The Byrds and the story of Bob Dylan’s first number one hit: “I was glad”
A major part of the lore and allure of Bob Dylan is the fact that despite his looming, unrivalled legacy as one of history’s most revered musicians, the man has never had a number one.
The closest he’s ever come on the Billboard charts is scraping in at number two twice. Both times though, he was blocked to the top. In 1965, his track ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ almost had the crown, but then the Fab Four stopped him with the release of ‘Help!’. Then again, in 1966, he was so close to victory with ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35’, but then the Mamas and Papas stole the top spot with ‘Monday, Monday’.
In both cases, though, he was kind of his own worst enemy. ‘Rainy Day Women’ is the most unlikely hit possible as it’s spiralling and meander with little to no foundation. It barely has a chorus to come home to so it’s surprising that out of all his tracks, that was one of two that came close to being a number one.
‘Like A Rolling Stone’ is more understandable. Not only is it a far more typical song with a clear chorus to prompt a big sing-along, but it was also a complete change in pace for Dylan as he ditched folk and went electric, tapping into the more rock and roll crowd that might not have been paying close attention before. However, it’s a long song, both of them are, so a lot of radio stations refused to pick them up and play them as they spanned beyond the typical three-ish minute mark.
But while the lore says that Dylan never had a number one, that’s not exactly true. One of his songs hit the top spot in June 1965, when ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ got there, without him.
It was The Byrds that technically got the number one, but it was Bob Dylan’s song. Released as the title track for their debut album, their cover of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ is light, breezy and endlessly easy-listening, making it a perfect fit for the radio audience. It adds more weight to people’s argument that Dylan never exactly had a great singing voice, given that his only number one came when he was nowhere near the mic.
But it also came at a time when Dylan was still somewhat of a relative newbie. In the folk world, he was already the new star, but it was somewhat of an echo chamber for people within the folk, rock and countercultural circles. With the vanilla-easiness of their cover, The Byrds seemed to manage to tap into a way wider audience.
Part of that has to come down to the exact thing that held Dylan back before. The run time of his original is over five-minutes, whereas The Byrds trimmed the track down to a sub-three-minute long easily consumed, gentle listen that was utterly inoffensive and broadly enjoyable for all – the perfect recipe for a number one.
In 2015, Dylan summed it up when he said: “They made some of my songs Top 10 hits but I wasn’t a pop songwriter and I really didn’t want to be that, but it was good that it happened. Their versions of my songs were like commercials, but I didn’t really mind that, because 50 years later, my songs were being used in the commercials. So that was good too. I was glad it happened, and I was glad they’d done it.”
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