The Byrds were an American
rock and roll band.
Formed in Los Angeles
, California
in 1964, The Byrds underwent several personnel
changes, with frontman Roger McGuinn
remaining the sole consistent member until the group disbanded in
1973.
Their trademark songs include
covers
of
Bob Dylan's "
Mr. Tambourine Man" and "
My Back Pages",
Pete
Seeger’s "
Turn! Turn! Turn!" and
Carole
King's "
Goin' Back", as well as the
originals "
I’ll
Feel a Whole Lot Better", "
Eight
Miles High", "
So You Want to Be a Rock
'n' Roll Star".
The Byrds were popular and influential during the mid-1960s and
into the early 1970s. Initially, the band played
folk rock, melding influences such as the
British Invasion sound, contemporary
folk and
pop
music. Later they expanded their sound into such sub-genres as
space rock,
psychedelic rock and, on their 1968 album
Sweetheart of the
Rodeo,
country rock.
During
1991 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame
. In 2004
Rolling Stone Magazine ranked them
#45 on their list of the
100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
History
Folk rock
Inspired by the success of
The Beatles,
Roger McGuinn (initially named Jim McGuinn) had been playing
Beatles songs acoustically in Los Angeles folk clubs when
Gene Clark approached him to form a duo. Soon
after,
David Crosby joined them to form
a group named The Jet Set, a name chosen by McGuinn and inspired by
his love of aeronautics. The Jet Set soon expanded their ranks to
include drummer
Michael
Clarke and mandolin-player-turned-bassist
Chris Hillman. The band released a
single on
Elektra
Records in October, 1964 ("Please Let Me Love You" b/w "Don't
Be Long") under the name The Beefeaters. In November 1964, through
connections that Jim Dickson (the band's manager) had, the group
auditioned for and signed to
Columbia
Records, renaming themselves The Byrds a few days later.
On January 20, 1965, The Byrds recorded "
Mr. Tambourine Man", a then-unreleased
Bob Dylan song that the band gave a full, electric rock band
treatment, effectively creating the musical subgenre of
folk rock. McGuinn's jangling, melodic guitar
playing (played on a
12-string
Rickenbacker guitar, heavily
compressed to produce an extremely
bright and
sustained tone) was immediately
influential and has remained so to the present day. The group's
complex
harmony work became the other
major characteristic of their sound (McGuinn and Clark alternating
between
unison singing and harmony, with
Crosby providing the high harmony).
Since the band had not completely gelled musically by January 1965,
McGuinn was the only Byrd to play on "Mr. Tambourine Man" and its
B-side, "I Knew I'd Want You". Rather than
using band members, producer
Terry
Melcher hired
The Wrecking
Crew, a collection of top session men including
Hal Blaine,
Larry
Knechtel and
Leon Russell, who
(with McGuinn on guitar) provided the backing track over which
McGuinn, Crosby and Clark sang vocals. By the time the sessions for
their debut album started in March 1965, Melcher was satisfied that
the rest of the band was competent enough to record their own
musical backing.
Mr.
Tambourine Man was released in June 1965, after a long delay, and
this debut single reached #1 on the U.S. charts and repeated the
feat in the U.K.
shortly
thereafter. At the same time, The Byrds' debut album
Mr. Tambourine
Man was released, reaching #6 in the U.S. and #7 in the
U.K.
The
album mixed reworkings of folk songs (most notably Pete Seeger's musical version of the Idris Davies' ballad,
"The Bells Of
Rhymney
") with several more Dylan covers as well as the
band's own compositions, mainly written by Gene Clark.
The group's next single was another interpretation of a Dylan song,
"
All I Really Want To Do".
Unfortunately for The Byrds,
Cher
simultaneously released her own version of the song to greater
commercial success.
Even though they had recorded Dylan's
"It's All Over Now, Baby
Blue" as their prospective third single (it was played on the
California radio station KFWB
), The Byrds
instead quickly recorded "Turn! Turn! Turn! ",
a Pete Seeger adaptation of a traditional melody, with some lyrics
taken directly from the Biblical book of
Ecclesiastes. The song became the group's
second U.S. #1 single, headlining their second album (titled
Turn!
