I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.
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Mr Tambourine Man – A History in Performance
By Mike Johnson
Part 3: 1969-1976 – Chasing shadows.
[I read somewhere once that if you wanted the very best, the acme of Dylan’s pre-electric work, you couldn’t do better than listen to side B of Bringing It All Back Home, 1964. Four songs, ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ ‘Gates of Eden,’ ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ and ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ represent the pinnacle of Dylan’s acoustic achievement. In this series I aim to chart how each of these foundation songs fared in performance over the years, the changing face of each song and its ultimate fate (at least to date). This is the third article about the first track, ‘Mr Tambourine Man.’ Find the second article here: ]
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For those Bobcats who fell in love with the live performances of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ in its early phases, 1964 – 66, Dylan’s dismal performance of the song at the Isle of Wight in 1969 must have come as a shock. This seven minute epic ode to escapism becomes, at the Isle of Wight, a three minute quick visit to a song that had apparently lost its charm for Dylan.
No wonder it was hard to find a recording of this. I had to dig deep into my archives. Perhaps Dylan fans prefer to sweep this one under the rug.
The song has four magnificent verses with the chorus repeated after every verse. Add an extra two verses for harp solos and you get the sustained poetic tour-de-force the song became in 1966. At the Isle of Wight Dylan only sings the first two verses, with minimal harp support, and then appears to abandon the song. Sings the chorus then wraps it up. What a let-down.
It starts well enough and Dylan, in his new avatar as Baritone Bob, sounds pretty good and the peppy tempo of the acoustic guitar feels just right. There is a tremble in his voice that augurs well in terms of emotional engagement with the song. Then all that promise goes to waste when he bails out half way through. Without the last verse the song can’t reach its climax. Could Dylan have lost interest in the song, now five years old? When, after 1966 with its deep dive into drugs and existential angst, Dylan set out to forge a new path, could it be that he would have to leave such songs behind? Perhaps the new, straight Dylan couldn’t relate to a song that evokes the siren call of cannabis. I would argue that Dylan doesn’t rediscover the song in almost its full glory until the first Rolling Thunder tour of 1975, but we’re not there yet.
Between 1966 and 1974 Dylan didn’t tour, but besides the Isle of Wight he did another one-off, the Bangladesh concert of 1971. This concert was much better received than the Isle of Wight, and in general the performances are a lot stronger. Despite the fact that the third verse (the ‘ragged clown behind’ verse) is missed out (and we fear it’s gone for good), Dylan delivers the song without frills yet with sincerity. It almost feels as if the song has returned to its roots, before the zonked out performances of 1966; there’s freshness in it.
For some Bobcats, this is their favourite performance of the song and I can see why. While the performance might return the song to its roots, Dylan’s voice is no longer young and full of youthful yearning, but matured with the richness of experience behind it. The edge is still there, the lure of the ‘magic swirling ship’ is still strong. The urge for transcendence doesn’t go away with the passing years.
And, last but not least, we have the guitar work by Dylan and George Harrison who go together beautifully. A lovely performance.
1971 Bangladesh concert
Perhaps what’s most appealing here is the lack of affectation. He’s not putting on any particular voice, it seems, neither the undulating tones of ‘66 or the Baritone Bob of Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait. The harp solo doesn’t reach the ecstatic heights and swooping lows of ’66, but it’s subtle and jazzy with an effective touch of whimsy.
We don’t get another performance of the song until 1974, when Dylan went back on the road with The Band. This was a stadium rock tour and Dylan’s performances have not been universally admired. ‘This was the year Dylan stopped singing and started shouting,’ one YouTube commentator says. I’m not so sure. That ‘shouting’ produced some powerhouse performances, particularly of ‘It’s All Right Ma,’ but there was some loss of intimacy. These were not small, intimate venues. However, Dylan pulls the song off in a vibrant performance, much to the appreciation of the audience.
