By: HISTORY.com Editors

1965

“Mr. Tambourine Man” is released, and the folk-rock revolution is on

Published: November 16, 2009Last Updated: May 27, 2025

Released on June 21, 1965, the Byrds’ debut album, Mr. Tambourine Man, marks the beginning of the folk-rock revolution. In just a few months, the Byrds had become a household name, with a number-one single and a smash-hit album that married the ringing guitars and backbeat of the British Invasion with the harmonies and lyrical depth of folk to create an entirely new sound.

Perhaps someone else could have listened to the bright guitar lines of the Beatles’ “Ticket To Ride” and to Bob Dylan’s original “Mr. Tambourine Man” and had the idea of somehow combining the two, but neither of those recordings existed when the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn devised his group’s new sound. Newly signed to Columbia Records, the Byrds had access to an early demo version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” even before their label-mate Bob Dylan had had a chance to record it for his own upcoming album.

On January 20, 1965, they entered the studio to record what would become the title track of their debut album and, incidentally, the only Bob Dylan song ever to reach #1 on the U.S. pop charts. Aiming consciously for a vocal style in between Dylan’s and Lennon’s, McGuinn sang lead, with Gene Clark and David Crosby providing the complex harmony that would, along with McGuinn’s jangly electric 12-string Rickenbacker guitar, form the basis of the Byrds’ trademark sound.

That sound, which would influence countless groups from Big Star to the Bangles in decades to come, had an immediate and profound impact on the Byrds’ contemporaries, and even on the artists who’d inspired it in the first place.

“Wow, man, you can even dance to that!” was Bob Dylan’s reaction to hearing what the Byrds’ had done with “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Just days before the hugely influential album of the same name was released to the public on June 21, 1965, Dylan himself would be in a New York recording studio with an electric guitar in his hands, putting the finishing touches on “Like A Rolling Stone” and setting the stage for his controversial “Dylan goes electric” performance at the Newport Folk Festival just one month later.

The Day Dylan Went Electric

Bob Dylan shocked audiences at the Newport Folk Festival by strapping on an electric guitar and debuting a new rock ’n’ roll sound.

By: Evan Andrews

Timeline

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Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on June 21st

1779

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1788

U.S. Constitution ratified

New Hampshire becomes the ninth and last necessary state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, thereby making the document the law of the land.

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1810

Zachary Taylor and Richard Nixon marry their future first ladies

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1813

France pushed out of Spain in the decisive battle of the Peninsular War

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1876

General Santa Anna dies in Mexico City

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1916

U.S. General John J. Pershing’s force attacked by Mexican troops

The controversial U.S. military expedition against Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa brings the United States and Mexico closer to war when Mexican government troops attack U.S. Brigadier General John J. Pershing’s force at Carrizal, Mexico. The Americans suffered 22 casualties, and more than 30 Mexicans were killed. Against the protests of Venustiano Carranza’s government, Pershing’s force […]

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1920

Hollywood stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks mobbed by crowds

Swarms of admirers mob the Hollywood film actors Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, who arrive in London on their honeymoon on June 21, 1920. Two of film’s earliest stars, Pickford and Fairbanks had been business partners since 1919, when they teamed up with Charlie Chaplin and director D.W. Griffith to form United Artists. As a […]

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1942

Allies surrender at Tobruk, Libya

On June 21, 1942, General Erwin Rommel turns his assault on the British-Allied garrison at Tobruk, Libya, into victory, as his panzer division occupies the North African port. Britain had established control of Tobruk after routing the Italians in 1940. But the Germans attempted to win it back by reinforcing Italian troops with the Afrika […]

1956

Arthur Miller refuses to name communists

Playwright Arthur Miller defies the House Committee on Un-American Activities and refuses to name suspected communists. Miller’s defiance of McCarthyism won him a conviction for contempt of court, which was later reversed by the Supreme Court. His passport had already been denied when he tried to go to Brussels to attend the premiere of his […]

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1964

The KKK kills three civil rights activists

Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are killed by a Ku Klux Klan mob near Meridian, Mississippi. The three young civil rights workers were working to register Black voters in Mississippi, thus inspiring the ire of the local Klan. The deaths of Schwerner and Goodman, white Northerners and members of the Congress of Racial Equality […]

1975

A teenage girl’s boyfriend murders her parents

On June 21, Jim and Naomi Olive are brutally killed by their high school-aged daughter’s boyfriend, a waterbed salesman. Their bodies are later cremated in a barbeque pit. Police were called to the home of Jim and Naomi Olive in Terra Linda, California, after Jim Olive’s business partner reports that the couple had not been […]

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1982

John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, found not guilty

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1990

Earthquake devastates Iran

An earthquake near the Caspian Sea in Iran kills an estimated 50,000 and injures another 135,000 people on June 21, 1990. The 7.7-magnitude tremor wrecked havoc on the simply constructed houses in the area. Thirty minutes past midnight, with most people sleeping in their homes, a violent quake, centered along the shores of the Caspian […]

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2004

First privately owned spacecraft, SS1, travels beyond the earth’s atmosphere

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