Turn!
Turn!).
As with their debut, this album was characterized by harmony vocals
and McGuinn's distinctive guitar sound, both highlighted by Terry
Melcher's bright-sounding production. This time they featured more
of their own compositions and now had a major songwriter in Gene
Clark; his songs from this period, including "
I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better",
"The World Turns All Around Her", "She Don't Care About Time", and
"
Set You Free This Time", are
widely regarded as amongst the best of the folk-rock genre.
Psychedelia
By the end of 1965 the band had tired of the pure folk-rock sound
and began to experiment. On December 22, 1965 they recorded
"
Eight Miles High", generally
considered the first full-blown
psychedelic recording (although other
contemporaneous groups and artists, notably
The Yardbirds and
Donovan, were adopting similar styles). It was
widely regarded as a "drug" song (despite its lyrics actually
describing an airplane flight and a concert tour of England), and
its relatively modest success (US #14, UK #24) has been attributed
to the resulting broadcasting bans by some radio stations (though
the unfamiliar and slightly uncommercial sound of the track is
another possible factor). While the groundbreaking lead guitar work
was actually an attempt by McGuinn to replicate the
free jazz saxophone style
of
John Coltrane, the record was often
referred to as "
raga rock". (In fact, it
was the single's B-side "
Why"
which drew more directly on Indian
raga
influences.)
Gene Clark left the band in March 1966, partly due to a fear of
flying which made it impossible for him to keep up with the band's
itinerary. Clark had witnessed a fatal airplane crash as a youth,
had a panic attack on a plane in Los Angeles bound for New York and
refused to board. McGuinn told him, "You can't be a Byrd, Gene, if
you can't fly." Clark was subsequently signed by Columbia as a solo
artist and went on to produce a critically acclaimed but
commercially unsuccessful body of work.
The Byrds' third album,
Fifth Dimension, released in
July 1966, built on the new sound the band had created, with
McGuinn extending his exploration of jazz and raga styles on tracks
such as "I See You" and Crosby's "What's Happening?!?!". The
campaign in U.S. radio to clamp down on "drug songs" affected
several of the tracks, including "Eight Miles High" and "
5D ", and limited the album's
commercial success (#24 US).
Allegedly irritated by the overnight success of manufactured groups
such as
The Monkees, the group next
recorded the satirical and slightly bitter dig at the music
business, "
So You
Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star", which again broke new ground
musically and featured a trumpet part played by the South African
musician
Hugh Masekela. The song, now
regarded as a rock classic, was written by McGuinn and Hillman and
achieved modest success as a single, as well as being the opening
track on their fourth album,
Younger Than Yesterday. The LP
was more varied than its predecessor and has been widely praised
for tracks such as Crosby's haunting ballad "Everybody's Been
Burned", a cover of Dylan's "
My Back
Pages" (later released as a single), and a quartet of Chris
Hillman numbers which showed the bassist emerging fully formed as
an accomplished country-oriented songwriter ("
Have You Seen Her Face", "Time
Between", "Thoughts And Words", "The Girl With No Name").
Lineup changes
By 1967 there was increasing tension between the band members, with
McGuinn and Hillman becoming irritated by what they saw as Crosby's
overbearing egotism and his attempts to control the band.
On June 17
of that year, when The Byrds performed at the Monterey Pop
Festival
, Crosby sang the majority of lead vocals, and to
the intense annoyance of the other members gave lengthy speeches
between every song on subjects including the JFK
assassination
and the benefits of giving LSD
to "every man, woman and child in the country." He further
irritated the band by performing with rival band
Buffalo Springfield, filling in for
ex-member
Neil Young. His reputation
within the band deteriorated even more following the commercial
failure of his first A-side song, "
Lady Friend", released in July (US
#82).
The tensions within the band finally erupted and in August 1967,
during sessions for The Byrds' fifth album, an in-studio argument
between Crosby and Clarke resulted in Clarke angrily quitting the
band. Session drummer
Jim
Gordon was brought in to replace him temporarily. Then, in
September, Crosby refused to participate in taping the Goffin-King
number "
Goin' Back", considering the song
to be inferior to his own "
Triad", a controversial song about
a
ménage à trois. The songs
were in direct competition for a place on the album.
