It was on the 1965 Newport People Festival that Bob Dylan well-knownly “went electric,” alienating certain adherents to the people scene via which he’d come up, but additionally setting a precedent for the sort of quick-change musical adaptation that he’s stored up into his eighties. On the 1964 Newport People Festival, however, all that lay sooner or later. But even then, the younger Dylan wasn’t shy of making controversial choices. Take, for examinationple, the selection to play “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a tune that — however redolent of the mid-nineteen-sixties when heard as we speak — would arduously have been primeical sufficient to fulfill the expectations of people followers who regarded the music’s primeicality as its foremost power.
On the prime of the put up, you may watch colorized footage of Dylan’s performance of “Mr. Tambourine Man” on the 1964 Newport People Festival; the original black-and-white clip seems beneath. Consider the resonances it may have set off within the minds of his youthful, clean-cut audience: Rimbaud? Fellini? Lord Buckley? Mardi Gras? Confessions of an English Opium-Eater? Dylanologists have suggested all these sources of inspiration and others. It’s possible, after all, that — as Dylan himself as soon as stated — the lyrics’ central picture is that of guitarist Bruce Langhorne, who performed on the tune as documented for Delivering It All Again Residence, a musician then recognized for his personalership of a gigantic tambourine.
Regardless of its lack of references to the problems of the day, “Mr. Tambourine Man” displays its historical second with a clarity that few songs ever have. (Some would say that’s even more true of The Byrds’ cover version, a radio hit that got here out only a month after Dylan’s original.) Dylan himself will need to have sensed that it marked not simply the height of an period, but additionally that of his personal compositional and performative efforts on this particular musical model. Although he did try to jot down a follow-up to the tune, its failure to cohere confirmed him the way in which forward. Dylan nonetheless performs it in concert as we speak, and to enthusiastic reception from his audiences, however in such a method as to reinvent it every time — knowing that he each is and isn’t the identical man who took the stage at Newport these sixty years in the past, and that “Mr. Tambourine Man” each is and isn’t the identical tune.
Related content:
Bob Dylan’s Historic Newport People Festival Performances, 1963–1965
Watch Bob Dylan Make His Debut on the Newport People Festival in Colorized 1963 Footage
How Bob Dylan Saved Reinventing His Tunewriting Course of, Breathing New Life Into His Music
How Bob Dylan Created a Musical & Literary World All His Personal: 4 Video Essays
“Mr. Tambourine Man” & Other Bob Dylan Classics, Sung Beautifully by Children
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the guide The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly often known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
