A month
later the tune hit #1—the only Dylan-penned tune ever to do so—and, as the
lead song and title track of their first album, turbocharging sales of that collection.
The term “folk rock” was coined specifically by journalist Eliot Siegel to account for what “Mr. Tambourine Man” sought to bring together: the depth and lyrical sophistication of folk music with the energy and backbeat of rock ‘n’ roll.
By the end
of the summer of 1965, record companies couldn’t rush musicians fast enough
into studios to capitalize on the new trend. (Tom Wilson was especially
influential, producing an electrified version of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The
Sound of Silence” that revived the duo’s partnership after their
underperforming debut, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.)
The
band—which formed only the year before when Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke
joined Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, David Crosby, and Gene Clark of The Jet Set—came
across the song via their producer and manager Jim Dickson, who had secured a
rough demo by Dylan and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott from Dylan’s manager, Albert
Grossman.
With
Crosby particularly opposed to recording the song, it took strenuous convincing
on the part of Dickson to bring the band around. In his 2020 memoir Time Between, Hillman remembered the producer’s clinching argument:
“You guys
need to go for substance and depth. Make records you can be proud of—records
that can hold up for all time. Are we making an artistic statement or just
going for a quick buck?”
Dickson
and the band had to figure out first, however, how to adapt this acoustic tune
to the rock ‘n’ roll market:
*They
switched from Dylan’s 2/4 time—more suitable for country/bluegrass—to a 4/4
groove;
*They
added electric guitars, including McGuinn on a twelve-string Rickenbacker also
used by the Searchers and the Beatles’ George Harrison;
*Though
the Byrds played on the rest of the album recorded to follow up on the single,
the only member to play an instrument on the single was McGuinn, as the famous
session ensemble The Wrecking Crew were brought in for the breakthrough single;
*In place
of Dylan’s idiosyncratic vocal, McGuinn aimed for a sweet spot between Dylan’s
and John Lennon’s, with Clark and Crosby layering in background harmonies, with
the result capturing “that angelic sound I’d heard when they were first
becoming familiar with each other’s voices,” noted Hillman.
*With FM
radio still a few years away, the group condensed Dylan’s four word- and
image-heavy verses down to one, to accommodate AM stations’ time limits of 2½-3
minutes for singles.
Dylan, for
one, was excited by the results of their three-hour January 20, 1965, studio
session with the song, exclaiming “Wow, man, you can even dance to that!” So,
too, was the preteen daughter of influential nightclub owner and talent agent Benny
Shapiro, whose enthusiasm persuaded her father to talk it up with prominent
figures in the music industry.
Eventually,
the Byrds’ demo brought to the band’s door Columbia Records, which offered a
deal for a couple of records that, if successful, would lead to an album. The
company then assigned producer Terry Melcher (son of Doris Day) to work on the
follow-ups.
With the
success of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Los Angeles became “the main spawning ground
for folk rock,” according to a 1986 Rolling Stone article. Several
groups followed in the vein that The Byrds opened, including The Turtles, We
Five, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield, and
Spanky and Our Gang, to name just a few.
Ironically,
The Byrds’ biggest impact may have registered on the songwriter whose work
helped jumpstart their careers: Dylan. It wasn’t only that, according to critic
David Fricke, the songwriter, “until then largely known as King Folk, suddenly
had the ear of an enormous teenage pop constituency.”
Furthermore,
hearing their version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” spurred him to record an electric
side for his next LP, Bringing It All Back Home. Later in 1965, at the
Newport Folk Festival, he would outrage folk purists by pursuing this experimentation
more intensively.
Perhaps
responding to criticism that they were too reliant on covers of Dylan and other
songwriters—and by the outspoken Crosby’s urging that they (and especially he)
should compose their own songs that would earn royalties—the Byrds, over the
next few years, increased the original content of their LPs.
Not
content with launching folk-rock, the group went on, through restless
innovation and personnel changes, to pioneer, through their own compositions,
other musical genres through the late Sixties: psychedelic rock (through “Eight
Miles High,” an account of a disastrous trip to Britain that many interpreted
as laden with drug references) and country rock (Sweetheart of the Radio, featuring
Hillman’s friend Gram Parsons).
For years, I wished that The Byrds had recorded “Mr. Tambourine Man” beyond their abbreviated, AM-oriented version. Then, in 1990, I was delighted to find that the briefly reunited McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman had included such a longer version at a Roy Orbison tribute concert featured on the group’s 1990 career-spanning 4-CD box, The Byrds.
You can watch that
performance—featuring a surprise appearance by Dylan himself—in this YouTube clip.
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