Episode 128: “Mr. Tambourine Man” by the Byrds

A History of Folk Music in 500 Songs

by Andrew Hickey.

Episode 128

Mr.

Tambourine Man

by the Birds

Today, we're going to take a look at one of the pivotal recordings in folk rock music, a track which, though it was not by any means the first folk rock record, came to define the sub-genre in the the minds of the listening public, and which, by bringing together the disparate threads of influence from Bob Dylan, the Searchers, The Beatles, and the Beach Boys, manages to be arguably the record that defines early 1965.

We're going to look at Mr.

Tambourine Man by the Birds.

that sleepy damn green old place I'm going to

remember

something

in the jingle jangle morning bell comes folk rock as a genre was something that was bound to happen sooner rather than later.

We've already seen how many of the British RB bands that were becoming popular in the US were influenced by folk music, with records like House of the Rising Sun taking traditional folk songs and repurposing them for a rock idiom.

And as soon as British bands started to have a big influence on American music, that would have to inspire a reassessment by American musicians of their own folk music.

Because, of course, while the British bands were inspired by rock and roll, they were all also coming from a skiffle tradition, which saw Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Brunsy, and the rest as being the people to emulate, and that would show up in their music.

Most of the British bands came from the bluesier end of the folk tradition, with the exception of the Liverpool bands, who pretty much all liked their black music on the poppy side, and their roots music to be more in a country vein.

But they were still all playing music which showed the clear influence of country and folk, as well as blues.

And that influence was particularly obvious to those American musicians who were suddenly interested in becoming rock and roll stars, but who had previously been folkeys.

Musicians like Gene Clark.

Gene Clark was born in Missouri and had formed a rock and roll group in his teens called Joe Mayers and the Sharks.

According to many biographies, the Sharks put out a record of Clark's song Blue Ribbons, but as far as I've been able to tell, this was Clark embellishing things a great deal.

The only evidence of this song that anyone has been able to find is a home recording from this time, of which a few seconds were used in a documentary on Clarke.

After his period in the Sharks, Clarke became a folk singer, starting out in a group called the Surf Riders.

But in August 1963 he was spotted by the new Christie Minstrels, a fourteen-piece ultra-commercial folk group, who had just released a big hit single, Green Green, with the lead sung by one of their members, Barry Maguire.

Don't you cry when you see I'm gone.

You know, there ain't no woman gonna settle me down.

I just gotta be traveling on.

I'm singing, you're ain't painted.

Clark was hired to replace a departing member and joined the group, who as well as Maguire at that time also included Larry Ramos, who would later go on to join the association and sing joint lead on their big hit, Never My Love.

heart of mine

will lose its desire

for you.

Never my love,

never my love.

What makes you think love will end when you know that my whole life depends

on you?

Clark was only in the new Christie Minstrels for a few months, but he appeared on several of their albums.

They recorded four albums during the months he was with the group, but there's some debate as to whether he appeared on all of them, as he may have missed some recording sessions when he had a cold.

Clark didn't get much opportunity to sing lead on the records, but he was more prominent in live performances, and can be seen and heard in the many TV appearances the group did in late 1963.

They found his shattered empty rifle

and the shawl she used to wear.

But they never found her duty

and they never found, they never found the hungry bear.

But Clark was not a good fit for the group.

He didn't put himself forward very much, which meant he didn't get many lead vocals, which meant in turn that he seemed not to be pulling his weight.

But the thing that really changed his mind came in late 1963 on Touring Kaider, when he heard this.

You'll think you've lost your love.

Well, I saw her yesterday, ayy.

It's you she's thinking of,

and she told me what to say, ay.

She said she loves you, and you know that can't be bad.

Clark knew instantly that that was the kind of music he wanted to be making.

And when I Want to Hold Your Hand came out in the US soon afterwards, it was the impetus that Clark needed in order to quit the group and move to California.

There he visited the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles and saw another performer who had been in an ultra-commercial folk group until he had been bitten by the Beetlebug.

Roger McGuinn.

