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The Byrds
- Biography
 The Byrds
(formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1964) were an
American rock band.
Bridging
the gap between the socially and spiritually conscious folk
music of Bob Dylan and the
fresh sounding hybrid pop of The Beatles, The Byrds are
widely considered to have been one of the most important and
influential bands of the 1960s. Throughout their career,
they helped forge such subgenres as folk rock, space rock,
raga rock, psychedelic rock, jangle pop, and – on their 1968
classic Sweetheart of the Rodeo – country rock. After
several line-up changes (with lead singer/guitarist Roger
McGuinn as the only consistent member), they broke up in
1973.
Some of
their trademark songs include pop covers of
Bob Dylan's "Mr.
Tambourine Man" and Pete Seeger’s "Turn! Turn! Turn!," and
the originals "I’ll Feel a Whole
Lot Better",
and "Eight Miles High."
They
were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and
several band members have launched successful solo careers
after leaving the group.
History
The
Byrds were founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1964 by
singers and guitarists Jim McGuinn (born James McGuinn III
on July 13, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois) (he later changed
his name to Roger McGuinn after encountering the Indonesian
religion Subud), Gene Clark (born Harold Eugene Clark on
November 17, 1944, in Tipton, Missouri; died May 24, 1991),
and David Crosby (born David Van Cortland Crosby on August
14, 1941, in Los Angeles). Bassist Chris Hillman (born
December 4, 1944, in Los Angeles) and drummer Michael Clarke (born Michael Dick on
June 3,
1946, in NYC; died December 19, 1993) joined soon after.
McGuinn
had been in a series of folk outfits including The
Limeliters and the Chad Mitchell Trio before working in NYC
in 1962-63 as a songwriter for Bobby Darin. He'd journeyed
to L.A. in late 1963 and began gigging at clubs such as the
Troubadour but, after hearing The Beatles for the first
time, he resolved to take "Lennon and Dylan and mix them
together."
Gene
Clark, who'd been in the New Christy Minstrels, briefly
joined McGuinn in a duo playing at The Folk Den before
Crosby, who'd performed with Les Baxter's Balladeers,
persuaded them to let him join. The newly-formed trio
recorded a song, "The Only Girl I Adore," soon after naming
themselves "The Jet Set" (McGuinn and Crosby were aviation
buffs). As such they cut a couple of numbers, "You Movin'"
and "The Only Girl." They then hired Michael Clarke (who had
the right look for the part) to join on drums. Former
bluegrass mandolin player Hillman, who'd played with the
Scotsville Squirrel Barkers, the Golden State Boys, and the
Hillmen, completed the quintet.
They
rehearsed and recorded extensively at the World Pacific
Studios in Los Angeles under the guidance of manager Jim
Dickson. This period culminated with Elektra Records
releasing a single, Please Let Me Love You B/W
Don't Be Long, under the name "The Beefeaters". Years
later, these World Pacific demos were released as the
Preflyte album and even made the lower reaches of the
album charts. There have since been two further archive
albums culled from the World Pacific sessions, In The
Beginning (1988) and The Preflyte Sessions
(2001).
In
November 1964, the band signed to Columbia Records and a few
days later renamed themselves "The Byrds." On January 20,
1965, they recorded "Mr. Tambourine Man," a Bob Dylan song
that they gave the electric treatment to and at a single
stroke created Folk Rock. McGuinn's guitar-sound (played on
a 12-string, heavily compressed Rickenbacker) with its
jangling melodicism, was immediately influential and has
remained so to the present day. The group's harmony work was
another characteristic of their signature sound. In June,
the song reached #1 on the US charts and, a month later,
repeated the feat in the UK. At the same time, their debut
album Mr. Tambourine Man was released and virtually
provided the template for the entire folk rock movement.
The
group's follow-up single was another distinctive
interpretation of a Dylan song, "All I Really Want To Do."
Unfortunately for them, Cher released a version of the song
just before theirs and she received the greater commercial
success.
The
Byrds then proceeded to record "Turn! Turn! Turn!," a Pete
Seeger adaptation of a traditional melody, with some lyrics
taken directly from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.