‘Mr T Man’ is now ten years old, and there is already an air of nostalgia in the solo acoustic performance of it: the thin, frail harp break, the lonely trembling voice. Remember those good ol’ days of ‘64 and ’65 when we thought we could disappear ‘through the smoke rings’ of our minds, past all the bad trips, to ecstatic freedom? Now the song recalls those giddy days. It no longer operates as just a call to escape, but a call to remember that youthful desire to fade into our own parades. A desire that never quite goes away. The song still speaks to us, but it also speaks to our vanished youth.
This recording is not as good as I usually prefer. It’s a bit thin and tinny. There is maybe a better performance in the mass of material on ’74 recently released, but if so I haven’t caught up with it yet.
Philadelphia 1974 Evening
There is a sharp contrast between the 1974 concert tour and the Rolling Thunder tour that kicked off in 1975. The madcap bus tour across America, often playing to small-town venues, is justly famous as this is peak Dylan, and some of the performances, ‘One More Cup of Coffee’ and ‘Isis’ for example, being the finest Dylan ever did, ’66 notwithstanding. His voice has a richness, a power and a timbre he never had in ’66. This is Baritone Bob as we’ve never heard him, not the light, somewhat cheesy baritone of Nashville Skyline, but turbocharged with passion and a total commitment to the material.
Arguably that passion and commitment show most clearly in his recent songs, those from Blood on the Tracks and Desire, the Desire songs being forged on the road, but his earlier material doesn’t suffer.
The following clip is from the Martin Scorsese film, The Rolling Thunder Review. If you’re just focusing on the song and Dylan’s performance of it, you might find Scorsese’s images a bit distracting but they do give us a good feel for the ambience of the tour.
‘It happened so long ago I wasn’t even born,’ the older Dylan quips as he tries to pin down, without much success, what the tour was all about. Scorsese uses the song as background to images of cultural and political significance of the early 1970’s, including Richard Nixon and the Vietnam war. It was a cunning choice of song by Scorsese, who could have chosen a more obviously political song like ‘Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ to support his political commentary, but on reflection ‘Mr T Man,’ with its expressed desire to get away from it all, and a nostalgia for a more innocent age, provides a perfect somewhat melancholy backdrop to the turmoil of the 70’s.
I call Dylan’s guitar work here syncopated, but I’m not quite sure of the right word to use. The song becomes more rhythmic, more of a foot-tapper. It surges. It manages to avoid any rigid dumpty-dum.
1975, Scorsese
It’s better, however, to hear the full song through with no distractions, and what a moving, vibrant performance (Boston, Nov 1975) this is. Even without the third verse, which is indeed gone for good, the last verse lifts the song to its climax. The performance is more restrained than ’66, and energy held in check, an emotion barely contained, the harp not as hectic but also quivering and restrained. Suddenly the song lives again for us:
1975 Boston
The second year of the Rolling Thunder tour saw a shift in tone towards a harder edge, and they were back in big venues again. Despite turning many of his old acoustic songs into rock songs, notably the swirling ‘Hard Rain’ and ‘One Too Many Mornings,’ ‘Mr T Man’ remained as a solo acoustic performance, a throwback to the old Bob, a reminder of the pre-1965 Dylan, a nostalgic exercise. However, listening to this performance from Clearwater in 1976, we might wonder why he bothered. As with the Isle of Wight concert, he only sings two verses, in this case the first and the last, and while the magical movement of that last verse, from the ‘smoke rings of my mind’ to the ‘windy beach’ gives the song its climax, we’re still just getting the flavour of the song rather than the full song itself. A three and half minute reminder of what the song once was. A taste rather than the full course.
It’s all the more frustrating as Dylan is in great voice, in this case a soft, numinous voice reminiscent of ’66. This could have been an outstanding performance if Dylan had chosen to give the song its due. Again we’re left with the impression that Dylan’s only doing the song because he has to, because he knows its importance, and how his audiences love his solo performances of it, rather than his heart being in it. It’s almost a cruel reminder of the 60’s Dylan.
1976 Clearwater
Although it wasn’t clear at the time, 1976 was the last time we would hear the song as that solo acoustic survivor from the 1960’s. When Dylan hit the road again in 1978, it would be with a big, thirteen piece band and a radicalized conception of the song. We’ll be looking at that in the next post, coming up soon here on Untold Dylan.
In the meantime
Kia Ora!