But this brings up another question: Who the hell wants to listen to someone play a friggin' tamborine, much less pay for the privelage? The lyrics contain an invaluable clue:

Watch the jingle-jangle start to shine
reflections of the music that is mine
When you toss a coin, you'll hear it sing
Now listen as I play my Green Tamborine

This is no ordinary tamborine. A standard tamborine is just a simple wooden hoop with some irritating cymbols and a drumhead. A normal person's response to this instrumental kluge is to either get out of earshot in the quickest manner possible or to beat the tamborine player for offending the delicate tympanic membranes of the citizenry.

So how is it that Tamborine Man escapes certain death when he heads out to the street corner to play? The answer is obvious. He plays a magic tamborine, as evidenced by its conspicous green color. As he beats upon its surface, the jingle-jangling of the mini-cymbals mesmerizes the audience into a stupor and opens them up to the hypnotic suggestion of the music that is his. The audience, in thrall of the tamborine, is compelled to throw money into the tamborine once the song is complete. As a reward, the tamborine itself "sings" to them. What devilish tune this hellspawn instrument whispers in their ears is unknown-- the lyrics are unclear on this point. But it can be inferred that the tamborine's song prevents them from questioning the insane act of actually giving someone money for playing the damnable instrument.

The tamborine's magical properties help to answer another puzzle of the songs lyrics:

Drop a dime before I walk away
Any song you want I'll gladly play
Money feeds my music machine

It is here that the song takes a disturbing turn. Not only does Tamborine Man feel confident enough to actually threaten walking away (which would be a welcome action), he's so sure of the tamborine's hypnotic power that he can actually convince people he is capable of playing songs. Now we all know that a tamborine is incapable of playing a song. It cannot reproduce notes. One can only beat on it in a sort of rhythm that may approximate a song's beat, and even then the reproduction is vague. Is that Walk Like an Egyptian or Love in an Elevator? Who knows? The zombified audience is too busy reaching into their pockets to feed his music machine.

It's that description --music machine-- which highlights a potentially disturbing dimension to the song. You can take its meaning at face value: the tamborine has some sort of internal mechanism facilitating the hypnotic trance, perhaps by broadcasting high-pitched radio waves. The testing and R&D phase of that device must've been interesting. Did initial audiences soil themselves or form angry mobs bent on rooting out Communists from the film industry? Or did he forever alter their brainwaves during his test trials, changing them into mindless adult infants, interested only in peace, love and dope and unable to participate in society?