Mr Tambourine Man – A History in Performance, Part 7: 2000 – 2010: the jingle jangle.

Previously in this series…

• Part 1: A masterpiece is born
• Part 2: 1966 – Darker hues.
• Part 3: Chasing Shadows
• Part 4: 1978-1986. Far From the Twisted Reach
• Part 5: 1986-1993: Evening’s Empire
• Part 6: 1994 – 99: My weariness amazes me

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 seventh and last article about the first track, ‘Mr Tambourine Man.’]

In the previous article we saw how Dylan’s performance of this 1964 masterpiece hit two peaks, one in 1995 and 1999. These renditions had the feel of a full restoration of the epic dimensions of the song as compared to the rushed versions of the early 1990s. If you haven’t taken in those performances, I urge you to do so in order to better understand the shift that took place in the conception of the song between 1999 and 2000.

In 2000 Dylan unveiled a stunning new arrangement of the song that would carry it through the next three years. For my ear, this new arrangement reached its peak in 2001, but let’s start in 2000 with this Sheffield performance (Sept 22^nd) and we’ll try to figure out what happened here.

2000, Sheffield

What’s most notable is the altered tempo of the song, the way Dylan elongates the first word in each line and piles on the lines without a break creating a headlong movement of considerable intensity. Yes, this arrangement has grown out of the 1999 versions, but takes a further step away from the traditional chord structure of the song, a further step away from the swing, lilt and bounce of the original.

Dylan tears into the vocals no longer underpinned by the surging tempo and rhythm of the previous arrangements, and the way he drops his voice at the end of the lines places his performance as somewhere between singing and intoning or even talking. Before leaving the Sheffield performance we have to note the subdued and whimsical harp break at the end. It’s contemplative, sad and lyrical, a far cry from the swooping harp of 1966 but no less affecting. It’s a great video too. We see Dylan kneel, place his guitar on the floor and rise, all the time keeping the harp solo going.

There’s no harp break in this Baltimore performance (Nov 8^th), but the opening chords are more clearly heard. I need someone who knows music better than me to identify what is happening here, but the effect leans towards the baroque classical tradition, or maybe the English madrigal tradition. Whatever it is, it’s a long way from the traditional opening sounds of the song with a dense, complex chord structure. If the 1964/6 performances treat the song as the celebration of ecstatic experience, even the dark side of it, and the 1994/5 performances bring out the lonely, more spooky nature of the song, this latest more agonised rendition brings out the yearning and desperation inherent in the lyrics, which are evocative enough, and open-ended enough, to be able to carry these varying emotional valences. It can be ecstatic, forlorn or desperate depending on how it’s performed.

The harp has been replaced by some intensive acoustic guitar picking by Dylan, packing out the emotional intensity of the chord structure. Admirers of Dylan’s acoustic picking style will love the mid instrumental break for the same reason.

Insert 2: 2000 Baltimore

For capturing the best of 2001, I’m going to stick with the two recordings I used for my NET survey (See: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/21173)

I’ll start with what I think is the best of the year’s crop, this recording from Madison Square Gardens, 11^th November. In that NET article I described that performance as extraordinary in its intensity. ‘By not allowing any pause at the end of each line, but ripping into the next one straight off, Dylan creates a momentum and vehemence unmatched by any previous performance.’ That’s true!

This performance has become my favourite, my go-to performance when I want to hear the song. The appreciative audience helps. Both the vocal and the harp are unmatched, in my opinion. Hear the crowd roar when he pulls out the harp at the end of the song. Here the style and conception of the song we found in 2000 is brought to perfection. It feels as if the desire for transcendence, which lies at the heart of the song, is tearing at the poet’s heart and being torn out of his lungs. Agonized yearning indeed.

2001 Madison Square Gardens 

We find a performance to equal that, sans harp, on 21^st August, in Telluride. To commit the sin of quoting myself once more, for that NET article I wrote, ‘The arrangement is the same, but the singing is much darker. The way Dylan bends his voice down at the end of each line (downsinging) is more pronounced, and the optimistic bounce of the original 1960’s song is gone. The journey sounds more like a descent into hell than a plea to go tripping.’

