It’s early 1965, and the British rule the pop music world.
Ever since the Beatles arrived in America the previous February, the airwaves have been flooded with the sounds of the British Invasion. By contrast, American rock and pop music, largely headquartered in New York City, seems suddenly and hopelessly outdated, stuck in the previous decade. True, the Folk Music movement has a brilliant champion in Bob Dylan, whose poetic and topical lyrics still push the boundaries of musical art. But the Folk Boom has played itself out, and even Dylan is looking for a new direction.
Anyway, a high wall divides Folk from Rock, and their respective performers and fans have little but contempt for each other.
Yet the times are changing with incredible swiftness. The music world awaits the American response to the British invasion, a new sound that merges the drive and melodic innovation of the Beatles with the trenchant lyrics and social consciousness of Bob Dylan. A new scene beckons, swapping the dark alleys of New York for the sunny skies and tree-filled canyons of Los Angeles.
It’s time for the BYRDS to fly…
The BYRDS story
The Byrds, America’s first great rock band of the post-Beatles era, emerged from the folk music boom that overtook America in the late 1950s and early 60s. In mid 1964, three young folkies, barely in their 20s but already veteran performers, ran into each other at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles, a city just starting to make inroads in the world of pop music. They were Jim McGuinn, Gene Clark and David Crosby, three singer-guitarists whose voices blended into a glorious harmonic whole that cut through the smoke-filled folk dens of the club scene. But all three were tired of the grind of the college folk circuit and had caught the rock and roll bug bad, having witnessed the Beatles take the world by storm. They found an ally and manager in Jim Dickson, who had connections all over Hollywood and shared their vision of a musical “sweet spot” between the Beatles and Dylan. They recruited a rhythm section in the form of drummer Mike Clarke and bassist Chris Hillman and began putting their sound together and writing songs during late night rehearsals at World Pacific Studios. Dickson’s avid pushing landed them a recording contract with Columbia in January of 1965, and at a recording session produced by the savvy Terry Melcher and backed by a team of veteran session players, the newly dubbed Byrds made musical history by grafting Bob Dylan’s mystical “Mr. Tambourine Man” to a rock beat and a splendidly baroque intro from McGuinn’s Rickenbacker 12-string guitar, topping it off with an ethereal lead vocal by McGuinn and Crosby’s creamy harmonies. Thus the Byrds’ incredible sound sprang whole and intact from that first recording session, like Athena from the brow of Zeus.
While Columbia prepared the single for release, the Byrds began playing clubs around Los Angeles, notably a stand at the popular nightspot Ciro’s on Sunset Boulevard that quite simply created a sensation. By the time Mr. Tambourine Man hit Number 1 on the charts in May, 1965, the Byrds were being celebrated as America’s Answer to the Beatles. Riding the wave of success, the Byrds returned to the studio and cut their first album, Mr. Tambourine Man, which proved a landmark on the music scene. Unlike virtually ever other album of the era (excepting those by the Beatles), the L.P. contained no “filler” and was chock full of ringing anthems, beautiful melodies and poetic lyrics, some by Dylan but many courtesy of the Byrds’ own genius songwriter, Gene Clark. Like the single, the album surged to the top of the charts and proved the Byrds were no fly-by-night one-hit wonders, but a new and growing force in popular music.
As 1965 plunged ahead, the Byrds embarked on a tour of England that saw them skewered by a hostile British press determined to protect their favorite sons from any American retaliation. But the tour resulted in a long and enduring friendship between the Beatles and the Byrds that inspired both acts to scale new heights of musical inventiveness. One can almost speak of a Beatles-Byrds nexus that dominated popular music in 1965 and 66. Returning to the U.S., the group kept up a frantic touring schedule while finding time to cut a follow-up single and album. After a few false starts, McGuinn hit upon the idea of setting an old Pete Seeger song quoting the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes to a samba beat. Thus was born the Byrds’ second Number 1 single and an epic anthem that set its seal on the entire Vietnam War generation, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”
After completing work on another magnificent album, Turn! Turn! Turn! (the second in less than six months!), the Byrds entered 1966 as America’s undisputed top band. But after pioneering Folk Rock, they were looking to forge off in an entirely new direction. The result was “Eight Miles High,” a haunting masterpiece that perfectly captures the wide-eyed wonder, adrenaline rush and spooky dislocation of the emerging psychedelic era. While the single stalled at Number 14 due to rumors that it was a “drug song” (it was actually about their British misadventure), it won them new respect from their musical peers and spawned a third strong album, Fifth Dimension. By this time Gene Clark had suffered something of a breakdown due to tensions within the group and his pathological fear of flying. His departure in March of 1966 reduced the Byrds to a four-piece and deprived them of their principal songwriter, but Chris Hillman stepped forward as a vocalist and composer and soon proved himself a powerful creative force. The year ended with the group recording yet another brilliant album, Younger Than Yesterday, and entered 1967 with their momentum and mojo intact.
