Artistic drafts often end up in trash bins, hidden in family estate collections, or lost to time’s effect on memory, but a Bob Dylan lyric draft has recently been saved from any of these fates as it heads to auction in January 2025. Dylan wrote the draft of his iconic hit on a typewriter in the early 1960s. Six decades later, the two-page draft can be a part of your collection (if you have six figures to spare).
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Interestingly, the draft pages were seemingly a lost part of family lore for the journalist with whom Dylan was staying. When Dylan’s friend Al Aronowitz died in 2005, his relatives thought the lore died with him.
But it didn’t. It was just hiding in an archive folder they hadn’t looked into yet.
Bob Dylan Lyric Draft Up For Auction In January 2025
In his peak “original vagabond” era (shout out Joan Baez for her beautiful descriptions in “Diamonds and Rust”), Bob Dylan was couch surfing at journalist Al Aronowitz’s house in New Jersey. Dylan wrote the original drafts for “Mr. Tambourine Man” during his stay, reportedly listening to Marvin Gaye’s “Can I Get a Witness” on repeat while he did so. Once Dylan was done, he threw the draft pages in the trash bin. Aronowitz got them out.
Aronowitz smoothed the crumpled paper and put the original Dylan drafts somewhere safe—so safe, in fact, that even he couldn’t remember where they were. “This was family lore,” the journalist’s son, Myles Aronowitz, told Rolling Stone in December 2024. “My father talked about it, but he had no idea where they were. He thought he lost them or someone stole them. It took us years going through the archives folder by folder to find them.”
The Aronowitz family hosts “Celebrating Bob Dylan: The Aronowitz Archive, T Bone Burnett, & More” at the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville on January 18, 2025. The auction will include the two lyrical drafts of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” sketches by Dylan, notes Al Aronowitz wrote about Dylan in a recording session, and more. The estate estimates the value of the lyrical drafts to be somewhere between $400,000 and $600,000.
The Pages Show Abandoned Lyrics To This Iconic Track
“Mr. Tambourine Man” is arguably one of Bob Dylan’s most recognizable songs in his prolific and expansive catalog. Countless bands and artists have covered his original version, which Dylan released in 1965, including the Byrds, Melanie Safka, and Judy Collins. The last of these songwriters claimed Dylan finished the song at her home, which disputes Al Aronowitz’s recollection of events. But given Dylan’s rigorous writing routine, he likely finished some parts at Collins’ house and others at Aronowitz’s.
One of the most fascinating parts of Dylan’s lyrical drafts is how the song changes from start to finish. While the songwriter left many of the verses mostly the same as the final version, Dylan tweaked several words here and there. One section of his draft doesn’t appear anywhere on the studio version: Please pay no attention to me, please don’t turn around. If you hear, it does not fall on you, the it leaps an maybe climbs.
Indeed, if you have half a million dollars to spare, this Bob Dylan lyric draft is quite an intriguing piece of musical history.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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