Mr. Tambourine Man
|
|
- For The Byrds' album of the same name see Mr. Tambourine Man (album)
"Mr. Tambourine Man" is a song, written and performed by Bob Dylan, and featured on his 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home. It was then covered and popularized by The Byrds on their debut album Mr. Tambourine Man (1965). The album brought the folk-rock sound into mainstream American consciousness.
There are many theories about the meaning of the song. The film Dangerous Minds takes the approch that the song is about a drug deal. Dylan himself claims that the song was inspired by the image of a session musician shaking a tambourine and partly by a trip he took from LA to New York. He mailed packages of weed to post offices along the route so that he would not be caught with it.
The structure of the song is Dylan playing an acoustic guitar in dropped D tuning, capoed at the seventh fret. An electric guitar plays a counter melody to back up Dylans vocal.
Lyrics and sound clips from this song can be found here (http://bobdylan.com/songs/tambourine.html) on Bob Dylan's Website.