The Byrds
Avid readers of this blog (read: no one) might recall my having posted a picture of my then-recent purchase of a Byrds box set about a year and a half ago. I planned to review each album in the collection; this did not happen. However, I did listen to several of their albums, leading to a great affection for the Byrds.
The Byrds had a lot going against them, critically speaking, when they formed in 1964. They were overtly influenced by the Beatles - their oddly spelled name being a reference, as well as buying identical instruments to the ones the Beatles played - AND their first few singles were Dylan covers. How could such a band hope to be original? Somehow, the Byrds managed to do so, and it’s really quite astounding.
George Harrison’s primary guitar when recording A Hard Day’s Night was a Rickenbacker 360/12 electric 12-string guitar - it was a prototype model that had been given to him by Rickenbacker, and was the first mainstream use of such an instrument. As previously stated, the Byrds decided to buy identical instruments to the Beatles upon seeing the Hard Day’s Night film, and so guitarist and bandleader Roger McGuinn was assigned the Rickenbacker 12-string role. The instrument is now largely identified with McGuinn and the Byrds, which is a testament to his stunningly original use of the instrument. It is used on the debut Byrds single, Mr. Tambourine Man, and became their signature shortly after. In fact, their cover of the Dylan song spawned a new guitar term - “jangly” guitar playing, in reference to the lyrics of the song - to describe the ringing, delicate arpeggios played by McGuinn. In the late 1970s through the college rock of the 1980s, this style became one of my favorite subgenres: “jangle pop”. That a band had such an impact after their first single is nothing short of astounding.
An album of the same name followed shortly thereafter, and is one of the better debuts of its era. In my opinion, there are few truly great debut albums until the latter half of the 1960s, as albums were simply seen as a cash-in release to get some extra money off of a hit single. A small digression: the five-star ratings given by sites like Allmusic to early Beatles records (pre-Hard Day’s Night) are not objective in their criticism. While Please Please Me and With the Beatles contain several great singles, they also have their fare share of filler and covers, something the Beatles chafed against and did away with later on. Yet early albums by the Kinks, for example, have about the same level of quality and consistency; and despite containing dizzingly influential songs like “You Really Got Me” they get mediocre reviews. What is the reason for this? Blame Beatlemania.
But back to the Byrds. Mr. Tambourine Man contains four Dylan covers, which are standout tracks, but my two favorites are Byrd originals: “You Won’t Have to Cry” and the brilliant “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better”. Several of the better Byrds songs were co-written by one Gene Clark, who originally played rhythm guitar in the band before being moved to the embarrassing role of tambourine player. Clark wrote several of the best early Byrds songs before leaving the band shortly before Fifth Dimension, their third album. He went on to have an incredible solo career, which I’ll discuss later on, probably in another blog entry. Mr. Tambourine Man has had a huge influence on American and British indie rock (especially R.E.M., the Soft Boys, and the entire Paisely Underground movement), as well as the Beatles immediately after; “If I Needed Someone” on Rubber Soul is heavily indebted to the Byrds’ iconic cover of the traditional “Bells of Rhymney”. Because of this, and the various conditions already discussed indebting the Byrds to the Beatles, the Byrds were seen (and hyped) as the American response to the Beatles, something that seems to be forgotten by many nowadays.
After Turn! Turn! Turn!, their follow-up to Mr. Tambourine Man, the Byrds began to expand their sound. In March 1966 they released another landmark single, the Clark-McGuinn-Crosby penned “Eight Miles High”. The song is considered the first true psychedelic rock song, which should, realistically, cement the Byrds’ place in rock history. McGuinn sought to emulate free jazz, especially Ornette Coleman, in his guitar playing on the song, which may make the song the first free jazz-influenced rock song ever as well. Admittedly, McGuinn’s playing (especially when soloing) could be erratic at times, giving songs on Mr. Tambourine Man like “It’s No Use” a sort of proto-punk edge; on “Eight Miles High” McGuinn made this erraticness a weapon. The rest of Fifth Dimension sets the stage for several incarnations of psychedelic rock; indeed, it is no coincidence that this style arose in California, as the Byrds had a huge influence on that music scene.
Gene Clark left the Byrds a few months before the release of Fifth Dimension; as was typical, his lone song on the album (“Eight Miles High”) was one of the best. Post-Byrds, he began to experiment with a new genre: country. Country and folk had always figured in the Byrds’ sound to some degree; David Crosby’s beautiful harmonies being one of the best examples (to me, some of the best in rock - in the words of Robyn Hitchcock: “his harmonies were so forceful and so strong that people thought that was the actual melody*”). But Clark decided that he wanted to form a new type of country music - country rock. This genre would also affect his old band, but not quite yet.
Left without their primary songwriter, the Byrds faced numerous challenges when recording Younger than Yesterday, their fourth album, with producer Gary Usher. Yet ultimately they produced quite possibly the best Byrds record; one containing my favorite song of theirs, “Have You Seen Her Face”. Bassist Chris Hillman came into his own as a songwriter as a sort of substitute for Clark, and contributed my favorites of the record - “Why,” “Time Between,” and the aforementioned “Have You Seen Her Face”. David Crosby experienced real growth as well, with the song “Everybody’s Been Burned” being a standout, and “Mind Gardens” being quite enjoyable, if a bit silly. The Dylan cover “My Back Pages” is typically wonderful, and “CTA-102” is a much more fun experiment than, say, “Revolution 9”.
At this point, the Byrds began to experiment with country, hiring country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons to assist on their second album of 1968, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. This album has proved incredibly influential, and is credited with inventing alt-country. It’s one of the most beautiful, simple albums of the 1960s, and points towards the roots-rock revival of the late 60s and early 70s quite well. Additionally, it is the invention of a sound later ripped off by another California-based bird-named band, The Eagles, whose debut album contained several Gene Clark originals. The fact that the Eagles are given so much credit for simply listening to Sweetheart, adding self-importance, and subtracting the bluegrass elements that make the album what it is, is simply criminal. This is one of my many soapboxes, so I won’t continue much further, but it baffles me that Eagles fans rarely care about the Byrds.
It is worth mentioning here that the Byrds had released an album earlier in 1968 called The Notorious Byrd Brothers, which bridges the gap between the Byrds’ psychedelic period and their country period. It was also the album that Ron Asheton and Iggy Pop, members of the Stooges, listened to when they got the idea for the repetitive riffs of their 1969 debut (while listening to “Tribal Gathering”†). Notorious is the album I have listened to the least by the Byrds, but leaves a very interesting impression; it rocks harder than other Byrds records while still having the country influence that would become so prevalent later on.
While the Beatles certainly influenced numerous genres, the fact that the Byrds practically invented both psychedelic rock, jangle pop, country rock, many shades of indie rock, and oddly even influenced the “godfather of punk” cannot be ignored. The Byrds remain criminally underrated and relatively unknown among modern listeners despite their commercial success; they should be a touchstone for fans of any of the genres listed above, and honestly fans of all types of music.
*Cited from the following article on The Quietus: http://thequietus.com/articles/11363-robyn-hitchcock-favourite-albums?page=2†Cited from Paul Anka's biography of Iggy Pop, "Open Up and Bleed"