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Two sheets of yellowed stationary are crumpled but intact, with typewritten lyrics and scribbled changes that offer a rare glimpse into the creative process of their famed author as he penned one of the best-known songs of the 1960s.<\/p>\n
The early drafts of Bob Dylan\u2019s 1965 chart-topper \u201cMr. Tambourine Man\u201d sold this weekend for more than $500,000, according to Julien\u2019s Auctions, the California-based house that facilitated the sale.<\/p>\n
The delicate papers were sold alongside dozens of other Dylan memorabilia from the artist\u2019s early career in the 1960s, including sketches and photographs.<\/p>\n
The lyrics were part of the personal trove of the prolific rock \u2018n\u2019 roll journalist Al Aronowitz, who cut his own trail through the 1960s as chronicler and confidant of the era\u2019s artists and musicians, including Dylan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cHe never threw anything away,\u201d said Aronowitz\u2019s son Myles Aronowitz, who has spent years sifting through some 250 boxes containing his father\u2019s personal collection, a time capsule of 1960s music and writing.<\/p>\n
For Dylan experts, the lyrics offer a rare, early glimpse of how Dylan approached his work and the mechanics of songwriting.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely mind-blowing, and confirmation that this is how genius works,\u201d said Richard Thomas, a classics professor at Harvard who also teaches a course on Dylan\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n
The drafts of \u201cMr. Tambourine Man\u201d <\/em>were \u201c<\/em>family lore,\u201d Myles Aronowitz said, and his father, who died in 2005<\/a>, could not recall where or how he had filed them away. For years, his family believed the drafts were lost.<\/p>\n Myles Aronowitz and his wife unearthed the papers recently as they organized his father\u2019s collections. They expect to put together another auction, but hope to eventually turn over the archives to a library or museum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s remarkable,\u201d Myles Aronowitz said of the collection, which includes rare home recordings from musical titans of the era, as well as letters, notes and photographs.<\/p>\n In a 1973 column for The New York Sunday News later preserved on his personal website, Al Aronowitz wrote<\/a> of the evening Dylan began drafting the song at the journalist\u2019s New Jersey home.<\/p>\n \u201cBob wrote \u2018Mr. Tambourine Man\u2019 one night in my house in Berkeley Heights, N.J., sitting with my portable typewriter at my white Formica breakfast bar in a <\/strong>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,\u201d Aronowitz wrote of the evening.<\/p>\n \u201cMarvin Gaye sang \u2018Can I Get A Witness?\u2019 from the six-foot speakers of my hi-fi <\/strong>in the room next to where he was, with Bob getting up from the typewriter each time the record finished in order to put the needle back at <\/strong>the start.\u201d<\/p>\n Aronowitz wrote of emptying his trash can the morning after, as Dylan crashed on his couch. \u201cA whispering emotion caught me,\u201d Aronowitz wrote. He pulled the discarded, yellowed sheets out of the waste bin, read Dylan\u2019s working lyrics and saved the papers.<\/p>\n 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, \u201cThe Freewheelin\u2019 Bob Dylan.\u201d \u201cMr. Tambourine Man\u201d was eventually recorded and released on Dylan\u2019s 1965 album, \u201cBringing It All Back Home.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Nobel Prize-winning artist has been in the spotlight recently amid the release of the biopic \u201cA Complete Unknown<\/a>,\u201d which chronicles Dylan\u2019s early rise in 1960s New York.<\/p>\n On smaller screens, he caused somewhat of a stir this week when he joined the social media platform TikTok<\/a>, just days before it appeared set to be shut down in the United States.<\/p>\n In what appears to have been a tongue-in-cheek nod to the app\u2019s pending fate, Dylan posted a clip from a 1960s news conference in which he sat behind microphones and then immediately said: \u201cGood god, I must leave right away<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n