Finally, during October 1967, McGuinn and Hillman drove to Crosby's
home and dismissed him from the band, stating that they would be
better off without him. Crosby subsequently received a considerable
cash settlement, with which he bought a
sailboat and soon after began working with
Stephen Stills and
Graham Nash, forming the extremely successful
supergroup Crosby, Stills &
Nash.
Gene Clark briefly rejoined The Byrds as Crosby's substitute, but
left three weeks later after again refusing to board an aircraft
while on tour. There is some disagreement among experts as to
whether or not Clark actually participated in the recording
sessions for the upcoming album. Michael Clarke also returned to
the band briefly towards the end of the album sessions, before once
again being told that he was an ex-Byrd by McGuinn and
Hillman.
On the final album, Crosby and Clarke both played on several tracks
each. The bluegrass guitarist and future Byrd
Clarence White, who had also played on
Younger Than Yesterday, contributed significantly on the
tracks "Wasn't Born to Follow" (later included on the
Easy Rider soundtrack) and "Change is Now."
The resulting album,
The
Notorious Byrd Brothers, was released in January 1968, and
despite its troubled genesis, contains some of the band's gentlest,
most ethereal music. The record mixed folk rock,
country,
psychedelia and
jazz
influences (often within a single song), and attempted to deal with
many contemporary themes including peace, ecology, freedom, drug
use, alienation and mankind's place in the universe. Over the years
The Notorious Byrd Brothers has grown in reputation, while
the contentious incidents surrounding its making have largely been
forgotten.
Now reduced to a duo, McGuinn and Hillman hired new band members,
quickly recruiting Hillman's cousin Kevin Kelley as drummer and the
band went out on tour in support of
The Notorious Byrd
Brothers as a trio. After realizing that the trio arrangement
wasn't going to work, McGuinn and Hillman, in a fateful decision
for their future career direction, hired
Gram Parsons, originally to play keyboards (he
later moved to guitar). Hillman was an excellent mandolin player,
who before joining The Byrds, had played in several notable
bluegrass bands. Soon he and Parsons persuaded McGuinn to change
direction again and explore
country
and
country-rock music, genres in which
The Byrds had previously only dabbled, mainly on Chris Hillman's
tunes.
Country rock
Having
already begun recording sessions for their next album at Columbia's Nashville
studios, The Byrds played at the Grand Ole Opry
in Nashville, on March 15, 1968. The band
was the first group of
hippie "longhairs"
ever to play at the venerable country music institution, a fact
that caused controversy among the Nashville establishment at the
time. The Byrds had all had their hair cut shorter than they
normally wore it specifically for their appearance at the Grand Ole
Opry but this did not appease their detractors. Following this
troubled concert appearance, the band continued to record their
next album, their first in an entirely country style, with Parsons
choosing and singing many of the songs. On July 8, however, just
prior to a series of concerts in South Africa, Parsons quit the
Byrds on the grounds that he did not want to perform in the
racially segregated country.
Although unsuccessful commercially (US #77),
Sweetheart of the Rodeo is
widely considered the first country-rock album by a major rock
band, pre-dating Dylan's
Nashville
Skyline by over six months. As for the first country-rock
album overall, that distinction is often reserved for Parsons's own
Safe at Home, recorded with
his group the
International
Submarine Band.
Safe At Home was released in early
1968 by
Lee Hazlewood's
LHI Records, whose contract with Parsons created
legal complications for
Columbia
Records and for Parsons himself. Parsons would relinquish the
International Submarine Band name and future royalties. Meanwhile
The Byrds would replace or bury three of Parsons lead vocals on
Sweetheart of the Rodeo: "
You Don't Miss Your Water," "The
Christian Life," and "One Hundred Years from Now." Of these vocals,
Hillman would tell Richard Williams of
Melody Maker that the group "discovered
that [Parsons] was under contract to another label, from his old
group the International Submarine Band, so we had to recut
them...." Album producer
Gary Usher,
however, would insist that the alterations arose out of creative
concerns, not legal ones. To his biographer Stephen J. McParland,
Usher stated "I don't remember anybody from Columbia's legal
department sending me a memo to the effect, 'Hey, take Gram's
vocals off'. Yes, there were legal problems that had to be worked
out, and they were worked out. Whoever sang lead on the album was
there because that's how we wanted the sound."
