Bob Dylan, Sony, Sharks, Youtube and Mr. Tambourine Man

 

Bob Dylan: Sony, a corporation of sharks,

who swallow up Dylan on YouTube.

Plus, the transcendent Mr Tambourine Man

I had a lovely evening meal with a friend this week.  We talked for four hours about liberation, inner and outer, spirituality, truth, wholeness, gurus, teachers, Totnes and India. We talked about Bob Dylan.

She lamented the fact that you can barely find on YouTube any of Bob Dylan videos of him singing in his concerts.

Sony, his music company, have removed from YouTube most of the concert videos which blocks millions from the pleasure of watching Dylan in a concert.

Sony clearly think that they have not made enough money out of Dylan. Sony take the view that that the company and Dylan cannot make money from YouTube. So they have a team of lawyers and technicians deleting 99% of videos of Dylan singing in concerts.

Dylan says nothing.

In the space of a year, one report claimed Sony removed an estimated 45,000 Dylan videos from YouTube,  thus depriving his fans worldwide of his concert songs and a whole generation of young people from developing an appreciation of the concerts. Most of Bob Dylan’s YouTube clips now show only a single photo or drawing. Dylan fans refuse to go to Vevo, the Sony site, which has uploaded a small, select number of Dylan clips.

You might see 10 or 20 likes on a Dylan clip on Vevo compared to millions who listen on YouTube.

You can still listen to some of Bob singing at a gig – often with other singers. Videos are few and far between of him singing alone on stage on Youtube. You have to search.

After dinner, my friend and I listened to Odetta singing for 10 minutes Mr. Tambourine Man with heart felt melancholy with its haunting lyrics. The song is not in the same league as Ode to a Nightingale by 19th century English poet, John Keats but carries a similar depth of beauty on the transience of our existence with the nightingale serving as the transcendent symbol for Keats.

Meaning of Mr. Tambourine Man

Bob Dylan looks across to the Tambourine Man as a source of liberating inspiration and insight. Dylan sings about the loneliness of life, impending death and the shadows that one chases. He calls on the Tambourine Man to take him on a transcendent journey. With the Tambourine Man, he’s not sleepy and there is no place he’s going to. He wants to leave behind the ragged clown of the self. He knows that with the Music of the Tambourine Man, he is transported beyond the smoky rings of his mind and beyond crazy sorrow, where he dances freely without painful memories and daily fate left behind. He’ll follow the Tambourine Man.

Watch Odetta singing Mr Tambourine Man in a slow, poignant rendering to get the richness of the meaning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOEPkRvpE2k

Watch Bob Dylan singing Mr Tambourine Man in 1964.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeP4FFr88SQ

Lyrics of Mr. Tambourine Man

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

I’m not sleepy and there ain’t no place I’m going to

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you

 

Though I know that evenings 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

 

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

I’m not sleepy and there ain’t no place I’m going to

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you

 

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling 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 wandering

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

 

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

I’m not sleepy and there ain’t no place I’m going to

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you

 

Though you might hear laughing, spinning, swinging madly through the sun

It’s not aimed at anyone

It’s just escaping on the run

And but for the sky there are no fences facing

And if you hear vague traces of skipping 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 seeing that he’s chasing

 

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

I’m not sleepy and there ain’t no place I’m going to

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you

 

Take me disappearing 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 bench

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

 

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

I’m not sleepy and there ain’t no place I’m going to

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you

Yes, he made remarkable albums in the 1960s. Blood on the Tracks (1975), Oh Mercy (1989) and Time out of Mind (1997) contain depth and lyrical beauty.

On Bob Dylan and the Sony Corporation

Extract from Subterranean Homesick Blues

“Look out kid

Don’t matter what you did

Walk on your tip toes

Don’t tie no bows

Better stay away from those

That carry around a fire hose

Keep a clean nose

Wash the plain clothes

You don’t need a weather man

To know which way the wind blows…”

As a newspaper reporter, I interviewed Bob Dylan in a London hotel in 1966.  I went with Dominika to see him in concert for my 65th birthday in Birmingham, England. He reveals an Original Mind (to use a Buddhist term) – as a singer.

Dylan is loved for his 1960’s songs but the depth of the lyrics also reveal in Blood on the Tracks (1975), Oh Mercy (1989) and Time out of Mind (1997),

Thank you, Mr. Tambourine Man

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