The song became the group's second US #1 single and
headlined their second album, also titled Turn! Turn!
Turn!.
The
Byrds' first two albums were enhanced by the bright sounding
production of Terry Melcher who was also known for his work
on Paul Revere and the Raiders albums. The Byrds also
performed their own compositions and, in Gene Clark,
included a major songwriter; his songs with the band include
The World Turns All Around Her, She Don't Care
About Time, I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better and
Set You Free This Time.
By the
end of 1965, the band moved away from the simple folk rock
that they had pioneered and ventured into more abstruse
territory. On December 22, 1965, they recorded Eight Miles
High, possibly the first fully-blown psychedelic recording
(although contemporaneous efforts by The Yardbirds were in a
similar vein). The song was widely regarded as a "drug" song
(although the band deny this) and its relatively modest
success when it was released as a single (US # 14) has been
attributed to the resulting airplay bans on some
radio-stations. Gene Clark, who had provided the melody and
the majority of the song's lyrics, left the band in March
1966, partly due to a fear of flying but also because he
wanted to go solo. He was signed by
Columbia
and went on to forge an artistically varied but commercially
unsuccessful body of work.
The
Byrds' third album, Fifth Dimension (5D), released in
July 1966, wasn't as overtly psychedelic as might have been
expected from its name, but it provided further evidence
that The Byrds weren't content to churn out endless reruns
of Mr. Tambourine Man. Although slightly diminished
by the inclusion of some substandard and atypical material,
5D contained innovative and memorable music thus
rendering it a landmark work. Unfortunately, the US radio
anti-drug movement had branded several of the tracks such as
Eight Miles High and 5D as "drug songs" and
this campaign undoubtedly limited the album's commercial
success (#24 US).
Patently irritated by the manufactured, overnight success of
the uncontroversial Monkees, they then recorded a satirical
dig at the music business—So You Want To Be A Rock'N'Roll
Star. The song achieved modest success as a single and
also kicked off their fourth album, Younger Than
Yesterday. In some quarters, this is regarded as their
best album. While it does contain some of their loveliest
works such as
Crosby's Everybody's Been Burned, Dylan's My Back Pages,
and a quartet of Chris Hillman numbers (Have You Seen Her
Face, Time Between, Thoughts And Words,
The Girl With No Name,) it also features
Crosby's indulgent Mind Gardens and McGuinn's novelty CTA-102.
In June
1967, the Byrds played a ragged set at the Monterey Pop
Festival, during which Crosby proceeded to utter both
pro-drug and JFK assassination conspiracy statements, to the
annoyance of the other band members. He then added insult to
injury by playing with rival band Buffalo Springfield. In
October, during the recording of their fifth album, Crosby
refused to participate in taping a Goffin-King number
Goin' Back in preference to his more controversial
Triad. The simmering tensions within the band finally
errupted and the other group members fired Crosby who
subsequently received a considerable cash settlement. Gene
Clark briefly rejoined but left after a mere three weeks
after refusing to board an aircraft while on tour. Michael
Clarke also quit during these sessions, mainly due to
disputes with
Crosby during the recording of Dolphin's Smile.
Studio drummer Jim Gordon was drafted in to complete his
parts. The bluegrass guitarist Clarence White contributed
significantly on several tracks and became a permanent band
member, in 1968.
The
resulting album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, was
released in Jan. 1968 and contains some of the band's most
ethereal music. Most of the tracks mixed folk rock, country,
psychedelia and jazz to produce an eclectic opus which dealt
with many contemporary themes such as peace, ecology,
freedom, drug use, alienation, relationships and mankind's
place in the Universe. Over the years, The Notorious Byrd
Brothers has gained in reputation, while the contentious
incidents surrounding its making have largely been
forgotten.
The
Byrds were now a duo but quickly recruited Hillman's cousin,
Kevin Kelley, as drummer and then, in a fateful decision for
their future career-direction, hired Gram Parsons to play
keyboards. With the aid of Hillman, Parsons persuaded
McGuinn to take the Byrds into a territory they'd only
sporadically covered before—country music.
The
Byrds had virtually invented Folk Rock three years earlier.