One note here.

Roger McGuinn at this point used his birth name, but he changed it for religious reasons in 1967.

I've been unable to find out his views on his old name, whether he considers it closer to a trans person's dead name, which would be disrespectful to mention, or to something like Reg Dwight becoming Elton John, or David Jones becoming David Bowie.

As I presume everyone listening to this has access to a search engine, and can find out his birth name if at all interested, I'll be using Roger McGuinn throughout this episode, and any other episodes that deal with him, at least until I find out for certain how he feels about the use of that name.

McGuin had grown up in Chicago and become obsessed with the guitar after seeing Elvis on TV in 1956.

But as rockabelly had waned in popularity, he had moved into folk music, taking lessons from Frank Hamilton, a musician who had played in a group with rambling Jack Elliot, and who would later go on to join a 1960s line-up of the Weavers.

Hamilton taught McGuinn Lead Belly and Woody Guttery songs, and taught him how to play the banjo.

Hamilton also gave McGuinn an enthusiasm for the 12-string guitar, an instrument that had been popular among folk musicians like Lead Leadbelly, but which had largely fallen out of fashion.

McGuin became a regular in the audience at the Gate of Horn, a folk club owned by Albert Grossman, who would later become Bob Dylan's manager, and watched performers like Odetta and Josh White.

He also built his own small repertoire of songs by people like Ewan McCull, which he would perform at coffee shops.

At one of those coffee shops he was seen by a member of the Lime Lighters, one of the many Kingston trio-like groups that had come up during the folk boom.

The Limelighters were after a guitarist to back them, and offered McGuinness the job.

He turned it down at first, as he was still in school, but as it turned out, the job was still open when he graduated, and so young McGuinness found himself straight out of school playing the Hollywood Bowl on a bill including Earth a kit.

McGuinness only played with the Limelighters for six weeks, but in that short time he ended up playing on a top-five album, as he was with them at the Ashgrove when they recorded their live album Tonight in Person.

Well, it's ever so much nicer than beer.

I don't care for sherry, and one cannot drink stout.

And port is a wine.

I can well do without the

it's really a case of shakin' ha song gauge.

Have some, my dear,

my dear.

Lagadium, laggadium,

After being sacked by the Limelighters, McGuinness spent a short while playing the clubs around LA, before being hired by another commercial folk group, the Chad Mitchell Trio, who like the Limelighters before them needed an accompanist.

McGuinn wasn't particularly happy working with the trio, who in his telling regarded themselves as the stars, and McGuinn very much as the hired help.

He also didn't respect them as musicians, and thought that they were little to do with folk music as he understood the term.

Despite this, McGuinness stayed with the Chad Mitchell trio for two and a half years and played on two albums with them, Mighty Day on Campus and Live at the Bitter End.

McGuinness stuck it out with the Chad Mitchell Trio until his 20th birthday, and he was just about to accept an offer to join the new Christie Minstrels himself, when he got a better one.

Bobby Darin was in the audience at a Chad Mitchell Trio show, and approached McGuinn afterwards.

Darwin had started out in the music business as a songwriter, working with his friend Don Kirshner, but had had some success in the late 50s and early 60s as one of the interchangeable teen idol bobbies who would appear on American Bandstand with records like Dream Lover and Splish Splash.

But Darren had always been more musically adventurous than most of his contemporaries, and with his hit version of Mac the Knife, he had successfully moved into the adult cabaret market.

Unlike other singers breaking into that market, like Sam Cook, he had decided to incorporate folk music into his act.

He would do his big band set, then there would be a 15-minute set of folk songs, backed just by guitar and stand-up bass.

Darin wanted McGuinn to be his guitarist and backing vocalist for these folk sets, and offered to double what the Chad Mitchell trio was paying him.

Darren wasn't just impressed with McGuinn's musicianship, he also liked his showmanship.

which came mostly from McGuinn being bored and mildly disgusted with the music he was playing on stage.

He He would pull faces behind the Chad Mitchell trio's back, the audience would laugh, and the trio would think the laughter was for them.

