Byrds - One step away from rock

The Rolling Stones are the greatest band of all time. Very true. But, in this writer's view, they're a blues band. So what is rock, then, you might ask? Well, first let's establish that the genre the Rolling Stones actually play is rhythm and blues. Then let's follow a different path to rock - call it the Byrds route, if you like. The Byrds are the path, then, not the destination.
The Byrds (Los Angeles, 1964-1973) were, alongside the Beach Boys, the most important American popular music group before the Velvet Underground. As for the two coordinates of context, time and place, the Byrds answer with 1964 and California.
The Byrds' immense historical importance, especially on the American continent, lies in this: in the early 60s, the Byrds were very young representatives of an old world. That old world is the age-old one (though in the Byrds' era - half a century has passed! - let's just call it "sixty-year-old") of the great American country and blues tradition (terms broadly traceable to the word "folk," which in turn, in the same sense, can be traced back to "pop"). Being young, though, the future Byrds naturally felt the pull to engage with the new world. For American popular music at the start of the 60s, the new world meant England, the Mersey beat, the British Invasion. It goes without saying that, just as hardcore at the end of the 70s would emerge as America's answer to English punk - which itself had been born thanks to the American Ramones (a boomerang effect) - rock was born from the export of the guitar from England to America (the British Invasion), while the electric guitar had itself been imported into England from America some time before (rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll). The Byrds were the filter, or the missing link, between rock 'n' roll and rock (Velvet Underground, Creedence Clearwater Revival).

Rock 'n' roll was, along with punk, the most revolutionary musical event of the 20th century, and in some respects (nihilism, lack of technical skill, attitude over musicianship) of all time. But it was an interlude - albeit one with an endless aftermath. The Byrds are young representatives of the old world in that their roots lie beyond and before rock 'n' roll: not in the 50s, but in the bluegrass of the 40s and the folk and country of the 20s. The Byrds' old world is the world of white music; it is not the world of the blues (and that's why it's not the world of rock 'n' roll either). The Byrds' music (like that of the Beatles) is, par excellence, the music opposed to Black music and to the entire African-American tradition: it's no coincidence that, more than blues, what you find in the Byrds are traces of jazz (a music widely claimed and theorized by white musicians) and of electronics, then still in its infancy.
But there weren't just two strands of old American music; it wasn't only white (folk, country, bluegrass, jazz) versus Black (blues, R&B, rock 'n' roll); there was a third, no less deeply rooted, and (like jazz) shared between Black musicians (especially early on) and white musicians (especially later): that of the "vocal groups" of the 40s, the Broadway strand (the Drifters, Bing Crosby).
The Byrds, in short, play a country/folk sound with electric guitar and vocal-group melodies. The Byrds are the synthesis of at least half a century of American popular music: that vast encyclopedia whose essence would provide the springboard, starting everything over again, for rock in 1967.

The Beatles (or Peter & Gordon, or the Hollies), for all this, have nothing to do with it. Nor does England. And it doesn't matter that the young McGuinn and Crosby spent their evenings alternating traditional folk songs with Beatles covers. What matters is that both the Byrds and the Beatles drew on the vocal groups of the 40s, and interpreted them using the instrument of their generation (or rather, the one handed down to them by the previous generation): the electric guitar. The Byrds and the Beatles drew on the music of their grandparents, born in the 1910s, not that of their fathers, born in the 1930s. If the proximate cause of the Byrds was the Beatles, the remote cause of both was the vocal groups of the 40s. It's no coincidence that the Beach Boys (or Buddy Holly), who also drew on these vocal groups (still partly standing despite the rock 'n' roll onslaught), emerged before and independently of the Beatles. The electric guitar was used in America in a melodic, anti-rock 'n' roll way before and independently of the British Invasion. And if the Beach Boys example (also Californian, and the Byrds' true points of reference) isn't enough, consider, within rock 'n' roll itself, Buddy Holly (perhaps the first to play 40s-style or vocal-group material in a 50s way, with electric guitar). Following this same thread, today's vocal groups are U2 ("One") or Celine Dion, not to mention Take That and the Backstreet Boys.
The Byrds (like the Beatles) are the opposite of rock 'n' roll; and it would take their opposite, too, to give birth to rock (which could only free itself from rock 'n' roll's blues legacy thanks to folk and country, white music). The Beatles, on the other hand, knew neither country nor folk. The Byrds were born as Beatles epigones, but they did something completely different: they put an electric guitar on top of folk songs (and Dylan wrote folk songs). An electric guitar that America had known for some years before the "British Invasion" (which was itself based on the "American guitar"); and an electric guitar that, even granting - though it's not actually true - that it had fallen out of use between the end of rock 'n' roll (1958) and the birth of rock (1967), was certainly not brought back to America by the Beatles and co., as most critics claim. At most, they brought to America a different way of playing guitar. And that way was soon discarded. It was the Byrds themselves who began discarding it. When, perhaps believing they were imitating the Beatles, by dint of using electric guitar on country-folk songs, or by electrifying bluegrass, they anticipated (without fully inventing it) acid rock and, with it, psychedelic rock. The first path of rock would indeed be the acid and psychedelic one, to which, all things considered, besides the Jefferson Airplane, the Velvet Underground can also be traced. The Byrds took one more step than the Beach Boys (anyone who claims the electric guitar had fallen out of use in America in the early 60s should recall that the Beach Boys formed in 1961, that their first record came out in '62, the Beatles' in '63, and that it was the Beach Boys, not the Beatles, who had the idea of fusing rock 'n' roll and vocal groups): they came from that same California, but they didn't look to the ocean, but to the hinterland, to the prairies resounding with folk rather than vocal groups. In any case, the Byrds were only possible in California because the Beach Boys had already turned it, from the extreme periphery it once was, into America's new musical capital.

