1965 The Byrds: Mr Tambourine Man

I've always regarded Bob Dylan as a perennial unseen guest at The Byrds table, a non member member who they'd turn to for a song whenever their own inspiration was low. 'Mr Tambourine Man' is a hugely truncated version of Dylan's four verse ode to freedom that had originally appeared on 'Bringing It All Back Home' that same year, though The Byrds gutted it by using only the second verse but filling out Dylan's barren acoustic vision with an electrified shimmer of chiming guitars. In doing so, accepted wisdom states that they single-handedly 'invented' folk rock, though that's not a viewpoint I've too much time for; The Byrds might be the strong trunk at the heart of that genre, but we've heard that Rickenbacker sound before and seeds had already been sown by The Searchers and The Beatles.

What The Byrds DID do,* whether by accident or design, was to tease out the druggy undertones in Dylan's lyric (evidence? just listen to Roger McGuinn's wide eyed/eyes closed reverie on "take me on a trriiiiiip on your magic swirling shhiiiip") and then marry them to a softened and spacey melody that drags slightly out of synch with McGuinn's drawling lead vocal until the two interact with the effect of the swing of a hypnotist's watch. The result is cosmic and sublime, a song that constantly threatens to break free of its earthly moorings and (in the parlance of Milton) "With thy Celestial Song. Up led by thee into the Heav'n of Heav'ns".

As a rule of thumb, I don't care much for cover versions. The exception to that comes where something is done to the song that the original writer didn't/couldn't have contemplated so as to make it something original in its own right rather than just a tracing paper copy. On that front, The Byrds add a dreamy, sun-kissed dimension to Dylan's song of pure lyricism which shaved off the rough edges and managed to sell it to the masses without selling out to them. Stupidly influential, the echoes of 'Mr Tambourine Man' reverberate in spirit around the guitar strings and amps of virtually every jangly indie or alt country act since, with The Byrds themselves never able to fully break free from it's sweet 'ain't broke, don't fix it' template for the rest of their output.


* Of course, the fly in the ointment is that none of The Byrds, apart from McGuinn, actually play on the single at all; producer Terry Melcher wasn't convinced of their musicianship and so hired crack session band The Wrecking Crew to provide the backing. Does this 'spoil' the single at all? I think not - for all intents and purposes the band featured can be regarded as the short-lived The Byrds Mk1, though if you can detect any discernible difference in playing between this and the rest of the songs on their debut album then you've sharper ears than me.