For a while, McGuin was happy playing with Damon, who he later talked about as being a mentor, but then Darwin had some vocal problems and had to take some time off the road.

However, he didn't drop McGuin altogether.

Rather, he gave him a job in the Brill building, writing songs for Darwin's publishing company.

One of the songs he wrote there was Beach Ball, co-written with Frank Gary, a knockoff of Dodo Ron Ron, retooled as a beach party song.

The recording, released as by The City Surfers, apparently features McGuin, Gary, Darren on drums, and Terry Melcher on piano.

till next morning.

Oh,

we have a new beach ball, everybody's feeling fine.

Oh, we're gonna have a beach party.

Can you find a better way to spend the summertime?

Clap your hands, keep it dancing to the beach band splashing in the water.

That wasn't a hit, but a cover version by Jimmy Hannon was a local hit in Melbourne, Australia.

and make it to the party.

Everybody's doing it all over this land.

Oh, we're having a beach, bro.

Everybody's feeling fun.

Oh, we're gonna have a beach party.

Can you find a better way to spend the summertime?

Clap your hands, keep it dancing to the beach band, splashing in the water, dancing in the sand.

Take your baby and make it to the party.

That record is mostly notable for its backing vocalists, three brothers who would soon go on to become famous as the Bee Gees.

Darwin soon advised McGuin that if he really wanted to become successful, he should become a rock and roll singer, and so McGuinn left Darin's employ and struck out as a solo performer, playing folk songs with a rock back beat around Greenwich Village, before joining a Beatles tribute act playing clubs around New York.

He was given further encouragement by Dion DeMucci,

another late 50s singer who, like Darwin, was trying to make the transition to playing for adult crowds.

DeMucci had been lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, but had had more success as a solo act with records like The Wanderer.

I hug them and I squeeze them, they don't even know my name.

They call me The Wanderer,

yeah,

Dion was insistent that McGuinn had something, that he wasn't just imitating the Beatles, as he thought, but that he was doing something a little more original.

Encouraged by Dion, McGuinn made his way west to LA, where he was playing the troubadour supporting Roger Miller, when Gene Clark walked in.

Clark saw McGuinn as a kindred spirit.

another folky who'd had his musical world revolutionized by the Beatles, and suggested that the two become a duo, performing in the style of Peter and Gordon, the British duo who'd recently had a big hit with World Without Love, a song written for them by Paul McCartney.

The duo act didn't last long though, because they were soon joined by a third singer, David Crosby.

Crosby had grown up in LA.

His father, Floyd Crosby, was an award-winning cinematographer who had won an Oscar for his work on Taboo, a story of the South Seas, and a Golden Globe for High Noon, but is now best known for his wonderfully lurid work on a whole series of films starring Vincent Price, including The Pit and the Pendulum, House of Usher, Tales of Terror, and Comedy of Terrors.

Like many children of privilege, David had been a spoiled child, and he had taken to burglary for kicks, and had impregnated a school friend and then run off rather than take responsibility for the child.

Travelling across the US as a way to escape the consequences of his his actions, he had spent some time hanging out with musicians like Fred Neal, Paul Cantner, and Travis Edmondson, the latter of whom had recorded a version of Crosby's first song, Cross the Plains.

Cross the plains,

cross the Plains

Cold

Wind

Boy

Edmondson had also introduced Crosby to cannabis, and Crosby soon took to smoking everything he could, even once smoking aspirin, to see if he could get high from that.

When he'd run out of money, Crosby, like Clark and McGuin, had joined an ultra commercial folk group.

In Crosby's case, it was Les Baxter's Balladeers, put together by the bandleader, who was better known for his exotica recordings.

While Crosby was in the Balladeers, they were recorded for an album called Jack Linkletter Presents a Folk Festival, a compilation of live recordings hosted by the host of Hootinani.

I've traveled in the mountains, traveled down in the valley.

I've traveled in the mountains, traveled, down in the valley.

Traveled in the mountains, traveled down in the valleys.