The Byrds are classics of popular music, but they are not, and never have been, fully beloved by the mass audience. The general public remembers their name (when they remember it at all) tied to the song "Mr. Tambourine Man," a song that, without the Byrds, would have remained obscure. Only with that single and the follow-up, "Turn! Turn! Turn!," did the Byrds reach No. 1 on the charts. After that, none of their singles ever went higher than No. 14. None of their albums ever went higher than No. 6; and the ones that could be considered successes hover around No. 20 or 30. For what it's worth, no Dylan single ever reached No. 1 either; and his first No. 1 album was his sixteenth, in 1974 (he would reach No. 1 only three more times: in '75, '76 and 2001). Consider that practically every Beatles album was No. 1. The Beach Boys sat halfway between the poor Byrds and the rich Beatles: 3 No. 1 singles ('64, '65, '66) and 2 No. 1 albums ('64 and '74). The Rolling Stones had just one No. 1 album in the 60s (in '65), six in the 70s ('71, '72, '73, '74, '76, '78), two in the 80s ('80, '81), and none in the 90s or 2000s. Consider too that from 1987 to today, every U2 album has been No. 1. Source: Billboard.
The Byrds, at their debut, had no experience with electric instruments: they were all young veterans of folk-pop and the acoustic coffeehouse scene. Bluegrass - which was all the rage in those venues - is the subgenre between blues and folk invented between the 30s and 40s by the white musician Bill Monroe (1911-1996), requiring an acoustic five-piece band playing in a precise, fast style, with instrumental solos and a mournful, desolate vocal delivery. The exact opposite of the wild rhythm and blues of Black musicians from which rock 'n' roll would be born.
The Byrds are more a point of reference than a single thing or group. They are the place where first Gene Clark, then David Crosby and Chris Hillman, and finally Gram Parsons - all great songwriters and strong personalities - published some of their early work. There is one common denominator, Roger McGuinn: the man who, with his arrangements, his productions, his 12-string guitar, and his countless sonic explorations, shaped the sound of the Byrds, now pop, now folk, now country, now jazz, now acid. In essence, McGuinn plays much the same role in the Byrds that Brian Jones played in the Rolling Stones: unable to write a song, but essential for meaningfully enriching every song (with a thousand sublime touches). The problem is that while ownership of the Rolling Stones belongs to its songwriters (Jagger, Richards), ownership of the Byrds belonged to McGuinn, an excellent producer-arranger and performer who, when he writes on his own, is laughable.
The Byrds, so many different lineups, all focused on this particular sonic coherence - expressing, among other things, a predominant serenity (no small thing for popular music, especially contemporary popular music); but also centered on intimacy, lyricism, the gentle tone of its songwriters. The Byrds were the backdrop of rock in every sense of the word: it would fall to the heroes of '67 to set the backdrop aside - and, partly through doing so, to create rock itself.

Gene Clark (1944, Tipton, Mo - 1991, Sherman Oaks, Ca) was a country musician. In the Byrds for two years (1964-1966) and three albums - which, minus the covers, are essentially his. He's been playing guitar since age 9. At 13 he's in a rock 'n' roll band; but the Kingston Trio make him realize his path lies in folk. From '62 to '64 he's a member (in New York) of the New Christy Minstrels. In 1964, as a folk singer, he goes to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a Beatles epigone; but instead finds other folk singers who, pursuing that same career path, would go on to form the Byrds. From '67 to '74 he has a brilliant career as a country-folk singer-songwriter. He dies, an alcoholic, at 47.
David Crosby (1941, Los Angeles), a devotee of folk, jazz, and Indian music (hence the psychedelia). He's with the Byrds on their first 6 albums (through '68). Just one solo album, in '71. Also a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash (& Young); and finally an endless string of collaborations with songwriters of varying quality: Jackson Browne, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt.
Michael Clarke (Spokane, Wa, 1946 - Treasure Island, Fl, 1993). He's with the Byrds on their first 5 albums (through '67). Then with the Flying Burrito Brothers and Firefall, always on the country-rock side of things. He appears on the bluegrass album "The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark" (1968). Having run away from home at 16, he played congas in the coffeehouses of the San Francisco area (and it was in one of these that he met McGuinn, though it was Crosby who brought him into the Byrds). Dressed like a Californian Brian Jones - and thus decades ahead of so much youth fashion - with a model's physique, he was the youngest and most fragile member of the group, but also the most likeable. He's not a songwriter, but, like all great musicians, expresses himself through the music. He dies of liver failure at 47.
Chris Hillman (1944, Los Angeles) has a bluegrass background; a mandolin player, he switches to electric bass having never even seen one before. He's in the Byrds for the first 8 albums. Then (from October 1968) in the Flying Burrito Brothers with Gram Parsons. From 1985 in the Desert Rose Band.
Jim (Roger being the name he changed to in deference to an Eastern religious sect) McGuinn (1942, Chicago), a folk prodigy, formerly of the Limelighters and the Chad Mitchell Trio (he appears in 1961 on "Mighty Day On Campus" and in 1962 on "The At The Bitter End"), formed the Jet Set in Los Angeles in 1964 with Gene Clark and David Crosby; for Elektra the single "Please Let Me Love You/Don't Be Long" came out (credited to the Beefeaters); that same year, on the suggestion of producer Jim Dickson (in the 70s producer of the Flying Burrito Brothers, in the 80s a member of the Barracudas), Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke joined: the group changed its name to the Byrds.

