bob dylan
Dylan started writing this song in February 1964, after visiting Mardi Gras in New Orleans with friends. It's told to have been finished at Judy Collins' place a couple of months later. His own version was released on the 1965 album "Bringing It All Back Home", but "The Brothers Four" heard Dylan perform the song in Hawaii in August '64 and released it before the author's version was issued.
And then it caught fire. Most successful cover - among incredibly many - is The Byrds version from the same year. It was also the title track of their first album. The song has become any buskers's property, and has almost been a plague for 60 years.
I have, for a generation or more, played this one only on command, because everybody else did. That goes for quite a lot of Dylan's songs. I didn't care about the lyrics being surrealistic; the song was from an age where surrealism was regarded "normal", if anything can be told to be. Jolly melody, and with arrangements on autopilot simply rubbing the board it has always been a banker. But I've always felt it unresolved.
In 2024 Melanie Safka laid down her pen and guitar, and I had a roundtrip on the internet to get an overview of her production. In '68 her debut album "Born to Be" was released on Buddah Records (after Woodstock '69 reissued as "My First Album"), and as one of two covers, she had chosen this song. I got goose pimples.
Slightly out of both tune, rythm and rhymes ... sometimes more resiting than singing, with a sore but still tender voice ... all of a sudden the background for the lyrics was revealed.
It isn't surrealistic at all. It's realistic. A cry for help to survive in an uncomfortable, alienated existence - being somewhere you really don't want to be, but have to. Not to go crazy, you have to escape from reality. Some use dope. Of any kind. Music CAN be a kind of dope. I've been there. I AM here, and addicted.
Now, at last, I can sing this song and make it my own.
hey mister tambourine man : play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no way I'm going to
hey mister tambourine man : play a song for me
in the jingle jangle morning I come following you
though I know the evenings empire has returned into sand
vanished from my hand
left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
my wearyness amazes me : I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
and the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming
then take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship
my senses have been stripped
my hands can't feel to grip
my toes too numb to step
waiting only for my boot heels to be wandering
I'm ready to go anywhere : I'm ready for to fade
into my own parade
cast your dancing spell my way
I'm ready to go under it
though you might hear laughing spinning swinging madly across the sun
it's not aimed at anyone
it's just escaping on the run
and but for the sky there are no fences facing
and if you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme
to you tambourine in time
it's just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn't pay it any mind
it's just a shadow that you're seeing that he's chasing
then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
down the foggy ruins of time
far past the frozen leaves
the haunted frightened trees
out to the windy beach
far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand wawing free
silhouetted by the sea
circled by the circus sands
with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
let me forget about today until tomorrow
For lyrics only, fullscreen b&w, go HERE and press F11. Hit the blue bullet or press backspace to return.
Go HERE for a list of existing cheatsheets.
For the following CHORD section, fullscreen/horizontal mobile is required.
C D7 G C hey mister tambourine man play a song for me G Am D7 I'm not sleepy and there is no way I'm going to C D7 G C hey mister tambourine man play a song for me G Am D7 G ... G7 in the jingle jangle morning I come following you