I've been traveling on it.

It's possible that Crosby got the job with Baxter through his father's connections.

Baxter did the music for many films made by Roger Coleman, the producer and director of those Vincent Price films.

Either way, Crosby didn't last long in the Balladeers.

After he left the group, he started performing solo sets, playing folk music but with a jazz tinge to it.

Crosby was already interested in pushing the boundaries of what chords and melodies could be used in folk.

Crosby didn't go down particularly well with the folk club crowds, but he did impress one man.

Jim Dixon had got into the music industry more or less by accident.

He had seen the comedian Lord Buckley, a white man who did satirical routines in a hipsterish argut that owed more than a little to black slang, and had been impressed by him.

He had recorded Buckley with his own money and had put out Buckley's first album, Hipsters, Flipsters, and Finger Popping Daddies, Knock Me Your Lobes, on his own label, before selling the rights of the album to Electra Records.

It is true he hath returned with many freaks and chains

and brought them home to Rome.

Yea, the booty was looty and hipped the treasury well.

Dost thou dig this was Caesar's groove for the push

when the cats

with the empty kicks

hath copped out,

yea, Caesar hath copped out.

Dixon had gone on to become a freelance producer, often getting his records put out by Elektra, making both jazz records with people like Red Mitchell.

And country folk and bluegast records with people like the Dillards, whose first few albums he produced.

Dixon had also recently started up a publishing company, Tixon Music, with a partner, and the first song they had published had been written by a friend of Crosby's, Dino Valenti, with whom at one point Crosby had shared a houseboat.

Know that Lord

Unfortunately for Dixon, before that song became a big hit for the Youngbloods, he had had to sell the rights to it to the Kingston Trio's managers, as Valenti had been arrested and needed bail money, and it was the only way to raise the funds required.

Dixon liked Crosby's performance and became his manager.

Dixon had access to a recording studio, and started recording Crosby singing traditional songs and songs to which Dixon owned the copyright.

At this point, Crosby wasn't writing much, and so Dixon got him to record material like Get Together.

brother, let me see you get together and love one another and

some will come and some will go

We shall surely pass

Unfortunately for Crosby, Dixon's initial idea, to get him signed to one of others records as a solo artist using those recordings didn't work out.

But Gene Clark had seen Crosby perform live and thought he was impressive.

He told McGwin about him and the three men soon hit it off.

They were able to sing three-part harmony together as soon as they met.

This is one characteristic of Crosby that acquaintances often note.

He's a natural harmony singer and is able to fit his voice into pre-existing groups of other singers very easily.

and make it sound natural.

Crosby introduced the pair to Dixon, who had a brainwave.

These were folkies, but they didn't really sing like folkies.

They'd grown up on rock and roll, and they were all listening to the Beatles now.

There was a gap in the market, between the Beatles and Peter Paul and Mary, for something with harmonies, a soft sound, and a social conscience, but a rock and roll beat, something that was intelligent but still fun, and which could appeal to the screaming teenage girls and to the college kids who were listening to Dylan.

In Crosby, McGuinn and Clark, Dixon thought he had found the people who could do just that.

The group named themselves the Jet Set, a name thought up by McGuinn, who loved flying and everything about the air, and which they also thought gave them a certain sophistication, and their first demo recording, with all three of them on twelve string guitars, shows the direction they were going in.

The Only Girl I Adore, written by McGuinness and Clark, has what I can only assume is the group trying for Liverpool accents and failing miserably, and call and response and yeah yeah vocals that are clearly meant to evoke the Beatles.

It actually does a remarkably good job of evoking some of Paul McCartney's melodic style, but the rhythm guitar is pure Darnelly.

You're the evening star,

and the only star I see.

You're my life

through the day,

The Jet Set jettisoned their folk instruments for good after watching a hard day's night.

Roger McGuinn traded in his banjo and got an electric 12-string Rickenbacker, just like the one that George Harrison played, and they went all in on the British Invasion sound, copying the Beatles, but also the Searchers, whose jangly jangly sound was perfect for the Rickenbacker, and who had the same kind of solid harmony sound the Jet Set were going for.