As the year that saw the Summer of Love continued, strains within the band began to escalate. McGuinn and Hillman increasingly resented David Crosby’s growing assertiveness within the group, his vocal commitment to radical politics, and his willingness to “sit in” with other bands like Buffalo Springfield. Crosby, for his part, chafed at what he considered the restrictions imposed by the Byrds’ formula sound and ridiculed McGuinn’s involvement in the Eastern religion of Subud (under whose influence he had changed his name from Jim to Roger in mid ’67). Clarke’s growing indifference to their music caused screaming matches in the studio. Things came to a head in October of 1967, when McGuinn and Hillman abruptly “fired” Crosby. Gene Clark briefly rejoined as his replacement, but his old fear of flying reasserted itself and he left only weeks later. Michael Clarke soon drifted away as well, leaving the Byrds, for a time, as a duo. Still, McGuinn and Hillman managed to complete the next album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, which despite all the turmoil turned out to be another stunning magnum opus, the Byrds’ “Sgt. Pepper.”
Seeking a fresh start as 1968 dawned, the Byrds recruited drummer Kevin Kelley and toured as a three-piece for a short time before deciding another guitarist / keyboardist / singer was needed to flesh out their sound. In Gram Parsons, they got a lot more than they’d bargained for. A devotee of country music and a brilliant singer-songwriter in his own right, Parsons convinced the rest of the group to strike off in yet another entirely new direction—this one back to Nashville and the nation’s very roots. The next album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, shocked the group’s fan base as it was almost entirely devoted to country and traditional American folk. Together with Bob Dylan’s “John Wesley Hardin” and The Band's "Music From Big Pink," it helped put the brakes on the psychedelic movement and provided pop and rock with a firm grounding.
Parsons was a restless spirit who departed the group in mid-year, but the country sound he imparted to the group stuck. His replacement, guitarist Clarence White, was a superb instrumentalist in the country and bluegrass fields. Yet another round of personnel shifts saw Hillman leave to form the Flying Burrito Brothers with Parsons; he was replaced by American bassist John York, while Kevin Kelley’s drum spot was taken by veteran country drummer Gene Parsons (no relation to Gram). With this lineup, the Byrds cut two more albums, Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde and Ballad of Easy Rider, both of which contained some gems but lacked the consistent greatness of the group’s earlier LPs.
Yet while the Byrds waned as a recording act, they soon forged a reputation as one of the best live bands in the business, touring nonstop over the next four years. Clarence White’s innovative country-rock guitar style, utilizing the B-bender gizmo he’d invented that gave a regular guitar the twangy lilt of a pedal steel, inspired a new generation of players who went on to form groups like Poco and The Eagles. When bassist Skip Battin replaced York in late 1969, the new lineup became the longest-lived incarnation of the Byrds, lasting into 1973. The 1970 album Untitled saw a partial return to form and chart success, reaching the top 40, and the single “Chestnut Mare” was a hit in England and became an indelible part of the Byrds canon. With the heavy commitment to touring, however, the group had little time to devote to songwriting and studio craftsmanship, and the followup albums Byrdmaniax (1971) and Farther Along (1972) suffered accordingly.
Meanwhile, David Crosby had gone on to join with Steven Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young to form rock music’s first Supergroup and the most successful American band to that point. But by 1973 CSNY was on hiatus and Crosby, still sore over his firing by the Byrds and searching for redemption, conceived the idea of reforming the original Byrds lineup to record an album under his supervision. The other original Byrds joined in, with McGuinn disbanding the Clarence White incarnation to clear his schedule. The resulting Asylum album, BYRDS, is actually quite a bit better than its subsequent reputation, but at the time critics saw it as a disappointment and lambasted the reunion project. Tour plans were abandoned and all the Byrds again went their separate ways. It seemed a sad end for one of America’s greatest bands, but the story wasn’t quite over yet.
The year 1973 ended up being doubly disastrous for the Byrds when they suffered the first casualties among their alumni. In July, a drunken driver struck and killed Clarence White while he was loading equipment after a gig in Lancaster, California, and Gram Parsons died of a drug overdose a few months later in a hotel room near Joshua Tree.
Oddly enough, the acrimony between ex-Byrds ended up bringing about the group’s final reunion. In 1989, Gene Clark and Michael Clarke formed a “20th anniversary of the Byrds” group that also included ex-Byrd John York. Promoters soon shorted the title to simply “The Byrds,” which caused an understandable reaction from the other three original members. In 1990, McGuinn, Crosby and Hillman, reunited to record a few songs and perform concerts as The Byrds to secure title to the name. The following year, the Byrds were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame and the five originals put aside their differences long enough to perform a final song set together. A few months later, Gene Clark was found dead in his apartment, apparently due to longtime alcohol and substance abuse. Mike Clarke died due to similar causes two years later. The three surviving original Byrds have gotten together occasionally in the years since, and have worked together on the production of two boxed CD sets spanning the Byrds musical history sets to ensure their musical legacy live on.
The Byrds sound—chiming 12-string guitars and smooth vocal harmonies married to melodic music of lyrical substance—has gone on to inspire and influence performers of several generations, including the likes of The Eagles, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and R.E.M. Moreover, they pioneered three hugely important musical movements – Folk Rock, Psychedelic Rock, and Country Rock, and their influence rang clear through the New Wave and Alternative eras. Their contributions to any one of these fields would have assured them musical immortality; that they were essential to all of these movements places them among the pantheon of Pop Music Gods.
The Byrds Collective considers it an honor to play the Byrds’ music and to attempt to recreate that wonderful sound for audiences everywhere. We seek only to pay tribute to this extraordinary and essentially American band, and to introduce that great, ringing sound to new generations of listeners. |