Mr. Tambourine Man (June 21, 1965): 12 tracks, 31 minutes. No. 6 Pop Albums.
Chris Hillman: Bass, Mandolin, Guitar (Bass), Vocals
Gene Clark: Guitar, Tambourine, Vocals
Michael Clarke: Drums
David Crosby: Guitar, Guitar (Rhythm), Vocals
Roger McGuinn: Banjo, Guitar, Leader, Vocals, Guitar (12 String)
Terry Melcher: Producer (The Beach Boys, Paul Revere & the Raiders)
The Byrds' debut carries as much historical and formal significance as it does artistic and substantial slightness. Its importance lies in marking, through the electric guitar (through McGuinn), the transition from the classic era of the American song (folk, country) to the age of rock. The operation succeeds via a "post-rock 'n' roll" softened by vocal-group harmonies. In truth, the Byrds' debut should be considered a single, not an album. "Mr. Tambourine Man" (Dylan) [2:29], No. 1 Pop Singles, is enough on its own to say everything the Byrds had to say. The fact that "Mr. Tambourine Man" is a Dylan song, written that very year, 1965, doesn't matter at all. It could have been any other folk song. Besides, the Byrds' version is, in effect, a different song altogether. And it is the single most important American proto-rock track of all time. Its grace, its ache, its dreaminess are comparable only to "Sunday Morning" by the Velvet Underground. At the record label's insistence, the only Byrd playing on the "Mr. Tambourine Man" single is leader McGuinn, on his 12-string Rickenbacker; the other instruments are played by seasoned session men. The song also marks the triumph of the so-called chiming, jangling guitar sound that would go on to become the band's trademark.
In 1965 America, before the folk revival of the early 70s, we get the last gasps of the folk movement (with Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Bringing It All Back Home") and confirmation of the beach-sound and of Los Angeles as the new capital of popular music (the Beach Boys release "Summer Days" and "Today"); but also, and above all, the great, little-known proto-rock bands (the Fugs with "Village Fugs" and the Sonics with "Here Are"). James Brown's funk, meanwhile, is on its sixteenth outing ("Papa's Got A Brand New Bag"). In England, it's the year of the great proto-rock or post-blues bands (Who, Kinks, Them), and the confirmation of the blues bands (Animals, Rolling Stones); but it's also the year of Donovan ("Fairy Tale") and of the Beatles' seventh album. The Byrds' debut is inferior to every major pop album of the era. The Byrds would later improve, but without ever managing to make a landmark album. Landmark songs, yes, because that depended on the quality of the individual songwriters, but never a landmark album: partly because not all the Byrds' songwriters (yes, the Byrds are a band of songwriters: or is every band, more or less, that?) were in top form at the same time, partly because of the power struggles among the leaders themselves; but above all because, before rock existed, the Byrds made neither blues nor folk nor Merseybeat, and once rock arrived (1967) the Byrds carried on not making rock.
With three more Dylan reworkings ("Spanish Harlem Incident," "All I Really Want To Do" and "Chimes Of Freedom"), the lively but tedious Byrds debut essentially comes across as a work of form rather than substance: it's half covers (almost always of bland songs); the significance lies entirely in how those covers are played, and that "how" boils down, in its entirety, to the single "Mr. Tambourine Man." We also get: "The Bells of Rhymney" (Davies/Seeger), with a riff lifted wholesale from "Mr. Tambourine Man"; "Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe" (DeShannon), the most country and rock-leaning track; "We'll Meet Again" (H. Parker/R. Charles), the best and most memorable serenade.
The other half of the album is a personal songbook from a still-green and naive Clark: "I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better," "You Won't Have To Cry," "I Knew I'd Want You," "It's No Use" make you long for the Beatles (they are, incidentally, the most garage-rock songs the Byrds ever recorded). The quality lies above all in the approach to the songs and in their execution, always exquisite, innovative, and refined. "Here Without You," if nothing else, is a direct, simple lament and anticipates Crosby's future direction.

