwich Village while Dylan was becoming a star. "He was my enemy," McGuinn said later. "I felt competitive, I thought anybody could get up and do that." Eventually Dickson convinced the group it was worth doing, and they made a demo of "Tambourine Man."

After several aborted attempts to record for other labels, Dickson got his protégés to Columbia, where he once again lobbied for "Tambourine Man." McGuinn and producer Terry Melcher (Doris Day's son) agreed. But Melcher insisted they use studio musicians instead of having the Byrds play on it themselves. McGuinn was the only Byrd allowed to.

McGUINN: "Mainly it was Terry Melcher's idea to use the sort of 'A-team,' a group of musicians who were doing most of the stuff in L.A. at the time. They were Hal Blaine on drums, Larry Knechtel on bass, Leon Russell on electric piano, Tery Cole played Telecaster. Glen Campbell was supposed to be on the session, but he couldn't make it." McGuinn played a Rickenbacker 12-string and sang lead, while Byrds Gene Clark and David Crosby sang harmonies.

The whole production was a synthesis of three major musical influences of the time: The Beach Boys, Dylan, and the Beatles. McGuinn explains: "Terry Melcher put a Beach Boys kind of track to it. Later in an interview he said that it was 'Don't Worry Baby' that he was emulating. And I can kind of hear that, now that 1 think of it. We cut it down to one verse, and I was shooting for a vocal that was very calculated between John Lennon and Bob Dylan. I was trying to cut some middle ground between those two voices."

When McGuinn heard the record, he knew they had a critical success. "We expected it to be well received because it came out well," he says. But a hit? Not really. "I was surprised at it being #1 and all that" he admits. David Crosby adds: "We thought we'd made a great record, but we didn't have any idea it was going to do what it did. I was really surprised. We were driving along in a black '56 Ford station wagon that we'd bought from Odetta. All of us were in the car when radio station KRLA played 'Mr. Tambourine Man' three times in a row. We just sat there and drooled."

FOR THE RECORD: Dylan claims that despite popular belief, the song was not about drugs. "Drugs never played a part in that song...'disappearing through the smoke rings in my mind,' that's not drugs; drugs were never that big a thing with me. I could take 'em or leave 'em, never hung me up."