Mr. Tambourine Man

I always get incredibly sad when I hear this song. It seems to be about the existential lonliness of earthly happiness. A guy with a tambourine can't really play a song.

Dudes you have it totally wrong. While you can only marvel at Mr. Dylan beautiful lyrics, the true meaning of the song has been lost on you. For those of you who thinks this song is about drugs, pray tell, where are the drug references? what drug is "Mr. Tambourine Man" associated with. Just because the speaker in the lyrics is in another realm does not mean he got there due to drugs. "Mr Tambourine Man" is a musician. He is a source of inspiration. Much like Keat's "Ode to a Nightingale", this song is about getting inspiration (ie being able to achieve enlightenment) . Whereas the clown follows the shadow, the speaker follows the Tambourine Man because he is the real deal. He is where inspiration comes from. And since Dylan chose a man playing the tambourine as the title/"inspirator", it is safe to assume that he is making a statement about his art. Musician, with their music, inspire the people who truly understands the lyrics (case in point: this very debate) . While the clowns of this world merely copy the style, the form, and the tone of the lyrics, the inspired people understand and see their world in a new light (ie the passages about nature and their surroundings) . This new understanding can thereby make the audience into better people.

This song is so genius that it has so many people arguing about its meaning even today!

The people who believe it is a drug song can back it up in every single line of the song. Hpylori can also back up his interpretation in, you guessed it, every single line of the song.

My point is, that art is derived from inspiration, whether it came from pure mind or a drug induced state, and that art was created for the purpose of expressing, viewing, experimenting with, and explaining life while also providing us comfort and an escape from life. Therefore art and drugs, in a very strong way, are one and the same. They can both be used to further understand or to escape from life.

It’s the high that you feel when you’re tired from doing a lot of things and have done them well. You’re tired (“my weariness amazes me”), but feel energetic and good. So you don’t want to sleep. He’s walking in NYC at maybe 6:00 in the morning feeling good in this way. The streets are empty and dead. “The ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming”. Yet he seeks sensory stimulation of some sort because he’s not “dead” — though weary, he’s feeling so alive. Then he gets behind a tambourine man who’s walking along, playing the instrument. Mental stimulation he so needs, amid the otherwise deadness. That’s all it takes, in that state of mind. He’s elated by and for that moment reveres the tambourine man. It’s a momentary kind of unique feeling which Dylan perfectly lyricizes for this song. Tomorrow he may see the tambourine man and not even notice.

The song isn't about drugs. It's about how you feel when you're dieing from old age. I don"t know how Dylan could know of this being young at the time he wrote it. (maybe drugs) (or some real spiritual sence) To an aged person the lyics make perfect sence. Entertainment to take them to the great beyond.

Whoever said it was about death was absolutely right. It is an imaginative combining of the process of dying ("my senses have been stripped"), longing to go on that trip (an obvious pun), and the eventual funeral procession - what else could his own parade mean? He is still there "not sleepy" , feeling his soul fade as they lay him to rest, to the music of a tambourine.

See this link for New Orleans parades and funerals

http://www.nola.com/mardigras/about/index.ssf?/mardigras/about/content/stories/funerals.html

Bob Dylan TOOK drugs, sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean the songs are ABOUT drugs.

"yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving 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" are my favorite lines in the song. they create such a beautiful mental picture.

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.

A bunch of years ago, 1970's?, I went to a small concert with the folksinger Chuck Mitchell (Joni Mitchell's first husband - and he hated to be refered to as that). Well he gave a great concert to less than 100 people at the "Down Under" coffee house at FSU (Tallahassee Florida). He started playing the chords to a song and told a story about he and Bob Dylan were up in the attic of someone's house. He told us that Dylan actually shared the meaning to him. He said it referred to the one common musician in all New Orleans Jazz funerals. Wealthy people would get a marching band in fancy uniforms, poorer people might only get a few musicians. He claimed the tradition was there was always a Tambourine player who didn't march in formation, or where a matching uniform. This was for rich people and poor people. He claimed that the Tambourine Man symbolized DEATH and that's it. The entire song is about death and not drugs. He then did a great version of the song with all the verses. The death interpretation makes perfect sense if you listen to all the verses.
especially: Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship, 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'. I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it.

When you are dead all your senses are stripped.

Chuck Mitchell's story sounded very convincing, and I could not have come up with this interpretation myself.

to me this song is clearly a reference to Plato's cave analogy. For those of you who don't know, Plato's cave analogy is regarded as the most important piece of philosophical manuscript ever recorded and forms the basis of all major religions today. You can find it on the net if interested.

The way I see it, the Tambourine man is the Instructor of the analogy and Dylon sings as one cave dweller who wishes to be enlightened. This fits as Dylon was fascinated by such concepts. Some lyrics in this song fit the cave analogy word for word. "just a shadow you're seein' that he's chasin'". Could that be any clearer (to those who have read the analogy)? "My senses have been stripped" this refers to the overwhelming sensation of stepping out from the cave. Again word for word. Eventually Dylon comes to terms with his enlightenment and realises his freedom from the cave "Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow".

Even the chorus of the song summarises the analogy completely "I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to" Like a cave dweller who has 'woken up' and seen the need for an instructor, he turns to the tambourine man.

If you have no idea of what I'm talking about, I recommend you read the cave analogy- and the true meaning of this song may uncurl.