| Bob Dylan – Mr. Tambourine Man Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Ok...I've read a lot of stuff on this page that is extremely misguided...like, for instance, quoting the movie "Dangerous Minds" as a reliable source. While Dylan certainly used drugs, he introduced the Beatles to pot, and while the lyrics do, as anyones lyrics who uses a fair amount of drugs would, have many undertones of drug use; this song is not solely about drugs, or buying drugs from a tambourine toting drug dealer...please give Dylan more respect than that. First off, all of Dylan's songs are ambiguous. Ambiguity it what makes something art. For example, to say you're less pretty now that you are older is literal, however, to say "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May" is art. It is artful in its ambiguity. And do to this ambiguity there can certainly be many personal interpretations. But I assure you it is not simply a metaphor for drugs. Dylan rarely commented on the meaning behind his lyrics inorder to keep the ambiguity and ability for personal interpretation alive. However, he always insisted that this song was not about drugs and often was very offended by that assumption. In his most recent autobiography he states that this song was inspired by his experience at Mardi Gras. For anyone that knows anything about Mardi Gras; it is the celebration that leads up to Ash Wednesday and Christian Holy day that marks the beginning of Lent. The party was historically intended to be one last blow out before basically giving up our bad habits for the forty days of Lent. For anyone who has been to Mardi Gras, it is quite a strange scene come Tuesday night at midnight. At midnight, when Wednesday and lent technically begin the streets clear out. The bars however will remain open as long as there are cutomers. So for basically a week there is none stop parties in the street until all hours of the night/morning (basically they dont stop). On Tuesday, however, you can walk into a bar at 10:00 pm with Bourbon Street buzzing like crazy and walk out anytime after midnight and the street, once packed and crazy for an entire week, is empty, completely desolate. Rosary beads appear over all the grave stones in the cemetaries, everyone goes home for the beginning of the religious observance of Lent. If you are not expecting this, this can come as quite a shock. And the scene is quite eerie. This is what happened to Dylan he walked into a pub with the street packed and walked out, surprised to find it completely empty, except for a costume (french quarter of New Orleans/Mardi Gras...the clown with the tambourine is actually literal) wearing musician with a tambourine. With this understanding a lot of the lyrics begin to make sense...some however are just poetic imagery used to describe this eerie feeling. Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to. (Still awake from a night of partying and theres no where left to go...hes restless) Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you. Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand, (the evenings empire -- Mardi Gras celebration -- has come to an end) Vanished from my hand, Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping. My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet, I have no one to meet (Again, he's resltess and despite the festivities being over, there being no one left to meet up with and his exhaustian, its morning and yet he's still awake) And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming. (the ancient empty steet refers to bourbon street) Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship, (This is where there might be some drug undertones) My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip, My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels To be wanderin'. (Again, hes dead from a week of partying, dragging his feet) I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade Into my own parade, (he's ready to fade, fall asleep, recover from the celebration, the reference to his own parade probably mirrors the many parades associated with Mardi Gras) cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it. (possibly a metaphor for getting stoned, or maybe just referring to the soothing sounds of a tambourine (let alone anything) in such an eerie empty place) As for the rest... But as Dylan himself put it "I'm not going to write a fantasy song. Even a song like 'Mr. Tambourine Man' really isn't a fantasy. There's substance to the dream." "Well, songs are just thoughts. For the moment they stop time. Songs are supposed to be heroic enough to give the illusion of stopping time. With just that thought. To hear a song is to hear someone's thought, no matter what they're describing. If you see something and you think it's important enough to describe, then that's your thought. You only think one thought at a time, so what you come up with is really what you're given. When you sit around and *imagine* things to do and to write and to think - that's fantasy. I've never been much into that." So in a sense the rest of the song is merely his thoughts at the very moment that he experienced that very eerie scene. "Mr. Tambourine Man," like the other material Dylan was developing in early 1964, was emblematic of his escape from the shackles of topical songwriting into more abstract imagery, often suggesting a search for liberation from both external and internal prisons. "And for the sky there are no fences facing" -- he's longing for freedom and a break from the restraints imposed by the lull that popular music had fallen into. Artistic expression should have no fences around it. That quest was quite apparent in another of the songs he worked on during his journey, "Chimes of Freedom," its call for the abolition of repression not tethered to any specific political or social movement. "Mr. Tambourine Man" went yet further, evoking not just escape from bondage but an altered state of perception, with its plea for transportation through mystical ships and corridors of time to a land of diamond-studded skies. A use for music not previously concieved of. Remember this is before the psychodelic movement really. None of the music of the time could really transport you to an altered reality to escape the dispondence of the one you currently were living in. Inspired by the faint happy jingle jangles of a ragged clown playing a tambourine in the middle of a deserted Bourbon Str., while feeling nearly sick with exhaustion Dylan thought about escaping, past the froozen leaves and crazy sorrow to a place with diamond skies, a place where you could dance with one arm waving free, where all your memories and the unfortunate fate of your life was out of sight. |
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