THE BYRDS – “Mr. Tambourine Man”
The impact of Bob Dylan as lyricist isn’t so much in the idea that pop could be ‘poetry’ but in the idea that it could be a riddle-game. (Of course the difference between these two ideas is mostly one of emphasis: that’s why we do comprehension exercises at school.) Coded meanings and lyrical references didn’t begin in 1960 but the formula was generally to take a subject that one couldn’t sing about and modify things so that one could. Once a listener to, say, “Sugar In My Bowl” understood the single metaphor, that was that: they were in the club.
Dylan did this too, as singer and as audience – his ears notoriously pricked up when he misheard dope references in the Beatles. But a lot of his mid-60s lyrics took the technique and exploded it, packing fabulous, ridiculous worlds of detail and allusion into rambling verses. You could have a lot of fun codexing them – which itself might let you into a particular club – but there’s not often a key central image that turns the song into something you can make literal sense out of. Your understanding is something personal, secret, hard to articulate.
But of course understanding of pop usually is like that. It turns on the private stuff you can draw out of a chord, or a phrase, or a snarl or twitch. The point at which pop criticism starts is that ginger moment when you play a song you love to someone else and hope that the world it opens up for them is the same as the one it opens for you (or maybe you hope that it’s not the same). What Dylan’s kind of cryptic pop is doing – and make no mistake, it does it well – is making the potential for private worlds more obvious, making them part of pop’s text.
We’re at a slight tangent, though, to “Mr Tambourine Man” by The Byrds. For one thing “Mr. Tambourine Man”, at least the wide-eyed way the Byrds sing it, is one of those Dylan songs that has a metaphor-key, and they’ve left the key squarely on the doormat with the label “Take me for a trip” tied on. I think it’s a very pretty lyric, but it’s approached here with a convert’s optimism and Dylan’s folksy tics (“I’m ready for to fade”) are treated with a bit too much reverence. The Byrds sing the song like Dylanologists-in-waiting.
But that’s fine, because while you’re helping them puzzle out the words, the music gets the chance to sneak up and charm you. I like the Byrds because of the way they hit on a lovely sound and then applied it for a couple of years to everything – stern old hymns, laments on Presidential death, wry musings on the rock biz, love songs, drug songs, anything. Any subject, any song could be polished and Rickenbackered into a blissful smoothness. Here their obvious faith in Dylan’s song and their musical committment to beauty link, and the result is three minutes that seem to bring a better world within touching distance.
8
Tom in Popular • 1,613 views • Share/Save
See, with this and the last entry we’re starting to get to the really good stuff about how pop works (the general how, not the particular why). I’ve been enjoying Popular since the beginning, but I hope it continues like this.
Or, to be less obtuse, this is great.
We talked a bit earlier about Lennon and word play and how it worked into Ticket To Ride and all the puns, double entendre and “in” remarks in many of the Beatles stuff. Small potatoes compared to Dylan. And , as time has proven, much more than a riddle game
With the intro of M. Tam Man into the charts it’s an acceptance of poetic, lyric driven songs. I remember the general wisdom as ” Dylan can’t sing” but he could write. It took a band as tightly wrought and highly sung to make a silk pouch out of Dylan’s sow’s ear. We owe the Byrd’s a lot in being able to bring such an unusual song into the public limelight. That ol’ Rickenbacker’s jingle jangle does the trick.
Here’s a song that we can listen to again and again and draw more and differing meanings from it. Just like all good poetry, it allows us to give it our personal meaning. And thank God that it was Dylan they chose to be ” Rickenbackered into a blissful smoothness. “. Had they not Zimmerman may not have ever strapped on a Stratocaster at Newport.
Brian C
In contrast, the reason for the decline of the Searchers is that they never had a Dylan to smooth out.
No need to comment on the attendant irony of David Crosby knocking Graham Nash off the top of the charts.
Marcello – now THAT’S what I call observant. Have recently been listening to Crosby and Nash’s most recent work. Patchy but in places fabulous. Whatever else you think about the sixties, it seems to me like a golden age of harmony singing.
Mystifying. King of the Road gets 40+ comments, Tambourine Man gets 3…
Funny, I thought everone had gone to the moon but I guess M.Tam Man is too smooth for it’s own good.
And we all LIKE it !
Funny, I thought everone had gone to the moon but I guess M.Tam Man is too smooth for it’s own good.
And we all LIKE it !
If it’s worth saying once, it’s worth saying twice…
If we all like it how come it only got an 8?
If we all like it how come it only got an 8?
I don’t like it.
I don’t dislike it either, but it’s never said anything to me. I understand that they were the talk of the town when they appearted on the live scene, but I wasn’t there, and nothing about their look, sound or project has ever done the slightest thing for me.
(That’s not entirely true: I go for “Chestnut Mare” and “Feel A Whole Lot Better”.)
Apologies for posting such a personal blank meh post, but the greater the assumption of unanimity, the more important that the odd blank face says meh.
Good point. Your dissent duly noted!
I feel I may be missing out on something. I love Neil Young, and mistook the intro to one of his 45,654 versions of “Mr Soul” for “Eight Miles High” this evening, and thought: “hey, maybe I do like the Byrds!”. And I love some bits of CSN, and some bits of Hollies, and some bits of West Coast harmony stuff, and some garage, and have never much of a bad word to say about Dylan, and love Love, but…
…I suppose I’m saying “ta” for noting the dissent.
Sorry for the double post about LIKING IT.
I’ve had a real problem getting my box to post stuff – may be that’s why so little response – to this song.
Dissention included.
Brian C
Resurrection Watch: This Kilroy tribute. Plus Shatner, Melanie et al, of course.
Кстати, я сейчас посмотрел, ваш блог в Yandex хорошие места занимает ,если название сайта в поиск вбивать.