Nashville, Tenn. – Bob Dylan’s draft lyrics for “Mr. Tambourine Man” fetched more than half a million dollars in a weekend auction featuring numerous items linked to the legendary American singer-songwriter.
About 60 items related to Dylan were auctioned off in Nashville, Tennessee, by Julien’s Auctions. These included photos, music sheets, his guitar, pencil drawings, and an oil painting created by the Nobel Prize-winning literary figure.
The auction, held both in person and online, raked in a total of around $1.5 million in sales. Julien’s Auctions noted that the event featured 50 items from the personal collection of the late music journalist Al Aronowitz, with the highest-priced sale being the aforementioned draft lyrics.
The typewritten lyrics, which covered three drafts of the 1965 song, were written on two sheets of yellow paper, with Dylan’s annotation on the third draft.
Dylan wrote the original draft lyrics in the journalist’s New Jersey home, according to Julien’s, citing a 1973 newspaper article by Aronowitz.
Dylan sat “with my portable typewriter at my white formica breakfast bar in a swirl of chain-lit cigaret smoke, his bony, long-nailed fingers tapping the words out” on copy paper, Aronowitz was quoted as writing.
The third draft, while close to the final version, still had significant variations from the final lyrics, the auction house said on its website.
The song appeared as the lead track on the acoustic side of his 1965 “Bringing It All Back Home” album and was the first Dylan composition to reach No. 1 in the United States and the United Kingdom, Julien’s said.
Other high-selling items Saturday included a 1968 Dylan-signed oil-on-canvas painting for $260,000 and a custom 1983 Fender guitar that he owned and played for $225,000.
Dylan, now 83, is garnering attention with last month’s release of the movie “A Complete Unknown,” which focuses on his rise to stardom in the early 1960s. Dylan is played by Timothée Chalamet, who has worked for several years on the role, which involves singing and playing guitar.
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