Turn! Turn! Turn! (December 12, 1965). Eleven tracks, 36:21. No. 17 Pop Albums.
Chris Hillman: Bass, Mandolin, Guitar (Bass), Vocals
Gene Clark: Guitar, Tambourine, Vocals
Michael Clarke: Drums
David Crosby: Guitar, Guitar (Rhythm), Vocals
Roger McGuinn: Banjo, Guitar, Leader, Vocals, Guitar (12 String)
Terry Melcher: Producer
The masterpieces of this album, more mature than its predecessor, are: "Set You Free This Time" (Clark) [2:49], the ballad of a seasoned songwriter, and "If You're Gone" (Clark) [2:45], a raw and resentful pop song. The other tracks are: "It Won't Be Wrong" (Gerst/McGuinn) [1:58], too brazenly British; "He Was A Friend of Mine" (McGuinn/Traditional) [2:30], yet another limp, heavily arranged folk song; "The World Turns All Around Her" (Clark) [2:13], a lament searching for a center; "Wait And See" (McGuinn/Crosby) [2:19], the most intimate and non-committal of the youth anthems.
The covers are: the hit (No. 1 Pop Singles) "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)" (Seeger/Traditional) [3:49], a song whose philosophy is as overblown as its harmony; "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" (Dylan) [3:30], the most sincere and serene; "Satisfied Mind" (Hayes/Rhodes) [2:26], the most American or country, most arena-ready folk track; "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (Dylan) [2:18], one choral number too many; "Oh! Susannah" (McGuinn/Traditional) [3:03], the most famous manifesto-song of the entire American tradition (its immortal guitar riff was written in the 1800s by the legendary Stephen Foster), closes the album unexpectedly and with great force; it's performed with a mix of epic grandeur and humor.
From the same sessions but left off the album were "The Day Walk" (Clark) [3:04], which steals - and who knew it would go on to become immortal! - the riff from the greatest song of '65, "Satisfaction"; and "She Don't Care About Me" (Clark) [2:18], which doesn't hold much interest.

Fifth Dimension (July 18, 1966), 11 tracks, 30 minutes. No. 24 Pop Albums.
Chris Hillman: Bass, Mandolin, Guitar (Bass), Vocals
Gene Clark: Guitar, Tambourine, Vocals
Michael Clarke: Drums
David Crosby: Guitar, Guitar (Rhythm), Vocals
Roger McGuinn: Banjo, Guitar, Leader, Vocals, Guitar (12 String)
Jim Dickson: Producer
Allen Stanton: Producer
"5D (Fifth Dimension)" (McGuinn) [2:33] is an epic country song with tones almost reminiscent of Scottish folk (Dick Gaughan), drawing on that same epic quality. "Wild Mountain Thyme" (Traditional) [2:30] confirms, in a more rhetorical fashion (string section), the record's general direction, leaning more toward communal song than individual expression. "Mr. Spaceman" (McGuinn) [2:09] is a particularly pushed-forward bluegrass tune, reaching, beyond Merseybeat, toward the dusty, grandiose choruses of Buffalo Springfield. "I See You" (Crosby/McGuinn) [2:38] is a distorted, jazz-inflected lament, bolstered by McGuinn's 12-string (which sounds like a saxophone) and carried along by the soft rhythm section.
"What's Happening?!" (Crosby) [2:35] is the album's first masterpiece, and Crosby's: melodic soft-rock steeped in pathos, but without any excess of grandiosity or rhetoric. "I Come and Stand at Every Door" (Hikmet) [3:03] is the album's second masterpiece: another melody, another ethereal sadness - this time firmly rooted in folk.
"Eight Miles High" (Clark/Crosby/McGuinn) [3:34] is the single commonly cited as the starting point of the psychedelic movement and drug culture. It reached No. 14. It was banned by many radio stations. McGuinn, influenced by jazz musician John Coltrane and by Indian music (he'd be the first to champion the Hinduism-LSD pairing), enlivens and disorients, in an avant-garde key, the melodic foundation built by Crosby and Clark, drawing on an age-old and therefore universal tradition. "Hey Joe" (Powers/Roberts) [2:17] is the most rock 'n' roll (rhythm and blues) track the Byrds ever recorded: needless to say, Hendrix would remember it. "Captain Soul" (Clarke/Crosby/Hillman/McGuinn) [2:53] is an instrumental with blues inflections, similar to what was being done in England at the time (Cream), itself drawing on American sources from decades earlier.
"John Riley" (Bob Gibson) [2:57] is a folk cover that returns to soft-rock territory, still managing, with all its deep melancholy, to escape the grip of the then-dying or already-dead Merseybeat sound. "2-4-2 Fox Trot (The Lear Jet Song)" (McGuinn) [2:12] is an outlet for McGuinn's experimentalism, which, tiptoeing softly, with little vocal-group choruses, anticipates various future developments in popular music (from noise - what else is acid, after all? - to noise-based electronics). Once again McGuinn proves his mediocrity as a composer and his greatness as a performer, arranger, and inventor. Coming from the same recording sessions, but regrettably left off the album, is another Crosby masterpiece: "Psychodrama City" (3:26); in full Cream or blues-revival style, with a backing ensemble as skilled as a jazz combo, torn between Dylan and psychedelia, it manages to enrich both.
1966 is the year of Frank Zappa ("Freak Out"), of the 13th Floor Elevators ("The Psychedelic Sounds Of"), of the Beach Boys ("Pet Sounds"). Fifth Dimension, however graceful, simply cannot keep pace.