Of course, if you're going to try to sound like the Beatles and the Searchers, you need a drummer, and McGuin and Crosby were both acquainted with a young man who had been born Michael Dick, but who had, understandably, changed his name to Michael Clark.

He was only 18 and wasn't a particularly good drummer, but he did have one huge advantage, which is that he looked exactly like Brian Jones.

So the Jet Set now had a full line-up: Roger McGuinn on lead guitar, Gene Clark on rhythm guitar, David Crosby was learning bass, and Michael Clark on drums.

But that wasn't the lineup on their first recordings.

Crosby was finding it difficult to learn the bass, and Michael Clark wasn't yet very proficient on drums.

So, for what became their first record, Dixon decided to bring in a professional rhythm section, hiring two of the wrecking crew, bass player Ray Pullman and drummer Earl Palmer, to back the three singers, with McGuinn and Gene Clark on guitars.

Let me live in the warmth of your smile.

Let them see you with me.

Let them wish they could be

as lucky as me

to have you here,

That was put out on a one single deal with Electra Records, and Jim Dixon made the deal under the condition that it couldn't be released under the group's real name.

He wanted to test what kind of potential they had without spoiling their reputation.

So instead of being put out as by the Jet Set, it was put out as by the Beef Eaters, the kind of fake British name that a lot of American bands were using at the time, to try and make themselves seem like they might be British.

The record did nothing, but nobody was expecting it to do much, so they weren't particularly bothered.

And anyway, there was another problem to deal with.

David Crosby had been finding it difficult to play bass and sing.

This was one reason that he only sang, and didn't play, on the Beef Eaters single.

His bass playing was wooden and rigid, and he wasn't getting better, so it was decided that Crosby would just sing, and not play anything at all.

As a result, the group needed a new bass player, and Dixon knew someone who he thought would fit the bill, despite him not being a bass player.

Chris Hillman had become a professional musician in his teens, playing mandolin in a bluegrass group called the Scottsville Squivelbarkers, who made one album of bluegrass standards for sale through supermarkets.

Hillman had moved on to a group called the Golden State Boys, which featured two brothers, Vern and Rex Gosdin.

The Golden State Boys had been signed to a management contract by Dixon, who had renamed the group The Hillmen after their mandolin player.

Hillman was very much in the background in the group, and Dixon believed that he would be given a little more confidence if he was pushed to the front.

The Hillmen had recorded one album, which wasn't released until many years later, and which had featured Hillman singing lead on the Bob Dylan song When the Ship Comes In.

come up when the winds will stop and the breeze will cease to be breathing.

Like the stillness in the wind, for the hurricane begins.

The hour when the ship comes in.

Oh, the seas will split, and the ships will hit it, and the shoreline sands will be.

Hillman had gone on from there to join a bluegrass group managed by Randy Sparks, the same person who was in charge of the New Christie Minstrels, and who specialised in putting out ultra-commercialised versions of Roots music for pop audiences.

But Dixon knew that Hillman didn't like playing with that group and would be interested in doing something very different, so even though Hillman didn't play bass, Dixon invited him to join the group.

There was almost another line-up change at this point as well.

McGuin and Gene Clark were getting sick of David Crosby's attitude.

Crosby was the most technically knowledgeable musician in the group, but was at this point not much of a songwriter.

He was not at all shy about pointing out what he considered flaws in the songs that McGwinn and Clark were writing, but he wasn't producing anything better himself.

Eventually, McGuinn and Clark decided to kick Crosby out of the group altogether, but they reconsidered when Dixon told them that if Crosby went, he was going too.

As far as Dixon was concerned, the group needed Crosby's vocals and that was an end of the matter.

Crosby was back in the group and all was forgotten.

But there was another problem related to Crosby, as the Jet Set found out when they played their first gig, an unannounced spot at the Troubadour.

The group had perfected their image with their Beatles suits and pose of studied cool, but Crosby had never performed without an instrument before.

