“Mr. Tambourine Man” is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1964 and recorded for his 1965 album “Bringing It All Back Home.” A swirling, dreamlike lyric of escape and imagination, it marked a turn in Dylan’s writing away from topical protest toward something more personal and surreal.
The song’s tambourine-playing figure has been much discussed; Dylan is generally said to have been inspired in part by the guitarist Bruce Langhorne, who used to bring an enormous Turkish frame drum hung with bells to recording sessions. The Byrds turned the song into a jangling, electric number-one hit in 1965, a recording often cited as a starting point of folk-rock.
The song became one of the most widely covered of its era. Among the many who recorded it were Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, who included it on a late-1960s album devoted to Dylan’s songs.
