The Drifter – Song Description
“And someday they would know him as a man called Bob Dylan.” The joke sitting inside this title is doing real, substantial work, not just providing a punchline. It says, plainly, that the music moved every single person in every barroom he passed through completely on its own terms, verse by verse, long before any of the surrounding machinery — the eventual fame, the name people would come to know him by, the whole cultural story that would later get built up around him — existed yet to help the songs along or lend them any borrowed credibility. Nobody in any of those rooms needed to know who he’d become in order to be moved by what he was doing right in front of them that particular night. That is, as far as I can tell, the entire argument of this whole book, folded down into one historical punchline about a man nobody in the song yet recognises. I don’t think I could have written a clearer illustration of the idea if I’d set out to argue it directly instead of telling it as a story.
[Verse 1]
He wandered down the highways
With a guitar on his back
Dusty boots and midnight eyes
A life tied to the track
Singing stories of the hard times
For a dime or for a smile
A stranger with a melody
That lingered for a mile
[Pre-Chorus]
And wherever he drifted
People felt something true
Like the songs were old memories
They somehow always knew
[Chorus — HOOK]
Play me that old song, Tambourine Man
Play it like only a drifter can
Shake that rhythm like a travelling plan
Play me that old song, Tambourine Man
[Verse 2]
Barrooms in New Orleans
Backstreets in the rain
He’d light a spark of wonder
With that ragged, rising flame
No one knew his real name
Just the stories in his hands
And the heartbeat in his music
That carried through the land
[Pre-Chorus]
Where the broken and the restless
Gathered just to feel alive
He would strike a chord of truth
That made the whole room rise
[Chorus — HOOK]
Play me that old song, Tambourine Man
Play it like only a drifter can
Shake that rhythm like a travelling plan
Play me that old song, Tambourine Man
[Bridge]
There was a secret in his shadow
A fire wrapped in dust
A name the world was missing
A voice it had to trust
But down those lonely highways
He kept his mystery close
Till the night the music whispered
What the wandering heart once chose
[Final Chorus — Hook Expansion]
Play me that old song, Tambourine Man
Play it like only a drifter can
Songs of lightning running through your hands
Play me that old song, Tambourine Man
Play it again for the broken and damned
Play it again till the world understands
Play me that old song, Tambourine Man
[Outro Reveal]
And someday they would know him
As a man called
Bob Dylan
Lyrics – Michael Forty