He spent the gig prancing around the stage trying to act like a rock star, wiggling his bottom in what he thought was a suggestive manner.

It wasn't, and the audience found it hilarious.

Crosby, who took himself very seriously at this point point in time, felt humiliated and decided that he needed to get an instrument to play.

Obviously, he couldn't go back to playing bass, so he did the only thing that seemed possible.

He started undermining Gene Clarke's confidence as a player, telling him he was playing behind the beat.

Clark, who was actually a perfectly reasonable rhythm player, was non-confrontational by nature and believed Crosby's criticisms.

Soon he was playing behind the beat, because his confidence had been shaken.

Crosby took over the rhythm guitar role, and from that point on it would be Gene Clark, not David Crosby, who would have to go on stage without an instrument.

The Jet Set was still not getting very many gigs, but they were constantly in the studio, working on material.

The most notable song they recorded in this period is You Showed Me, a song written by Gene Clark and McGuinness which would not see release at the time, but which would later become a hit for both the Turtles and the Lightning Seeds.

Clark, in particular, was flourishing as a songwriter, and becoming a genuine talent.

But Jim Dixon thought that the song that had the best chance of being the Jet Set's breakout hit wasn't one that they were writing themselves, but one that he'd heard Bob Dylan perform in concert, for which Dylan had not yet released himself.

In 1964, Dylan was writing far more material than he could reasonably record, even given the fact that his albums at this point often took little more time to record than to listen to.

One song he'd written but not yet put out on an album was Mr.

Tambourine Man.

Dylan had written the song in April 1964 and started performing it live as early as May.

That performance was later released in 2014 for copyright extension purposes on vinyl in a limited run of 100 copies.

I believe this recording is from that.

Jim Dixon remembered the song after seeing Dylan perform it live and started pushing Whitmark Music, Dylan's publishers, to send him a demo of the song.

Dylan had recorded several demos, and the one that Whitmark sent over was a version that was recorded with Vamplin Jack Elliott singing Harmony, recorded for Dylan's album Another Side of Bob Dylan, but left off the album as Elliott had been off key at points.

you

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship

My senses have been stripped

My hands can feel to grip

There have been all sorts of hypotheses about what Mr.

Tambourine Man is really about.

Robert Shelton, for example, suspects the song is inspired by Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater.

De Quincey uses the term for opium, the dark idol, which is supposedly a translation of the Latin phrase martyr tenebrarum, which actually means mother of darkness, or mother of death, or mother of gloom.

Shelton believes that Dylan probably liked the sound of martyr tenebrum, and turned it into Mr Tambourine Man.

Others have tried to find links to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, or claimed that Mr Tambourine Man is actually Jesus.

Dylan, on the other hand, had a much more prosaic explanation that Mr.

Tambourine Man was a friend of his named Bruce Langhorne, who was prominent in the Greenwich Village folk scene.

As well as being a guitarist, Langhorne was also a percussionist, and played a large Turkish frame drum, several feet in diameter, which looked and sounded quite like a massively oversized tambourine.

Dylan got that image in his head and wrote a song about it.

Sometimes a tambourine is just a tambourine.

Also, in a neat little coincidence, Dylan has acknowledged that he took the phrase jingle-jangle from a routine by Jim Dixon's old client, Lord Buckley.

Dixon was convinced that Mr.

Tambourine Man would be a massive hit, but the group didn't like it.

Gene Clark, who was at this point the group's only lead singer, didn't think it fit his voice or had anything in common with the songs he was writing.

Roger McGuinn was nervous about doing a Dylan song, because he'd played at the same Greenwich Village clubs as Dylan when both were starting out.

He had felt a rivalry with Dylan then, and wasn't entirely comfortable with inviting comparisons with someone who had grown so much as an artist, while McGwinn was still very much at the beginning of his career.

And David Crosby simply didn't think that such a long, wordy song had a chance of being a hit.

So Dixon started to manipulate the group.

