I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.
Mr Tambourine Man: – A History in Performance.
1978-1986. Far From the Twisted Reach
By Mike Johnson
[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 fourth article about the first track, ‘Mr Tambourine Man.’
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In 1978 Dylan took to the stage with an eight piece band and three backup singers and, for the first time since its inception, the song gets a radical makeover, no longer delivered solo with guitar and harp, but with the full band, complete with Steve Douglass’ dancing flute, a wonderful, light swirling sound that expresses the wild, joyous nature of the ‘trip’ upon ‘that magic swirling ship.’ That brisk, upbeat backing takes us into fantasy land. Some don’t like the 1978 sound, but at its best it is both inventive and in touch with the spirit of the songs. In this case, the magic of the experience is captured.
Mr T Man sounds revitalized, refreshed, re-magicked. By not performing it solo, by bringing in the band with an imaginative arrangement, Dylan has taken some of the nostalgia out of the song. It’s almost like a new song.
So what’s the catch? Well… I’m going have to drop my obsession with missed verses, but I have to point out that Dylan only sings two verses, the first and the last, and wonderful as it may sound, we’re not getting the full experience.
Here it is, the re-mastered Tokyo performance known as the Budokan recordings:
That was early in the tour, Feb 28th. If we fast-forward however to the end of the year, we find something radically different. In Seattle on Nov 15th a hoarse Dylan delivers a dead slow ‘Mr T Man’ all the bounce and swirl gone. It’s a standout performance, a tour-de-force with the song’s yearning nakedly painful. Those breezy, stoned lyrics become something else. It sounds more like he’s talking to God than the local weed dealer. That yearning to escape the fetters of the world and to be where ‘there are no fences facing’ can become an agony, the urge for transcendence overwhelming. And the lyrics dig deep enough to carry that charge.
I don’t know Dylan’s personal history well enough to say, but I believe it was around this time, at the end of the ’78 tour, that Dylan converted to Christianity and started writing gospel songs. Maybe that had something to do with this passionate performance, ‘Mr T Man’ doing service as a vehicle for Dylan’s new, spiritual experiences. It becomes a Christian song (sort of), or at least is infused with that energy.
He makes the song great again.
It’s history now, how Dylan went on the road in 1979 playing nothing but new gospel songs, thus alienating the audience he’d built up through the mid 1970s with songs from Blood On the Tracks and Desire. He introduced a few old songs in 1980 with more coming in 1981. Dylan didn’t do ‘Mr T Man’ until 1981, except for one lone performance in 1980.
To understand what is going on with this one-off 1980 performance we have to back-track to 1965, and a cover of ‘Mr T Man’ by the Byrds, a cover which popularized the song. By putting Beatles’ chords to the song, they turn in it into a Beatles/Dylan song, a 2.30 minute pop song. They only sing one verse, the ‘swirling ship’ verse, because, I speculate, it is most dope-dreamy, stoner friendly of the verses, tailor-made for the sound they’re producing.
Those opening chords, pure Beatles! I’m not saying that to disparage it. I love pop songs, even ‘My Boy Lollipop’ has its charms, and Mr T Man can be lollipopped quite seductively, doing something very similar to what Peter Paul and Mary did with ‘Blowin in the Wind.’ By adding beautiful harmonies the song is sweetened, a bit too sweet for me I have to confess, too saccharine and gauzy for my liking. When you take the edge, the bite, out of Dylan this is what you get. I hope I’m not offending too many Byrds’ fans by saying this. Dylan had no such qualms and welcomed the Byrds’ lollipop – after all, they’d turned his song into a hit! A song to dance to. What could be more fitting for a song that casts its ‘dancing spell’ your way?
Here they are live in 1966. Note those Beatles haircuts! And the groovers are grooving. It all looks so…innocent…don’t it?