Telluride

Dylan was able to keep this version alive through into 2002, although to my ear 2001 was the peak year for it. Of course 2002 was the year Dylan shifted to keyboards, but this recording is from London, May 11^th, before the shift, and is a beautiful recording. Dylan’s voice is very much to the fore and the passion is still evident. There are however, some worrying signs. He loses track of the lyrics in the first verse, skips lines in the last verse, and we find the beginning to a tendency to upsing, which is to jump an octave at the end of the line. Over the next few years this would become a vocal mannerism which would draw attention to itself because of how often he did it. Also he has dropped that effective dragging of the first word of each line, that tearing passion, and tends to rush the lines despite the slow tempo.

2002 London

Despite the shift to the piano, the 2003 performances follow the same arrangement although the tempo has been stepped up a little, which doesn’t help the song as it edges the performance towards the rigid rhythms I called the ‘dumpty-dum’ in my NET series. I get the feeling that Dylan is marking time with the song at this point, and I begin to ask myself, is Dylan beginning to lose the magic of the song? (Niagara Falls, August 22^nd.)

2003, Niagara Falls

2004 doesn’t advance us very much, as it’s more of the same, but in 2005 we get the first major change in the arrangement since 2000. The song is now forty years old and Dylan is once more reaching for a new way to present it. This time the tempo has been dropped to dead slow with a hushed, half-talking vocal delivery. This Seattle recording (March 7th) is of professional quality and despite a couple of lines being dropped from the last verse, is a spooky, spine-tingling performance.

Perhaps the central question here is, how do you turn a song of youthful disaffection and rebellion into one which can be convincingly delivered by a man in his sixties, and that question has been brilliantly answered in this performance. It becomes a midnight meditation on desire and transcendence. Not a defiant declaration but a soft surrender.

2005 Seattle

Although Dylan shifted from piano to organ in 2006, the arrangement remains the same as in 2005, with a similar effect. This one’s from Sun City (8^th April). Again, we have an excellent recording with a quiet, heart-wrenching harp break at the end. However, the rigidity of the beat and the loss of syncopation is once more pushing the performance towards that dumpty-dum beat, and Dylan’s voice tends to slip into that emphasis.

 Sun City mp3

At this point we notice a sharp drop off in Dylan’s interest in the song. It was not performed at all in 2007, and in 2008 it was only performed four times, while in 2009 it was only performed three times. This concert staple is fast slipping out of sight. We have this video from Amsterdam, 2009, April 11^th which is worth a watch, but by this stage the loss of fluidity is, to my mind, fatal to the flow and excitement of the song. The dumpty-dum has taken over, and despite Dylan’s efforts to put a bit of rough into the vocals there’s no thrill here. The stilted organ playing doesn’t help, and even the harp break at the end falls prey to that rigidity. The magic swirling ship has lost its swirl. We get the feeling that Dylan is flogging a dead horse.

2009 Amsterdam 11 April 

 

Given that decline, it doesn’t come as such a great surprise that 2010 is the last time, to date, that Dylan performed the song. Again, it was only performed three times that year, and the performance was no improvement on 2009, worse if anything. Dylan just can’t breathe life back into the song; he couldn’t bring it back home. This is the last ever performance from Carcassonne, June 28^th. I have to say that it’s a dismal end to one of Dylan’s greatest songs. It’s sad to see the performance history of this song end in such a way, doing a puppet march into oblivion. I’m afraid I can’t listen to it all the way through. I find myself going back to the marvellous performances of 1995 to remind myself just how great this song can be, a compelling ode to escapism and dream, one of the great songs of the 20^th Century.

2010 Carcassonne June 28^th

 

That completes my account of ‘Mr T Man’ in performance, and what an amazing journey it has been, despite the dismal ending. I hope you’ll join me soon when I move onto the next song on Side B of Bringing It All Back Home: ‘Gates of Eden.’ There’s another story in the making.

Until then

Kia Ora