Mr. Tambourine Man (album) - Release and Legacy

Release and Legacy

Mr. Tambourine Man was released on June 21, 1965 in the United States (catalogue item CL 2372 in mono, CS 9172 in stereo) and August 20, 1965 in the UK (catalogue item BPG 62571 in mono, SBPG 62571 in stereo). It peaked at #6 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, during a chart stay of 38 weeks, and reached #7 in the United Kingdom, spending a total of 12 weeks on the UK albums chart. The preceding single of the same name was released on April 12, 1965 in the U.S. and May 15, 1965 in the UK, reaching #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart. A second single taken from the album, "All I Really Want to Do", peaked at #40 on the Billboard Hot 100 but fared better in the United Kingdom, where it reached #4. The album's distinctive fisheye lens front cover photograph was taken by Barry Feinstein and has since become an acknowledged classic. The album's back cover featured liner notes, written in the form of an open letter to a friend, by Columbia Records' publicist Billy James. In addition, the back cover also featured a black and white photograph, taken by Jim Dickson, of The Byrds on stage with Bob Dylan at Ciro's.

Upon release, critical reaction to the album was almost universally positive, with Billboard magazine noting "the group has successfully combined folk material with pop-dance beat arrangements. Pete Seeger's "The Bells Of Rhymney" is a prime example of the new interpretations of folklore." In its July 1965 issue, Time magazine praised the album by stating "To make folk music the music of today's folk, this quintet has blended Beatle beats with Leadbelly laments, created a halfway school of folk-rock that scores at the cash box if not with the folk purists." In the UK, the NME described the band and its debut album by commenting "They look like a rock group but are really a fine folk unit. They play their stringed instruments with great skill and invention against the rock-steady drumming. Their voices merge well...As the first group to bridge the gap between beat and folk, they deserve to be winners." The UK publication Music Echo was also enthusiastic about the album's contents, concluding that the record was "an album which easily lives up to the promise of their great knock-out singles." However, not all reviews of the album were positive: Record Mirror in the UK awarded the album two stars out of five, deriding it as "The same nothingy vocals, the same jangly guitar, the same plodding beat on almost every track. The Byrds really must try to get some different sounds." In more recent years Richie Unterberger, writing for the Allmusic website, has called the album "One of the greatest debuts in the history of rock, Mr. Tambourine Man was nothing less than a significant step in the evolution of rock & roll itself, demonstrating that intelligent lyrical content could be wedded to compelling electric guitar riffs and a solid backbeat."

The "Mr. Tambourine Man" single instantly established the band on both sides of the Atlantic, introducing the new genre of folk rock and challenging the dominance of The Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion. At roughly the same time that their debut single peaked at #1 on the Billboard charts, the U.S. music press began using the term "folk rock" to describe the band's blend of beat music and folk. In the months following the release of the Mr. Tambourine Man album and its attendant singles, many acts imitated this hybrid of a British Invasion beat, jangly guitar playing and poetic or socially conscious lyrics. The roots of this sound were to be found in the American folk music revival of the early 1960s, The Animals' recording of "The House of the Rising Sun", the folk-influenced songwriting of The Beau Brummels, and the twelve-string guitar jangle of The Searchers and The Beatles. However, it was The Byrds who first melded these disparate elements into a unified whole. The Byrds' influence can be heard in many recordings released by American acts in late 1965 and 1966, including The Turtles, Simon & Garfunkel, The Lovin' Spoonful, Barry McGuire, The Mamas & the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, We Five, Love, and Sonny & Cher. The Byrds' folk rock sound, as heard on Mr. Tambourine Man, has continued to be influential on many bands, including Big Star, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, R.E.M., The Church, The Long Ryders, The Smiths, The Bangles, The Stone Roses, Teenage Fanclub, The Bluetones, and Delays amongst others.

Mr. Tambourine Man was remastered at 20-bit resolution and partially remixed as part of the Columbia/Legacy Byrds series. It was reissued in an expanded form on April 30, 1996, with six bonus tracks, including three alternate versions of songs found on the original album, the outtakes "She Has a Way" and "You and Me", and the single version of "All I Really Want to Do".

The album was selected by Rolling Stone magazine as #232 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.