26 July 1965
It’s remarkable how The Byrds’ three biggest hits have become TV and cinema’s go-to evocative signifiers for ’60s America: ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ for the dawning of age-of-Aquarius optimism; ‘Eight Miles High’ for LSD-spun hippie-ana; ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ for a coming of age either wistfully in suburbia or traumatically on the battlefields of Vietnam. Their contemplative lyrical content, plaintive vocal harmonies, and signature jangling guitar just seemed to chime with the public mood and psyche of those turbulent, dramatic years in US history. That they also scream “The Sixties!” to us in Europe speaks to the dominance here too of American pop culture, albeit a white male version. And at a more fundamental level, they’re cooler than ‘The Hucklebuck’. So, notwithstanding our five Beatles chart-toppers to date, ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ feels like our first real iconic ’60s track at number one.
I’m not a fan of that other US ’60s icon, Bob Dylan, and as a song in itself ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ doesn’t fire me up. Even The Byrds can’t do much with its dragging, rambling verses. What I like about ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ is what The Byrds bring to it, starting with that chiming 12-string Rickenbacker intro and the equally cool sliding bass figure. (Roger McGuinn’s guitar is the only musical part played by the band themselves, as the rest was performed by the legendary Wrecking Crew who played on Pet Sounds and most other ’60s West Coast pop classics.) For all their close harmony work, The Byrds aren’t the strongest or most distinctive of singers, but they do enough to complement the jingle-jangle and gloss over Dylan’s lyric notions. It may have taken half the decade, but at last The Sixties have arrived in Ireland, baby!
