Fun fact-Terry Melcher had so little faith in the band’s musical abilities that McGuinn is the only Byrd playing on the track. Such as the LP’s opener, which shows off the ethereal vocal harmonies of Clark, McGuinn, and Crosby McGuinn’s jingle-jangle 12-string Rickenbacker guitar and that ever-present tambourine, all of which make it the definitive take of the song. Their debut LP showed The Byrds to be a sort of anomaly their sound was unique, but they looked primarily to other artists for material. Tambourine Man” off their 1965 debut, which showed The Byrds to be progenitors of a new sound: folk rock. Ed on its cover) I’ll be damned if I can choose a favorite, which is why I’m reviewing The Byrds’ Greatest Hits, which is great but limited because it came out in 1967-after only four albums-and hence before they recorded some of their best songs, such as “Wasn’t Born to Follow,” “Hickory Wind,” “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” “Bad Night at the Whiskey,” and “Chestnut Mare.” It’s also too heavy on the Dylan-four songs out of ten? Come on!-but it remains the best alternative to anyone looking for a single LP overview of the band’s many transmutations. And the talent! Between McGuinn (who was calling himself Jim then) and David Crosby and Gram Parsons and Gene Clark and Chris Hillman and Clarence White-all of whom passed through The Byrds at one point of another-they had enough great musicians to fill a whole wall in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.Īnd the problem with The Byrds is figuring out which album to review, because between the innovative folk rock of their first LPs, the psychedelia of their later LPs, the cosmic country of Sweetheart of the Radio, and the powerful but not so easy to categorize later albums such as The Notorious Byrd Brothers (which inexplicably features three of The Byrds and Mr. Between the band’s extraordinary harmonies to McGuinn’s guitar tuned to the key of LSD it was hard to go wrong. Stylistically they traveled a weird but not unique road from their early days as the Jet Set, from folk rock to psychedelia to pure country to a combination of all of the above, while establishing themselves as the world’s best Dylan interpreters-so that with every new album you didn’t know what you were going to get, but you knew it would be interesting. So here I am, typing this in between playing chess with Sam Cooke and drinking brandy with Richard Manuel, and basically all I want to say is that The Byrds were a great band, a very great band. No, the song that always gets him is ‘Wasn’t Born to Follow’ or, if he’s been partaking of the magic mushrooms that are everywhere up here, ‘Eight Miles High.’ Says it can turn the most twisted trip into a Holiday Inn of the Mind.” So I said, “Roger, sir, what are you doing here?” and he replied, “God likes my music so much he’s given me a hall pass to come and go as I please.” So I asked him what the Lord’s favorite Byrds songs are and he said, “Well, you’d think it would be ‘The Christian Life’ but he actually doesn’t like that one very much. Which took me back a bit, as McGuinn is still very much alive. So I died and went to Heaven (naturally) and who should I see as I step off that divine airline but The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn. Celebrating Roger McGuinn, born on this day in 1942.
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