Younger Than Yesterday (February 6, 1967): 11 tracks, 29 minutes. No. 24 Pop Albums.
Clarence White: Guitar, Guitar (Electric)
Vern Gosdin: Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar
Chris Hillman: Bass, Mandolin, Guitar (Bass), Vocals
Michael Clarke: Drums
David Crosby: Guitar, Guitar (Rhythm), Vocals
Roger McGuinn: Banjo, Guitar, Vocals, Guitar (12 String)
Gary Usher: Producer
It's been said that Gene Clark left the band out of a fear of flying. Obviously, the real reason was McGuinn's star-tripping tendencies. "So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star" (Hillman/McGuinn) [2:05], with horns and surreal atmospheres later echoed by Robert Wyatt ('74), expresses content worthy of the Rolling Stones.
"Have You Seen Her Face" (Hillman) [2:40] is the Beatles playing at pessimism, somewhere between gentle and McGuinn's acidic syncopated guitar work.
"C.T.A. - 102" (Hippard/McGuinn) [2:28] is a proto-electronic experiment (one of McGuinn's passions) that anticipates a certain shoegaze dreaminess. "Renaissance Fair" (Crosby/McGuinn) [1:51] is only a mediocre taste of Crosby's songwriting talent. "Time Between" (Hillman) [1:53] is a weak country-rock number that nonetheless, in tone, anticipates the catchiest side of Pink Floyd ("Wish You Were Here," "The Wall"). "Everybody's Been Burned" (Crosby) [3:05] is Crosby's great melodic masterpiece: Jefferson Airplane ("Comin' Back To Me"), Nick Drake (especially on his first album), Tim Buckley (especially on his first album) all start from here. We might call it a more resigned take on the Simon & Garfunkel of the same period.
"Thoughts and Words" (Hillman) [2:56] is Hillman's masterpiece: a desolate, downcast, broken rhythm, briefly softened by a Merseybeat-style refrain, which is immediately swallowed back up by McGuinn's electronic distortions (and that's what McGuinn does best: not writing songs, but devoting himself to production, arrangement, polishing what's already been conceived). "Mind Gardens" (Crosby) [3:46]: Crosby proves he has nothing to envy in
Bob Dylan or traditional folk; moreover, he composes a song that draws on country and folk, yet fundamentally sounds like rock, a whispered lament essential to great songwriters like Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake, both greater precisely because they were songwriters pure and simple, without placing themselves within the age-old tradition of folk from which Bob Dylan takes his springboard. "Mind Gardens," however, having left folk behind, leaves rock behind too, achieving an effect almost like Scottish bagpipes, thanks to an acidic undercurrent (and conceived in an anti-melodic way, as a single long verse with no internal reference points) that can be traced to the most avant-garde rock music of any era.
"My Back Pages" (Dylan) [3:08], a sort of even more introspective version of "Mr. Tambourine Man." "The Girl With No Name" (Hillman) [1:50]: gentle, bass-driven country, bluegrass that, twenty years later, would be translated into U2's "Where The Streets Have No Name." "Why?" (Crosby/McGuinn) [2:45], an existential anthem that finds its cross and its delight in the usual dreamy, understated, feminine tone. Coming from the same recording sessions, but regrettably left off the album, is another Crosby masterpiece: "It Happens Each Day" [2:44], a gem of space-country as refined as it is visceral.
Younger Than Yesterday, the Byrds' best album, has the misfortune of appearing in the year of rock, the year of the Velvet Underground, the Doors, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix,
Jefferson Airplane, Traffic. And against that, it can't do much.

