The Byrds: Classic Or Dud

I love “What’s Happening” with all my heart right now. Crosby is my favorite singer in the byrds (iirc this is also his first time as a min singer in the band) that chuckle around 0:42 in the second or third “I don’t know” never fails to charm me.

The song is so good... I think it’s my favorite Byrds song by a long shot... sounds like the missing link between 60’s psychedelia and the baggy movement.

as a great man once tweeted, 1000 times yes.

yep

i made some reference to them inventing MBV with that song recently. it's astonishing. mind you the rest of the album isn't bad either. secret best album of the 60s

Not heard 'What's Happening' yet but 'Draft Morning' from Notorious Byrd Brothers is my all time favourite. Got a soft spot for the Gram Parsons abetted 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo as well. But yeah these guys were special.

"what's happening" is an amazing track and yes definitely shades of Kevin Shields in there. I was obsessed with "I wasn't born to follow" for a good while there recently. Acid country n'western

picked up an LP this weekend for fun, "The Best of the Byrds: Greatest Hits, Volume II". it's pretty neat little compilation! has a few Rodeo-era tracks, has "Jesus is Just Alright", etc. side B gets a bit goofy w lot of tracks i hadn't heard yet. "Tiffany Queen" is like if Bob Dylan fronted a glam rock band. "I Wanna Grow Up to Be a Politician" is not really that sharp of satire but pretty catchy and fun. the closer "America's Great National Pastime" (written by Kim Fowley) has some super bonkers lyrics "America's great national pastime is chocolate fudge/carrying a grudge/and bribing the judge" put it all together and it feels a bit like a US Kinks.

i made some reference to them inventing MBV with that song recently

my dad saw the Byrds play in the 60's and never fails to bring up how loud they were (and this is in comparison to acts like The Who). that 12-string guitar man...

you know which song doesn't get enough attention?

"What's Happening?", on Fifth Dimension, which reminds me of isn't anything mbv

I remember reading something along those lines somewhere before, and here it is (different song, but still: Best Byrds Album '65-'68

Six posts up:

I love “What’s Happening” with all my heart right now. Crosby is my favorite singer in the byrds (iirc this is also his first time as a min singer in the band) that chuckle around 0:42 in the second or third “I don’t know” never fails to charm me.

The song is so good... I think it’s my favorite Byrds song by a long shot... sounds like the missing link between 60’s psychedelia and the baggy movement.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 28 November 2017 03:15 (five months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are there any decent "stories of" or collective biographies that peeps can recommend? Seems like there would be some interesting tales!

various volumes of work by Johnny rogan. Starting with Timeless Flight and going onto 2 volumes of Requiem For The Timeless. That later one is about the careers of ex-members after the band.

In the Wings: My Life with Roger McGuinn and The Byrds by Ianthe McGuinn which was reviewed in a copy of Ugly Things earlier this year and wasa memoir of Roger McGuinn's one time wife.

Not sure about any Oral Histories or day by day books, both of which might be interesting.

ah yes I should have remembered that Rogan was the main Byrds biographer, I read his Smiths work back in the day. Thanks!

Here is a silly Byrds tribute I recently came across
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1yXR5rw_Eo

Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life and Legacy of The Byrds’ Gene Clark by John Einarson is also terrific if horribly depressing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/it-was-the-byrds-album-everyone-hated-in-1968-now-sweetheart-of-the-rodeo-is-a-classic/2018/08/16/a2534a88-9a8f-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d74b28a5b8d1

Writer talks to folks about the album, plus M & Hillman current you plans

Tour

Great article, thanks for posting

I liked this bit from the Washington Post article:

while standing in line at a bank in Beverly Hills, Hillman ran into a sandy-haired kid from Georgia who said he could play piano. Hillman brought him to McGuinn. Parsons was just 21.

“I asked Gram if he could play some McCoy Tyner type of piano,” McGuinn says. “Because I was into John Coltrane and the “Eight Miles High” kind of place. And he played some Floyd Cramer-style piano. Floyd played on Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.” That was a song that got me interested in music. I thought, ‘Wow, this guy’s got talent.’ But I didn’t know he would turn into George Jones in a sequin suit.”