First, since Clark didn't like singing the song, he gave the lead to McGwinn.

The song now had one champion in the band.

And McGwinn was also a good choice as he had a hypothesis that there was a space for a vocal sound that split the difference between John Lennon and Bob Dylan, and was trying to make himself sound like that, not realising that Lennon himself was busily working on making his voice more Dylan-esque at the same time.

But that still wasn't enough.

Even after Dixon worked with the group to cut the song down so it was only two choruses and one verse, and so came in under two minutes, rather than the five minutes that Dylan's original version lasted, Crosby in particular was still agitating that the group should just drop the song, so Dixon decided to bring in Dylan himself.

Dixon was acquainted with Dylan and told him that he was managing a Beatles-style group who were doing one of Dylan's songs and invited him to come along to a rehearsal.

Dylan came, partly out of politeness, but also because Dylan was as aware as anyone of the commercial realities of the music business.

Dylan was making most of his money at this point as a songwriter from having other people perform his songs, and he was well aware that the Beatles had changed what hit records sounded like.

If the kids were listening to beat groups instead of to Peter Paul and Mary, then Dylan's continued commercial success relied on him getting beat groups to perform his songs.

So he agreed to come and hear Jim Dixon's beat group and see what he thought of what they were doing with his song.

Of course, once the group realised that Dylan was going to be coming to listen to them, they decided that they had better actually work on their arrangement of the song.

They came up with something that featured McGuinness Searcher-style 12-string playing, the group's trademark harmonies, and a rather incongruous sounding marching beat.

Dylan heard their performance and was impressed, telling them, you can dance to it.

Dylan went on a charm offensive with the group, winning all of them round except Crosby, but even Crosby stopped arguing the point, realising he'd lost.

Mr.

Tambourine Man was now a regular part of their repertoire, but they still didn't have a record deal, until one came from an unexpected direction.

The group were playing their demos to a local promoter, Benny Shapiro, when Shapiro's teenage daughter came into the room, excited because the music sounded so much like the Beatles.

Shapiro later joked about this to the great jazz trumpet player Miles Davis, and Davis told his record label about this new group, and suddenly they were being signed to Columbia Records.

Mr.

Tambourine Man was going to be their first single, but before that, they had to do something about the group's name, as Columbia pointed out that there was already a British group called the Jet Set.

The group discussed this over Thanksgiving turkey, and the fact that they were eating a bird reminded Gene Clark of a song by the group's friend Dino Valenti, Birdsers.

There's

a pretty house.

There's is

in a pear tree

full of pears

'cause they're birds you see.

Clark suggested the birdsers, but the group agreed that it wasn't quite right, though McGwinn, who was obsessed with aviation, did like the idea of a name that was associated with flight.

Dixon's business partner Eddie Tickner suggested that they just call themselves the Birds, but the group saw a problem with that too.

Bird being English slang for girl, they worried that if they called themselves that, people might think they were gay.

So how about messing with the vowels, the same way the Beatles had changed the spelling of their name?

They thought about birds with a U and Birds with an E, before McGuinn hit on birds with a Y,

which appealed to him because of Admiral Bird, an explorer and pioneering aviator.

They all agreed that the name was perfect.

It began with a B, just like the Beatles and Beach Boys.

It was a pun like the Beatles, and it signified flight, which was important to McGuin.

As the group entered 1965, another major event happened in McGuinness' life.

the one that would lead to him changing his name.

A while earlier, McGuin had met a friend in Greenwich Greenwich Village and had offered him a joint.

The friend had refused, saying that he had something better than dope.

McGuin was intrigued to try this something better, and went along with his friend to what turned out to be a religious meeting of the new religious movement Subud, a group which believes, among other things, that there are seven levels of existence from gross matter to pure spirit, and which often encourages members to change their names.

McGuin was someone who was very much looking for meaning in his life.

Around this time he also became a devotee of the self-help writer Norman Vincent Peel, thanks to his mother sending him a copy of Peel's book on positive thinking, and so he agreed to give the organisation a go.