Notorious Byrd Brothers (January 3, 1968), 11 tracks, 29 minutes. No. 47 Pop Albums.
Clarence White: Guitar, Guitar (Electric)
Chris Hillman: Bass, Mandolin, Guitar (Bass), Vocals
Michael Clarke: Drums
David Crosby: Guitar, Guitar (Rhythm), Vocals
Roger McGuinn: Banjo, Guitar, Vocals, Guitar (12 String)
Red Rhodes: Guitar
Jim Gordon: Drums
Paul Beaver: Moog Synthesizer
Gary Usher: Producer
Instrumentally, the album is so revolutionary for its makers that it barely sounds like the Byrds at all: driving rhythm, horns, imposing electronics. The result is a sound that's wildly transformed and far fresher than their previous work. This is true at least of the masterwork "Artificial Energy" (Clarke/Hillman/McGuinn) [2:18], for which critic Sandy Pearlman of "Crawdaddy" coined the term "heavy metal." In truth, by that point English hard rock had already had its say - and Blue Cheer, with "Vincebus Eruptum," would reaffirm it; and the vocals are the same feminine ones as always. Without going to such extremes, the band's new phase is evidenced by "Goin' Back" (Goffin/King) [3:26] and above all by the masterpiece "Natural Harmony" (Hillman) [2:11], distorted ballads where the synthesizer creates a proto-new-wave atmosphere while the rhythm section keeps up effervescent jazz tempos. Even "Draft Morning" (Crosby/Hillman/McGuinn) [2:42], which revisits ground more familiar to the band (folk), has something unusual about it, with a second half distorted by every kind of effect (horns, futuristic laser-gun noises, filtered voices) that would exert - as much as such short, pop-oriented compositions can - a decisive influence on the emerging Canterbury scene, and especially on 70s Wyatt ("Rock Bottom"). "Wasn't Born to Follow" (Goffin/King) [2:04] only confirms the Byrds' dazzling form: while on one hand they seem to have been reduced to every kind of trick and artifice to mask a substantial lack of inspiration, on the other they're among the first to sanction the use of such tricks, making them seem like something to appreciate and praise rather than view with suspicion. It also helps strip of all rhetoric compositions that, risking collapse into sentimentality, instead knock on the door of pure avant-garde ("Get to You" (Hillman/McGuinn) [2:39] deserves the adjective "metaphysical"). Every track on this album is precious, pregnant with ideas that would influence generations of pop musicians. It's also the (only?) occasion on which McGuinn gives his absolute best, makes real art: because the album is built on what he does well - arrangements, inventions, every kind of sonic extravagance - it's no coincidence that McGuinn appears, for the first and only time, as a credited contributor on almost every track. "Change Is Now" (Hillman/McGuinn) [3:21] is yet another ballad, incredibly transformed by a noise solo from McGuinn, by a revolutionary drum part (tribal and jazzy), by dissonance and bold shifts in tempo and style (country, folk, jazz, electronics). "Old John Robertson" (Hillman/McGuinn) [1:49] is, in its directness, even bolder: the Byrds, within the space of a couple of years, had radically changed or overturned course, but the decisive factor was the previous album, which, not by chance, is their best alongside this one: a sign not of randomness, but of a great moment of grace.
"Tribal Gathering" (Crosby/Hillman) [2:03], devoted to the work of McGuinn's twelve-string, delivers yet another harmonic, virginal song to the violence not of sound but of noise. "Dolphin's Smile" (Crosby/Hillman/McGuinn) [2:00] crowns the theoretical, deliberate work behind the album: on drums there no longer seems to be a green copy of the old guard, but a bold percussionist - though it's unclear how much Jim Gordon actually contributed here versus how much is the work of Michael Clarke, who was on his way out of the band; the ever-present voices in their falsettos end up creating an even more unusual, surreal atmosphere - even more so, in their naivety, than anyone today who goes looking for a voice box close to electronic music. "Space Odyssey" (Hippard/McGuinn) [3:52] is the masterpiece, in the form of a requiem, that closes the album amid spatial hisses; it has, after all, a title that is a statement in itself.
From the same recording sessions as this great album come even more radical works, testifying to the force that a passion for electronics could stir in a twenty-six-year-old McGuinn. The instrumental "Moog Raga" (McGuinn) [3:24] is at once a tribute to the man who (starting in '66) popularized the synthesizer and, through that instrument, a tribute to Indian atmospheres and religions - passions for the synthesizer and for India that coexisted in McGuinn and were the root causes of his passion for LSD. "Triad" (Crosby) [3:29] is yet another transcendent Crosby masterpiece, able to rival those of Tim Buckley. Jefferson Airplane would take it up that same year, '68, for "Crown of Creation." The song's exclusion from the album marked Crosby's exclusion from the Byrds - Hillman would follow a year later - the band now the private property of a McGuinn who, by excluding Crosby here for being interested in songwriting rather than electronics, and then returning to the most reactionary strand of country, only proves that the comings and goings within the Byrds were never about artistic differences, but purely a power struggle.
Although there were less significant albums in '68 than in '67, the Byrds' work still can't compete with Leonard Cohen's "Songs" - among the top ten popular music albums of all time, incidentally - or with Tim Buckley's "Happy Sad"; nor even with the more modest (if a masterpiece can be called modest) likes of Jimi Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland," Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks," Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful Of Secrets," Nico's "Marble Index"; the Byrds thus have to jostle their way into another crowd of masterpieces: Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bayou Country," Jeff Beck's "Truth," Neil Young's self-titled debut, Jefferson Airplane's "Crown Of Creation," Blue Cheer's "Vincebus Eruptum," the Kinks' "Village Green Preservation Society," Cream's "Wheels Of Fire," the Grateful Dead's "Anthem Of The Sun."
McGuinn tried to move from folk and country toward jazz and electronics. Gram Parsons (1946-1973) came in to play keyboards.