After Parsons' departure, McGuinn and Hillman hired guitarist
Clarence White, who had played on a
few tracks of every Byrds album since 1967's
Younger Than Yesterday. The new
lineup had only been together for a very short time when White
persuaded McGuinn and Hillman to replace Kevin Kelley with
Gene Parsons (no relation to Gram Parsons), who
had played with White in
Nashville
West, another pioneering country-rock band. This new lineup
played two shows together in October before Hillman quit to join
Gram Parsons in creating the
Flying Burrito Brothers. McGuinn,
now the only original Byrd left, hired bassist John York (who had
been working in the
Sir Douglas
Quintet) to replace Hillman, and the resulting quartet recorded
the
Dr. Byrds & Mr.
Hyde album and released it in February
1969 to poor U.S. sales and moderate U.K.
success.
In July
1969 The Byrds were the headliner of the Schaefer Music Festival in New York
City's Central
Park
, along with Miles Davis,
Chuck Berry, Fleetwood Mac, Led
Zeppelin, B.B. King,
The Beach
Boys,
Frank Zappa and
Patti LaBelle. They appeared at the festival
again in 1970 and 1971.
During October 1969 the band released the
Ballad Of Easy Rider
album. The single taken from the album was "Jesus Is Just Alright",
which in a similar arrangement became a hit record for
The Doobie Brothers four years later.
During those recording sessions the group also recorded a version
of
Jackson Browne's "Mae Jean Goes to
Hollywood", but it remained unreleased for some twenty years. The
album's title track was composed by McGuinn (expanding on a verse
couplet written by Bob Dylan) as the musical
theme for the 1969
hippie movie
Easy Rider, and both album and single sold
well due to the movie's success. By the time the album was
released, John York had left the band because his girlfriend
objected to his going out on the road. He was replaced by bassist
Skip Battin, who had enjoyed some chart
success during 1959 as half of the duo
Skip & Flip.
In
1970 The Byrds released the double album
, which charted
well in the U.K. and acceptably in the U.S.
(Untitled)
featured one disc of live recordings from early 1970 gigs at
Queens
College and the Felt
Forum in New
York
, and one of studio performances, including
"Chestnut Mare", "All The Things" and
"Just a Season". Notably, the live disc included a 16-minute
version of "Eight Miles High", which comprised the whole of one
side of the original LP release.
On June 23,
1971 the band released
Byrdmaniax, which was a commercial and
critical disappointment, largely due to inappropriate orchestration
which was added by producer Terry Melcher to many tracks on the
album without the band's approval. On May 13, 1971 the Byrds
appeared at London's Royal Albert Hall, to critical acclaim. The
full concert, including a number of encores, was issued in 2008 for
the first time.
In November 1971 came the release of The Byrds' eleventh studio
album,
Farther Along. The
title track of that album, sung by Clarence White with the rest of
the group harmonizing, would became a prophetic epitaph for both
White and Gram Parsons. In July 1973, White was killed by a motor
vehicle while he was loading equipment after a gig in Palmdale,
California.
Soon afterwards, Gram Parsons died as a
result of an overdose of morphine and alcohol, in the Joshua
Tree
Motel, also in California.
McGuinn toured with the Byrds through 1972, with L.A. session
drummer
John Guerin replacing Gene
Parsons. Two official Byrds recordings exist with this lineup: live
versions of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Roll Over Beethoven",
recorded for the soundtrack to the movie
Banjoman. The final recording sessions
involving all four of the latter-day Columbia Byrds were for
Skip Battin's 1972 album,
Skip; Guerin was on drums.
McGuinn appeared on only one track, "Captain Video" - evidently
Battin's tribute to his erstwhile employer.