All that is background to what we hear in 1980, San Fran 22nd Nov, that sole performance. It seems that the presence of Byrds’ member Roger McGuinn, who shares the vocals with Dylan onstage, had a lot to do with the song being performed. After all, they were in San Fran, California, home of the ‘California sound,’ the Byrds, the Eagles and the Beach Boys. Sweet harmonies. The summer of Love. The smoke rings of our minds.
It’s curious what happens to the lyrics here. The first verse is dropped and, after the chorus, McGuinn sings the second, ‘swirling ship’ verse as in the Bryds’ original. When Dylan sings the next verse, the third ‘escaping on the run’ verse, something strange happens. After the line ‘…there are no fences facing’ Dylan jumps back to the first, unsung verse, grabs the last lines (‘my weariness amazes me….too dead for dreaming’) and replaces the end of the third verse with them. Then drops the last verse altogether.
This doesn’t feel like a botch up to me. It seems deliberate, grafting those lines onto the end of that third verse and so jettisoning ‘the ragged clown’. I can’t even speculate why. We have to remember that for Dylan nothing is set in concrete. Lyrics are detachable, they can be dropped or moved around. Musical styles from pop to blues to country can be picked up and discarded or melded. The song is an ever-movable feast.
Musically, the performance is the tribute to the Byrd’s version, which, by 1980, had its own nostalgic appeal. We’re getting the Byrds with Dylan singing along.
San Fran 22nd Nov.
In 1981, however, ‘Mr T Man’ returned in full force and was regularly performed, along with some other older songs that Gospel Bob rediscovered. Those readers with Trouble No More, the gospel collection, will find the song live, performed in London on June 28th. This is it here:
However, that performance is eclipsed by the following night, the 29th, when he amps up the vocal. 1981 was peak year for Dylan as a vocalist. His baritone, now edging into tenor, becomes, a powerful instrument in its own right. Dylan handles the phrasing like a jazz singer, able to pitch his voice wherever he wants it. An ace performance of the song. (And see, I’ve stopped talking about missing verses.)
1981 London 29th June.
After the triumphant 1981 tour, which bought to and end four years of touring with back-up singers and big bands, Dylan quit the road until 1984, when he toured with a stripped back band featuring Mick Taylor (guitar), Ian McLagan (keyboards), Greg Sutton (bass), Colin Allen (drums).
It is wonderful to see Dylan returning to a solo, acoustic presentation of ‘Mr T Man’ as he also did with ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ that year. The song is now twenty years old, and Dylan’s performance recalls the early, glory days of the song in 1964/65. He sings it straight and heartfelt, with no embellishments, and the song shines all the better for it. We don’t get the feeling that Dylan is playing it for its nostalgia value, rather re-living the original lure of the song. We may not be young any more, but the desire to escape the ‘crazy sorrow’ of the world doesn’t fade.
This has to be one of my favourite performances.
Dylan did the song some seventeen times that year, but the best must remain the Barcelona performance (June 28th). And the video is so good I assume it was professionally done for TV. Enjoy!
Dylan did not hit the road again until 1986 when he teamed up with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for the True Confessions tour, which, after a bit of a shaky start (I saw their second concert in Auckland and it hadn’t yet fully cohered), gathered energy and went on to deliver some of the greatest rock performances of all time. That’s another story. ‘Mr T Man’ was only performed six times in that year. I’ve chosen this one from New York, Madison Square Gardens, a performance full of passion and verve. A good recording too, except for a talker who’s too close to the recorder.
I’m not sure if there is a second acoustic guitar in behind Dylan here, but, as with 1984, it’s great to hear the song done acoustically, and with a little touch of madness in the harp break. He ups the tempo too, pushing it along, which adds drive and urgency to it.
You get a bonus with this one, as a beautiful acoustic version of ‘One too Many Mornings’ comes after ‘Mr T Man,’ another song returned to its roots.
1986, New York
Dylan all but abandoned the song in 1987, while touring with Petty’s band. There was a single performance in Arnhem, and it’s there we’ll start with the next in this series.
Until then, travel well,
Kia Ora