Sweetheart Of The Rodeo (August 30, 1968): 11 tracks, 32 minutes. No. 77 Pop Albums.
Clarence White: Guitar, Vocals
John Hartford: Banjo, Guitar
Chris Hillman: Bass, Mandolin, Guitar (Bass), Vocals
Gram Parsons: Guitar, Vocals
Roger McGuinn: Banjo, Guitar, Vocals
Lloyd Green: Guitar (Steel)
Earl Poole Ball: Piano
Jon Corneal: Drums
Roy M. "Junior" Husky: Bass
Kevin Kelley: Drums
Jay Dee Maness: Guitar (Steel)
Gary Usher: Producer
With Crosby's departure, McGuinn throws himself headlong into the very thing Crosby was supposedly leaving over: tradition. The Byrds' two 1968 albums are, respectively, the most avant-garde (the first) and the most reactionary - not just of the Byrds' career, but of that year in popular music generally. Here, though, the Byrds begin their slow and inexorable slide toward dissolution - after Gene Clark and Crosby, Michael Clarke had also left. Within a year, this would no longer be the Byrds, but McGuinn's outfit, accompanied by various session men occasionally (in)capable of passing themselves off as songwriters. Like its predecessor, though on different terms, the album's importance lies entirely in the form of its execution, which is, as ever, flawless. It's no coincidence that it's an album made up entirely of covers - a constant of the Byrds, or rather of McGuinn: important only formally or aesthetically, substantially indebted to various songwriters; and whether those songwriters are Dylan or Crosby, and whether or not they're part of the ensemble, makes no difference. For some of these covers, Gram Parsons (Fl, 1946 - Ca, 1973), formerly of the International Submarine Band (later of the Flying Burrito Brothers), is brought in as a member of the group - he and his band were, that same year, with "Safe At Home," the originators of the country-rock style. In truth, it's a pseudo-style, and it's more accurate to speak of a revival. We're dealing, after all, with thoroughly traditional country - voice-guitar-fiddle-piano - updated with a muted rhythm section, lyrics written by young people sensitive to the problems of the new youth - more nihilistic, perhaps, but not so different from the problems of the young people of the 1800s. The Byrds, with this covers album, skillfully and flawlessly kick off, on a large scale, the country-rock revival that would prove so popular - and so poorly done by others - in America in the late 60s and early 70s. For this proselytizing, the Byrds are more important than The Band, Buffalo Springfield, and all those contemporary bands that did play country, but not so programmatically. Incidentally, country music in America, amid rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, Greenwich Village and the British Invasion, had never actually died: just consider the Everly Brothers (1954-1973) and the Nashville establishment (founded in the 1920s; by 1963, half of American records came from there).
Parsons' compositions - sung by him - are the lyrical "Hickory Wind" [3:34] and the epic "One Hundred Years from Now" [2:43], brimming with sincerity and spontaneity from a man who devoted his existence to country music and who, through acoustic guitar and vocal laments, would end up dying from an overdose of morphine and tequila. Parsons was close to the Rolling Stones and, like them, paired music fit for grandparents and great-grandparents with a bohemian lifestyle that was never more fashionable.
From the same sessions, Parsons contributed a third song: "Lazy Days" (Parsons) [3:29], somewhere between Dylan - in how it's brooded over and spat out - and the Rolling Stones - in how it's driven and sustained (again, nothing of the Byrds remains here).
On the other tracks, where as many as six guitarists sometimes trade off and counterpoint one another, while there's no denying the agility and skill with which the Byrds manage to range from the bluegrass of their beginnings to present-day country - these are no longer the Byrds! - one must nonetheless admire McGuinn's prodigious, chameleon-like versatility, a quality typical of any obsessive or occasional fanatic fixated now on one thing (India), now on another (electronics), now on yet another (prairie country) - not to mention the passions that came and went for Dylan, the Beatles, drugs, and so on.
There are two Dylan covers - the following year he too would catch country fever with "Nashville Skyline": "You Ain't Going Nowhere" [2:38] and "Nothing Was Delivered" [3:34]; the latter superb, with pop-hit appeal. The other reworkings of other people's songs are drawn from all over, especially from lesser-known repertoires, and end up - given the cunning of the performances and the sophistication of the arrangements - sounding, on the whole, fresh. After all, doing covers is the perfect thing for McGuinn: he needs solid ground to work his magic on; when that's missing, you get neither a good song nor worthwhile avant-garde experimentation. From "I Am A Pilgrim" (Traditional) [3:42], the most western of the bunch, to "The Christian Life" (Louvin/Louvin) [2:33], like a cowboy choir, to the cabaret-like, sorrowful "You Don't Miss Your Water" (Bell) [3:51], to "You're Still On My Mind" (McDaniel) [2:26], where - vocally - one seems to hear Lou Reed; right up to the inevitable Guthrie tribute ("Pretty Boy Floyd" [2:37]). "Blue Canadian Rockies" (Walker) [2:05] is the peak expression of the effect that defines the whole work - and every revival - that of an ancient trade practiced by a young generation. Hence the interest in, and the dissonance surrounding, the whole thing: as well as the conflict between nature and history. "Life In Prison" (Haggard/Sanders) [2:47] teaches how country - unlike rock - can narrate terrible things in a manner that's somewhere between danceable, impassive, and jovial. And if that might seem foolish or numbing, it could also be concealing the truth of all storytelling, and thus of the facts being told: indifference, or inexorability.
Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde (February 3, 1969). No. 153 Pop Albums.
Clarence White: Guitar, Vocals
Gene Parsons: Drums
Roger McGuinn: Banjo, Guitar, Vocals
John York: Bass
Bob Johnston: Producer
This is, for the band's internal history, the most important album. In fact, it's the first album after the Byrds broke apart, piece by piece. Chris Hillman has left too (to form the Flying Burrito Brothers with Gram Parsons). This album comes out under the Byrds name, but the Byrds no longer exist. It's effectively McGuinn's first solo album, but it marks the beginning of the end. The beginning of the horrors yet to come. Unable to write songs, mired in country music, having reached the end of his experimental abilities, he's a failed man who refuses to accept himself as such. Not even the expert Gene Parsons and the faithful Clarence White are enough to rescue the fortunes of an implacable, tedious fate still to be told.

