It was on the 1965 Newport Folks Festival that Bob Dylan well-knownly “went electric,” alienating certain adherents to the folks scene by means of which he’d come up, but additionally setting a precedent for the type of quick-change musical adaptation that he’s saved up into his eighties. On the 1964 Newport Folks 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 music that — however redolent of the mid-nineteen-sixties when heard at present — would arduously have been primeical sufficient to fulfill the expectations of folks followers who regarded the music’s primeicality as its essential energy.
On the prime of the publish, you possibly can watch colorized footage of Dylan’s performance of “Mr. Tambourine Man” on the 1964 Newport Folks 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 mentioned — the lyrics’ central picture is that of guitarist Bruce Langhorne, who performed on the music as reported for Delivering It All Again Dwelling, a musician then identified 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 should 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 put in writing a follow-up to the music, its failure to cohere confirmed him the best way forward. Dylan nonetheless performs it in concert at present, and to enthusiastic reception from his audiences, however in such a manner 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 music.
Related content:
Bob Dylan’s Historic Newport Folks Festival Performances, 1963–1965
Watch Bob Dylan Make His Debut on the Newport Folks Festival in Colorized 1963 Footage
How Bob Dylan Saved Reinventing His Musicwriting 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
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the e book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly generally known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
