Two sheets of weathered yellow paper with typewritten lyrics and scribbled edits by Bob Dylan to one of his best-known songs, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” sold for $508,000 Saturday, Jan. 18, at Julien’s Auctions.
The early draft of the song was saved by rock journalist Al Aronowitz, who gained notoriety throughout the 1960s covering the era’s artists and musicians, including Dylan, who wrote the song one night using Aronowitz’s typewriter at the journalist’s home in New Jersey. The lyrics were part of a personal collection of rock memorabilia saved by Aronowitz, who died in 2005.
Courtesy Julien's Auctions
Although not a hit for Dylan, a version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” by the Byrds was a smash, reaching number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1965. Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, is experiencing a Hollywood moment with the release of the new movie, “A Complete Unknown,” which stars Timothée Chalamet and chronicles Dylan’s early career.
In a 1973 column for The New York Sunday News preserved on his personal website, Al Aronowitz wrote of the evening Dylan began drafting the song at the journalist’s New Jersey home.
“Bob wrote ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ one night in my house in Berkeley Heights, N.J., sitting with my portable typewriter at my white Formica breakfast bar in a swirl of chain-lit Camels cigarette smoke, his bony, long-nailed fingers tapping the words out on my stolen canary-colored Saturday Evening Post copy paper,” Aronowitz wrote of the evening.
Courtesy Julien's Auctions
Aronowitz wrote of emptying his trash can the morning after, as Dylan crashed on his couch. “A whispering emotion caught me,” Aronowitz wrote. He pulled the discarded, yellowed sheets out of the waste bin, read Dylan’s working lyrics and saved the papers.
At the time he wrote the song, Dylan had just split with his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, who had appeared on the cover of his famed 1963 album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” “Mr. Tambourine Man” was eventually recorded and released on Dylan’s 1965 album, “Bringing It All Back Home.”
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