Now, remarkably, they were involved in the genesis of yet
another genre—Country-Rock. On Feb. 15, 1968 they played at
the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, the first group of
longhairs ever to do so, and immediately started recording
their next album in a wholly Country style with Parsons
choosing and singing many of the songs. However, on July 29,
Parsons quit the band just before they flew to South Africa
because he refused to play to segregated audiences. At the
same time, Sweetheart of the Rodeo was released, in
their new country vein, but most of Parsons' vocals were
replaced by either McGuinn or Hillman because of legal
problems with Parsons' previous record company. The album
was commercially unsuccessful (US # 77) but contains the
yearning Parsons classic, Hickory Wind, a couple of
Dylan tunes from The Basement Tapes, as well as songs
from such unlikely sources as The Louvin Brothers (The
Christian Life). It's often cited (somewhat dubiously)
as the first country-rock album but is certainly the first
country album by an established rock band.
Hillman
left in October to join Parsons in the Flying Burrito
Brothers. Kelley also quit at this time and McGuinn was left
on his own. He hired guitarist Clarence White, who had been
an uncredited session player on both the Younger Than
Yesterday and The Notorious Byrd Brothers albums. White
recommended Gene Parsons to play drums and John York to join
on bass. The resulting quartet recorded the
Dr. Byrds &
Mr. Hyde album and released it in Feb. 1969 to
poor US sales and moderate UK success.
In
October 1969 came the Ballad Of Easy Rider album. Jesus
Is Just Alright from that album was issued as a single
which, in a similar arrangement, became a hit for The Doobie
Brothers, four years later. The group also recorded a
version of Jackson Browne's Mae Jean Goes to Hollywood
during the recording sessions but it remained unreleased for
some twenty years. The title track was composed by McGuinn
(expanding on a verse line written by Bob Dylan) as the
music theme for the 1969 Hippie movie Easy Rider and is
recognized as one of their most affecting performances.
In
1970, The Byrds released the double album (Untitled) which
charted well in the UK and acceptably in the US.
(Untitled) featured one disc of live recordings and one
of studio performances and produced tracks such as
Chestnut Mare, All The Things and Lover of the
Bayou. It also included a 16 minute live version of
Eight Miles High.
1971
yielded the Byrdmaniax album which was a commercial and
critical disappointment, largely due to inappropriate
orchestration which was added to many tracks without the
band's approval by producer Terry Melcher. 1971 also saw the
release of the Farther Along album. 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
Palmsdale, California. Soon afterwards, Gram Parsons died,
as a result of a heroin overdose, in the Joshua Tree Motel,
California.)
McGuinn
toured with the Columbia Byrds through 1972, with LA session
man John Guerin replacing
Gene Parsons, before terminating the band. 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 only on one track, though, "Captain
Video" - evidently Battin's tribute to his erstwhile
employer.
The
five original Byrds all briefly reunited in late 1972 to cut
the anti-climactic reunion album Byrds. The reunion
was interesting in that the group never called themselves
The Byrds and instead opted to call themselves "Gene Clark,
Chris Hillman, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Michael Clarke"
(after the naming style of
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young). Because the
album was not recorded under the band's name, many fans do
not consider Byrds to actually be part of The Byrds'
official discography.
Subsequently, there were disputes over which members owned
the rights to the "Byrds" name in the late 1980s. Clarke and
Clark toured under The Byrds' name at that time, and from
1989 through most of 1993 Clarke toured occasionally as "The
Byrds Featuring Michael Clarke" with former Byrd Skip Battin
along with newcomers Terry Jones Rogers and Jerry Sorn. To
solidify their claim to the name and prevent any
non-original members from using the name, 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 led to 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, the judge ruling that Clarke's
group had toured successfully. Eventually, a settlement was
reached, preventing any entity not including McGuinn,
Hillman and Crosby from using the name "Byrds".
The
band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
1991. Gene Clark died later that year and, two years later,
Michael Clarke succumbed to liver disease brought on by
alcoholism.
Though
both Hillman and Crosby have expressed an interest in
working with McGuinn again on future Byrds projects, McGuinn
is currently committed to his folk music career.
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