Artists
Musicians featured in this piece are:
Roger McGuinn – guitar, lead vocals
Tom Petty – guitar, vocals
Mike Campbell – guitar
Benmont Tench – organ
Howie Epstein – bass, vocals
Stan Lynch – drums
Jim Keltner – drums
Anton Fig – percussion
Written by Bob Dylan. Recorded live at Madison Square Garden, New York City, October 16, 1992, for The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration. Released on the Bob Dylan: The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration live album (Columbia Records, 1993) and accompanying home video.
Originally from 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home, “Mr. Tambourine Man” became a global hit in 1965 in a jangly, electric arrangement by Roger McGuinn‘s own band, The Byrds — the version most people know best. Fittingly, McGuinn revisited the song here backed by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, who had spent much of the mid-1980s as Dylan’s own touring band. McGuinn went on to record and perform numerous other Dylan songs across his career, including “All I Really Want to Do,” “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” and “My Back Pages” — the latter of which he’d join Dylan onstage for later that same night.
Roger McGuinn – Mr. Tambourine Man Lyrics
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
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
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
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming
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
Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin’
And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind, it’s just a shadow you’re
Seein’ that he’s chasing
Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
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
To listen to other songs from the Teleskop 11 program and the full program, click here.