Ballad Of Easy Rider (October 29, 1969): 11 tracks, 30 minutes. No. 36 Pop Albums
Clarence White: Guitar, Vocals
Gene Parsons: Guitar, Drums, Vocals, 5-string Banjo
Roger McGuinn: Synthesizer, Banjo, Guitar, Vocals
John York: Bass, Vocals
Terry Melcher: Producer
It may well be McGuinn's most fully realized country album (he writes one song out of 11), but it doesn't amount to much. And the recipe - fresh at the time - of Sweetheart Of the Rodeo (itself stamped with Gram Parsons' imprint) can't simply be repeated. At least "Jack Tarr the Sailor" (Traditional) [3:31] deserves a mention: it sounds like a Celtic song sung by a cowboy going through a religious crisis.

Untitled/Unissued (October 1970): 16 tracks. No. 40.
Clarence White: Guitar, Vocals
Gene Parsons: Drums, Vocals
Roger McGuinn: Banjo, Guitar, Vocals, Producer
Skip Battin: Bass, Vocals
Terry Melcher: Producer
It's half a live set of covers and classics from the Byrds' repertoire, and half a songwriting showcase for the new bassist: Skip Battin.

Byrdmaniax (June 23, 1971): 11 tracks, 34:15. No. 46 Pop Albums.
Clarence White: Guitar, Vocals
Gene Parsons: Drums, Vocals
Roger McGuinn: Banjo, Guitar, Vocals
Skip Battin: Bass
Sneaky Pete Kleinow: Pedal Steel, Guitar (Steel)
Byron Berline: Fiddle, Violin
Larry Knechtel: Organ, Piano, Keyboards
Paul Polena: Reeds, Strings, Horn
Jim Seiter: Percussion, Tambourine
Terry Melcher: Piano, Producer
This is a hideous product of McGuinn's narcissism, a man who no longer even has the nerve to take responsibility for an art that, devoid of meaning, isn't even art anymore. Never had the Byrds sounded so heavily amplified and fresh, never so little like the Byrds. McGuinn is credited (albeit in collaboration) on 4 of the 11 tracks: "Pale Blue" (McGuinn/Parsons) [2:24] apes Simon & Garfunkel, "I Trust" (McGuinn) [3:21] sounds like a soul-pop version of "Like A Rolling Stone," "Kathleen's Song" (Levy/McGuinn) [2:44] has all the hallmarks of the trashiest folk-pop; "I Wanna Grow Up To Be A Politician" (Levy/McGuinn) [2:06] is a tired, hackneyed country ditty.
The other members of the new Byrds try their hand at songwriting without realizing there's a huge gap between being good performers and being good songwriters: "Tunnel Of Love" (Battin/Fowley) [5:02] sounds like the grandmother of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" from "9 1/2 Weeks"; "Citizen Kane" (Battin/Fowley) [2:37] is 1930s-style jazz; "Absolute Happiness" (Battin/Fowley) [2:40] is Serge Gainsbourg-style soft rock, "Green Apple Quick Step" (Parsons/White) [1:51] is a country-folk instrumental that has something to teach the Pogues. The covers, then, are as bad as it gets: a very old country tune already done by Duane Eddy, "My Destiny" (Carter) [3:40]; an aborted funk number, "Jamaica Say You Will" (Browne) [3:36]; a dreadful soul tune, "Glory, Glory" (Reynolds) [4:05].

Farther Along (December 29, 1971): 11 tracks, 30 minutes. No. 152 Pop Albums.
Clarence White: Guitar, Mandolin, Arranger, Vocals, Producer
Gene Parsons: Harmonica, Pedal Steel, Drums, Guitar (Rhythm), Guitar (Steel), Vocals, Producer, Drums (Snare), 5-string Banjo
Roger McGuinn: Banjo, Guitar, Vocals, Producer
Skip Battin: Bass, Piano, Vocals, Producer
It's no worse than the previous record only because it's not possible to sink any lower.

Byrds (1973): 11 tracks, 34:49. No. 20 Pop Albums.
Chris Hillman: Guitar (Acoustic), Bass, Mandolin, Guitar (Electric), Vocals, Guitar (12 String)
Gene Clark: Guitar (Acoustic), Harmonica, Tambourine, Vocals
Michael Clarke: Percussion, Conga, Drums
David Crosby: Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric), Vocals, Guitar (12 String), Producer
Roger McGuinn: Guitar (Acoustic), Banjo, Guitar (Electric), Vocals, Guitar (12 String), Moog Synthesizer
Now the Byrds are, for once, all together. But after five years it wasn't worth it.

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