Skip
Battin and John Guerin either quit or were dismissed after the
February 10, 1973 show in Ithaca, New York
, and were replaced by Chris Hillman and Joe Lala, respectively, for The Byrds' final two
shows on February 23 (Burlington, Vermont
) and 24 (Passaic, New Jersey
).
Reunions (1972–1990)
The five original Byrds all reunited briefly during late 1972
(while McGuinn was still on tour with the CBS version of the Byrds)
to record a reunion album entitled
Byrds. The album was released in March
1973, less than a month after the Columbia version of the Byrds
played their final show. The album garnered mixed reviews, and a
planned tour with the original five Byrds to support it never
materialized.
During the late 1970s McGuinn, Clark and Hillman worked on and off
as a trio (modelled on
CSNY and, to a lesser
extent,
The Eagles), touring and
recording two albums, and scoring a top 40 hit ("
Don't You Write Her Off") in 1978.
Some of the earlier and later live shows were advertised by
unscrupulous promoters as Byrds reunions. By 1979 Clark had
departed, leaving the two others to record an album as
McGuinn-Hillman.
During the late 1980s there were disputes over which members owned
the rights to the "Byrds" name. Clarke and Clark toured separately
under The Byrds name at that time, and from 1989 through most of
1993 Michael Clarke toured occasionally as "The Byrds Featuring
Michael Clarke" with former Byrd Skip Battin and newcomers Terry
Jones Rogers and Jerry Sorn. To solidify their claim to the name
and prevent any non-original members from using it, McGuinn,
Hillman and Crosby staged a series of Byrds reunion concerts in
1989 and 1990, including a famous performance at a
Roy Orbison tribute concert where they were
joined by Bob Dylan for
Mr. Tambourine Man. These shows
resulted in McGuinn, Hillman and Crosby recording four new studio
tracks for the boxed set
The
Byrds in 1990. During that year, a legal action against
Clarke and his booking agent failed, a judge ruling that Clarke's
group had toured under the Byrds' name legally. Eventually, a
settlement was reached, preventing any entity not including
McGuinn, Hillman and Crosby from using the name "Byrds".
The Byrds
were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. The original lineup of Gene Clark,
Michael Clarke, David Crosby, Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn was
honored at this induction. Gene Clark died later that year, and two
years later Michael Clarke succumbed to liver disease caused by
alcoholism.
Though both Hillman and Crosby have expressed an interest in
working with McGuinn again on future Byrds projects, no such
reunion has occurred and all three have successful individual
careers.
Members
Original members
- Roger McGuinn – guitar, banjo, vocals (1964–1973,
1989–1990)
- Gene Clark – guitar, harmonica, tambourine, vocals (1964–1966,
1967, 1972–1973)
- David Crosby – guitar, bass, vocals (1964–1967, 1972–1973,
1989–1990)
- Chris Hillman – bass, guitar, mandolin, vocals (1964–1968,
1972–1973, 1989–1990)
- Michael Clarke – drums (1964–1967, 1972–1973)
Subsequent members
- Kevin Kelley - drums (1968)
- Gram Parsons – guitar, piano, organ, vocals (1968)
- Clarence White - guitar, mandolin, vocals (1968–1973)
- John York – bass, vocals (1968–1969)
- Gene Parsons – drums, vocals (1968–1972)
- Skip Battin – bass, vocals (1969–1973)
- John Guerin – drums (1972–1973)
Discography
References
- www.allmusic.com Biography of The Byrds
- Rogan, Johnny (1998). The Byrds: Timeless Flight
Revisited. Rogan House. ISBN
0-95295-401-X
- Einarson, John (2005). Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life and
Legacy of The Byrds' Gene Clark. Backbeat Books. ISBN 0-87930-793-5
- http://www.snopes.com/music/hidden/horse.asp
- PRX »
Pieces » The Byrds (part 2): Farther Along
- Fricke, David (2000). (Untitled)/(Unissued) (2000 CD
liner notes)
- Fong-Torres, Ben (1998). "The Byrds". In The Encyclopedia
of Country Music. Paul Kinsgbury, Editor. New York: Oxford
University Press. pp. 71–2.
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