Subud involves a form of meditation called Delithon, and on his third attempt at doing this meditation, McGuinn had experienced what he believed was contact with God, an intense hallucinatory experience which changed his life forever.

McGwinn was initiated into Subud ten days before going into the studio to record Mr.

Tambourine Man, and according to his self-description, whatever Bob Dylan thought the song was about, he was singing to God when he sang it.

In earlier interviews, he said he was singing to Allah, but now he's a born-again Christian, he tends to use God.

The group had been assigned by CBS to Terry Melcher, mostly because he was the only staff producer they had on the West Coast who had any idea at all about rock and roll music.

and Melcher immediately started to mold the group into his idea of what a pop group should be.

For their first single, Melcher decided that he wasn't going to use the group, other than McGwin, for anything other than vocals.

Michael Clark, in particular, was still a very shaky drummer, and would never be the best on his instrument, while Hillman and Crosby were adequate, but not anything special, on bass and guitar.

Melcher knew that the group's sound depended on McGuinness' electric twelve string sound, so he kept that.

But other than that, the birds' only contribution to the A side was McGwin, Crosby, and Clark on vocals.

Everything else was supplied by members of the wrecking crew.

Jerry Cole on guitar, Larry Nectall on bass, Leon Russell on electric piano, and Hal Blaine on drums.

step

wait only

for my boot heels to be wandering

I'm ready to go anywhere I'm ready for to Indeed not everyone who performed at the session is even clearly audible on the recording.

Both Gene Clark and Leon Mussell were actually mixed out by Melcher.

Both of them are audible, Clark more than Muscle, but only because of leakage onto other other people's microphones.

The final arrangement was a mix of influences.

McGwinn's twelve string sound was clearly inspired by The Searchers, and the part he's playing is allegedly influenced by Bach, though I have never seen any noticeable resemblance to anything Bach ever wrote.

The overall sound was an attempt to sound like the Beatles, while Melcher always said that the arrangement and feel of the track was inspired by Don't Worry, Baby, by The Beach Boys.

This is particularly noticeable in the bass part.

Compare the the part on the Beach Boys record

to the tag on the Birds Record.

Five days before the Birds recorded their single, Bob Dylan had finally recorded his own version of the song, with the tambourine man himself, Bruce Langhorn, playing guitar.

And it was released three weeks before the Birds' version, as an album track on Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home.

Play a song for me.

I'm not sleepy, and there is no place I'm going to.

Hey, Mr.

Tambourine Man, play a song for me.

In the jingle jangle morning, I come following you.

Dylan's album would become one of the most important of his career, as we'll discuss in a couple of weeks when we next look at Dylan.

But it also provided an additional publicity boost for the Birds, and as a result, their record quickly went to number one in both the UK and America, becoming the first record of a Dylan song to go to number one on any chart.

Dylan's place in the new pop order was now secured.

The Byrds had shown that American American artists could compete with the British Invasion on its own terms, that the new wave of guitar bands still had a place for Americans, and folk rock was soon identified as the next big commercial trend.

And over the next few weeks, we'll see how all those things played out throughout the mid-sixties.

A history of rock music and 500 songs is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon.

Each week, Patreon backers will get a 10-minute bonus podcast.

This week's is on I Got You Babe by Sonny and Cher.

Visit patreon.com slash AndrewHickey to sign up for as little as a dollar a month.

A book based on the first 50 episodes of the podcast, from Savoy Swingers to Clock Rockers, is now available.

Search Andrew Hickey 500 Songs on your favourite online bookstore or visit the links in the show notes.

This podcast is written and narrated by me, Andrew Hickey, and produced by me and Tilt Ariser.

Visit 500songs.com.

That's 500 the numbers songs.com

to read transcript and liner notes and get links to hear the full versions of songs excerpted here.

If you've enjoyed the show and feel it's worth reviewing, please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

But more importantly, tell just one person that you liked this podcast.

Word of mouth, more than any other form of promotion, is how creative works get noticed and sustain themselves.

Thank you very much for listening.