Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I can't help, listening to the intro of Mr Tambourine Man always reminds me of that underrated Beatles tune What You're Doing, 'cause there is a VERY similar intro on Georges 12string. This is from the Beatles for sale album, and it came out a very short time before that Byrds tune. Is there any information about it, or am I just blasphemic?

Interesting idea ...the track of 'What you're Doing was recorded September 29th and 30th 1964 and the Byrds Mr.Tambourine Man was recorded January 20th 1965.

The Beatles 'For Sale' LP was issued in Dec of 1964 in the UK and in the USA we got BeatlesVI in June of 1965.It's hard to say if they were influenced specificlly here.

McGuinn has said for years that he was listening to a lot of Bach at the time .And the M.T.M. lick sure has that flavor.

If you listen to other records of the same period ...there is a lot of guitar playing that is like this .

Peter: An interesting observation. I have never heard McGuinn mention the connection but it would be a good question to ask him.

And while we're on the subject of similar sounding
Rick tune riffs, picture in your head, the Searchers doing"When You Walk In The Room".Same
feel, almost. I personally like Karla Bonoff's
version of this song the best...

Mark, what you need to do is find out dates for the Byrds "Preflyte" sessions; Tambourine man is on there, with Mike Clarks' "military" drumming.
Roger was already doing pretty much the classic 12 intro on that, but the perfected, processed/
compressed 12 was not as evident.That version could have predated "What You're Doing".I'll leave the minutae to the folks with more time and resources.Terry, got a timeframe on "Preflyte"?

Chris Hillman and Bob Dylan both played the May 1964 Monterey Folk Festival, which Jim Dickson also attended. After hearing Dylan perform "Mr. Tambourine Man", Dickson requested an acetate of the song (recorded June 9), which he subsequently presented to McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby & Michael Clarke (then known as The Jet Set) to work on. Seeing that the band was initially less than enthusiastic about the song, Dickson arranged for Dylan himself to attend Byrds (Jet Set) rehearsals of their own version at World Pacific Studios. Dylan was reportedly delighted by the sound Michael Clarke was getting from playing the tambourine on his cardboard boxes, so this was certainly before McGuinn acquired the Rickenbacker. This was even before The Byrds (Jet Set) recorded their "late summer" (pre-September 21) one-offsingle for Elektra Records ("Please Let Me Love You" / "Don't Be Long"), copies of which were already being dispatched during the first week of October 1964 under The Beefeaters monicker (so labeled by Elektra's Jac Holzman). Accounts differ, but Hillman reportedly didn't join the band until after the Elektra recording. Considering McGuinn's classic 12-string guitar intro is already in place and heard on The Byrds' (Jet Set's) early World Pacific recordings of "Mr. Tambourine Man", how could it possibly have been influenced by anything recorded at the very end of September and unreleased until December 1964?

I think this is what we're looking for; thanks
Terry.

Thanks for good information Terry. But to me the intros really do sound very similar. Playing them on a 12 string, it's nearly the same thing somehow around the second and 4th fret..

How about the intro to "Needles and Pins" and "I'll feel a whole lot better" Which one was first?

In the meantime I 've read some more of this fantastic forum and found my answer!

I am curious which Bach composition inspired the intro to Mr. Tambourine Man!

OdeTo Joy

as was "She Don't Care About Time"

Isn't Ode to Joy, the chorale portion of Beethoven's 9th Symphony?

Yes....made even more famous by The Beatles in 'Help' when they tame Roger the bengal tiger...

Re: "She Don't Care About Time"

The instrumental break is an extended quotation from Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring".

Not counting repetition, the introduction to "Mr. Tambourine Man" is short, so it's probably similar to little bits of a lot of other pieces. Maybe Bach, but it doesn't have that Bach "swing" to me.