Bob Dylan's surprising awesomeness, had no idea...

Cougar

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Dylan was impressed, enthusiastically commenting, "Wow, you can dance to that!" His endorsement erased any lingering doubts the band had about the song[/B].[59] "[/I]

The rest, as they say, is history, and I got a sneaking suspicion far more people heard the Byrds version of Tambourine Man before Dylan's.
I know as a kid out here on the West Coast I never even heard Dylan's version on top 40 radio as a kid.
Now the big question is:
Did Dylan get any songwriter royalties from all that airplay of the Byrds' version?

I was just going to say, he must have. Hence his enjoyment of having others do his stuff. Plus the compliment of having others want to do a version of your song. I loved the Byrds' versions. And Dylan's versions, who I followed fairly closely early on. It's funny -- when I'm just playing around flatpicking cowboy chords, it's Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind and Dylan's/Byrds' Tambourine Man... :tiger:
 

walrus

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The acoustic guitarist on many early Dylan sessions (in addition to Dylan) was multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire Bruce Langhorn. He was also the the guy who inspired (and was) “Mr Tambourine Man,” composed the fabulous soundtrack (and played all the instruments) to Peter Fonda’s *The Hired Hand*, and in his late years invented a damn nice barbecue sauce.

Died a few years ago.

Ah, nice post! Langhorn is another of those "behind the scenes" guys that really made other more well-known artists sound good. A one-man Wrecking Crew! One thing I never knew until I read his obituary (from the usual source):

He learned violin, but lost most of three fingers of his right hand as a child when lighting a homemade rocket. He started playing guitar at the age of 17, and the loss of his fingers contributed to his distinctive playing style.

walrus
 

walrus

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Now the big question is:
Did Dylan get any songwriter royalties from all that airplay of the Byrds' version?

I would have thought so. Even in the Tin Pan Alley days I think. But definitely going back to the Brill Building days songwriters got royalty checks - they shared with the publisher, of course. Think of Burt Bachrach - wealthy from songs he wrote but did not perform. Carole King, too. But I'm sure there are different "deals" made by different publishers, etc.

And to bring it to today, from cheatsheet.com, regarding the movie "Yesterday" (2019):

According to Danny Boyle and the filmmakers, it takes more than money to get to use Beatles songs. The estates of Lennon and Harrison, along with McCartney and Ringo Starr, need to approve of the project you are working on.


Once Yesterday got the green light, Billboard estimates it cost $10 million to have Patel cover the classic songs in the film. Even though you don’t hear the Fab Four sing and play the songs themselves, it still took that multi-million-dollar payoff to bring the film to life.

For a film like Yesterday, that amounted to a big chunk of the cost to produce the picture. Box Office Mojo pegged the total budget at $26 million. In other words, the rights to the Beatles’ songs ended up being about 40% of the budget. So far, it seems like it was worth it.

walrus
 

adorshki

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I would have thought so. Even in the Tin Pan Alley days I think. But definitely going back to the Brill Building days songwriters got royalty checks - they shared with the publisher, of course. Think of Burt Bachrach - wealthy from songs he wrote but did not perform. Carole King, too. But I'm sure there are different "deals" made by different publishers, etc.
Right, but in that case it was the way their "publishing" deals were written.
Tons of bands never got any "publishing" for airplay, only unit sales.
Have no clue how Dylan's deal was written but perhaps some of his contemporaries advised him and for that matter manager Albert Grossman had a pretty good rep too so like others say, yeah suspect he actually did get paid.
But let's take the case of the Animals "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" from the very Brill Building team of Mann & Weil:
Think publisher and Mann & Weil got all the airplay royalties, Animals only got record sales (performer) royalties.
Even if not true in that case, know for sure it was in other cases, as in "Somebody To Love".
It was one of the things that clued me in to what a sweet deal just being a songwriter could be.
And to bring it to today, from cheatsheet.com, regarding the movie "Yesterday" (2019):

According to Danny Boyle and the filmmakers, it takes more than money to get to use Beatles songs. The estates of Lennon and Harrison, along with McCartney and Ringo Starr, need to approve of the project you are working on.

Right but that harkens back to McCartney's original desire when he owned the catalog that Beatles tunes never be used for commercials; broken when Michael Jackson acquired eth publishing and "Revolution" was used to sell..well, whatever it was..so am sure that's a corollary clause that was probably attached to a publishing rights acquisition of the catalog at some point.
And I have no problem with it, but I suspect it's pretty unique.
:friendly_wink:

[
 
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Quantum Strummer

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Because of my backwards introduction to most rock & roll—I grew up a Motown kid—I first knowingly heard You Ain't Goin' Nowhere on a bootleg version of the Basement Tapes c. 1980. Love the wordplay in a lot of those songs. What really caught my ear about Dylan, though, once I started digging into his early folkie-era stuff was the guitar playing. He had a great rhythmic sensibility and his picking was more complex than anything he recorded later on. As has often been the case with him, once he moved on from that style he never returned to it.

-Dave-
 
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