The Dylan Time Machine: Mr. Tambourine Man

We're going to do a little Dylan Time Machine here, because well, it's fresh in my mind. Here we see the DEBUT of "Mr. Tambourine Man" at the Newport Folk Festival in August of 1964. Dylan had saved this song for a while, because it meant so much to him. You can see he is uncomfortable, and begins a little too fast. He eventually slows down in time for the first verse. In a sense of time, it is between his Another Side of Bob Dylan album released in August of '64 and Bringing It All Back Home album released in March of '65. What song starts out Bringing It All Back Home? Just "Subterranean Homesick Blues", a song that clearly stated "Dylan's gone electric". His folk following called him a fraud, a whore, yelled Judas at his concerts, booed relentlessly during his electric set. The Band's drummer actually quit, because his body couldn't take the boo's. Dylan could have easily said "screw it" after the first two shows of being booed, but he kept going, and thank the Lord he did. This is the cheery, quirky "Bobby" people came to know and love.



Whoa. A clip about two years later at Free Trade Hall on Dylan's England tour. A sense of time for you, '65 was the year of Highway 61 Revisited with the Best Song Ever made kicking the album off in "Like A Rolling Stone". The album is also 4th on the Best Albums Ever. '66 was the year of Blonde on Blonde, which is number 9 on the forth-mentioned list. This is what happens when fame and well, trying to cope with the hatred of his own fans towards him by using drugs will do to you. Sadly, or happily...these two albums are where he arguably made his best music.