“What’s That?”: Bob Dylan Hears the Byrds’ Version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” for the First Time

A good cover will sound like the original, but as Bob Dylan came to find when first listening to the Byrds’ version of “Tambourine Man,” a great cover will transform a song into something entirely different. Although Dylan was the original songwriter and the first to release the song in 1965, the Byrds’ rendition of the folk classic would become even more popular.

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This version, which the rock band released one month after Dylan in April 1965, would become a cornerstone for the burgeoning folk-rock movement. Record companies saw dollar signs. Contemporary artists saw a new path forward, sonically speaking. Dylan? He saw question marks.

Bob Dylan Reacts To The Byrds’ Version of “Mr. Tambourine Man”

Like so many other folk songs leading up to and during the 1960s, Bob Dylan wasn’t the only one to record a version of his folk ballad, “Mr. Tambourine Man.” As is expected in the folk tradition, countless artists reimagined Dylan’s 1965 track from Bringing It All Back Home, including Melanie Safka, Judy Collins, and Odetta. But it was the Byrds’ version that would prove to be the most historically significant cover.

From their softly crooned vocal harmonies to the jangly sound of their guitars, the Byrds’ rendition of “Mr. Tambourine Man” created a new rubric for the folk-rock tradition. They shortened Dylan’s verbose original into a radio-friendly track under two and a half minutes long. In the end, they created something so unique unto themselves that when Dylan first heard their rendition, he didn’t even recognize the song he wrote.

Roger McGuinn recalled the moment Dylan heard the Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” for the first time at World Pacific Studios. “Bob came over, and he was listening to us do this rock-inspired version of the song,” McGuinn told Guitar Player. “I remember I played the song, and Bob said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘That’s one of your songs, man.’ He didn’t really recognize it. But he did like it and gave us his approval.”

So, Did Bob Dylan Create Folk-Rock Or Did The Byrds?

The exact origins of folk-rock, much like its more acoustic predecessor, folk, are hazy at best. Some credit Bob Dylan’s choice to go electric at the Newport Folk Festival to be the first public birthing of the subgenre. Others claim that moment belongs to the Animals when they released their jangly version of “House of the Rising Sun.” And, of course, some would argue that the real origin of folk-rock began with the Byrds taking Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and turning it into something pop-sensible and catchy.

In the end, Byrds vocalist Roger McGuinn is slow to give any one person any credit—except maybe the rock ‘n’ rollers who came before all of them. “We all come from rock and roll,” he argued to Guitar Player. “I was into Elvis and Gene Vincent and Carl Perkins. And Bob had played piano in rock and roll bands when he was a kid. So, Bob was already there. He already had that in his system.”

Like so many other musical moments of the 1960s, these iconic subgenres and stylistic shifts were a result of everyone’s creative contributions blending together into new, distinct sounds.

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