Parsons didn’t hide his true love. At the end of their first rehearsal, Hillman remembers Parsons kicking into a Buck Owens song. The Byrds were trying to figure out their next step, with McGuinn talking up a sprawling, conceptual album with a futuristic suite. Parsons had his own idea.

There is some great stuff about Gram in Stanley Booth’s book about The Rolling Stones, which I may have mentioned once or twice before on this board.

Here’s an interview with Stanley that I haven’t read yet: http://www.furious.com/perfect/gramparsons/booth.html

this (or a vid v related) posted on the old school guitar shredding thread, good stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VwmyItsU-4

What's the musical term called, right before the tele starts it's lead, it's like a short little intro build up?

I guess it basically starts the song as well.

that's most commonly called a pickup. anacrusis would be the more technical term.

nice

thx!

Thanks for the interviews, and that pic of McGuinn & Marty reminds me of a discussion on Rolling Country last month:

roger mcguinn, chris hillman and marty stuart & his fabulous superlatives, sweetheart of the rodeo full album show, los angeles, tuesday night. opening night of a short-ish tour. it was ragged, loose, occasionally awkward and more than occasionally great. they did one set of truncated versions of hits and deep cuts, and then the sweetheart of the rodeo set, played in full but out of order. i got the sense that stuart and the superlatives rehearsed thoroughly on their own and mcguinn and hillman maybe not so much. they missed cues left and right, were looking down frequently for chords and lyrics, and while hillman's voice was in good form, mcguinn was having a little trouble cutting through. but their instincts for harmony are still dead-on, and stuart fit right into that. i felt like i was watching a band still working out its sound, and as a result, when something gelled, when they hit a sweet spot, it was magical. like watching a band discover itself in real time. and that second set was way better than the first. it felt like having a piece of my own dna read back to me. maybe they felt the same.

encore: two byrds classics and three tom petty classics. i was wondering if maybe they would be able to coax david crosby (who i assume still lives here though i have no idea) onto the stage for a song or two. instead we got mike campbell, who joined for "american girl" -- after which they kicked him off and, strangely, played more petty songs without him. marty stuart did a bluegrassy take on "runnin' down a dream" (thumbs up) and hillman did a fairly faithful "wildflowers," which apparently petty produced for him for an album he put out last year.

they also told some stories. they're not particularly good storytellers. damn those harmonies though.

― fact checking cuz, Wednesday, July 25, 2018 9:08 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was already hoping for an album from that tour, even more while reading your dispatch. Marty and His FS have the drive and expertise to keep those geezers functioning onstage for as long as possible.
Yeah, Hillman's always seemed better in bands, all the way back to the Hillmen, but the Petty=produced set has keepers; my comments from the most recent Nashville Scene ballot:
"Have not yet made it through Chris Hillman's The Asylum Years---some hideous harmonies get wasted on the way---but will give it another shot. Some nice tracks on the new Bidin’ My Time, especially "Walk Right Back," one of the many under-covered Everly Bros worthies, seeds of West Coast country rock at its best (he credits inclusion of this song to producer Tom Petty, who did what he could all over--Hillman's not the strongest solo artist among his peers, but has his moments, when the setting's just right, or just about). McGuinn and The Croz show up; some Heartbreakers, still radio-ready, also appear."

― dow, Wednesday, July 25, 2018 9:43 PM

I’d love to see this show next month in Boston but it’s hella expensive.

yeah that was a great report by fcc

I find it difficult to separate "Turn Turn Turn" from its almost overwhelming Boomer-ness -- to the point where I've gone years without listening to it on purpose -- but goddamn it is a gorgeous song from top to bottom, isn't it.

At this point have that experience with a lot of songs from that era so yeah

Heck yeah

Wow! @thedavidcrosby blocked me! pic.twitter.com/nDDQwS1dWv

— Roger McGuinn (@RogerMcGuinn) December 4, 2019

saw the croz doc yesterday... he seems repentant but unable to change his assholish ways

lol @ leaving out why Croz blocked him (which was totally justified imo)

I generally have no use for his musical output (everything great about the Byrds mostly came from others imo), but found the doc pretty engaging and his overall contrition/attitude p refreshing.

why did croz block him?

I mean...............fair enough, David Crosby pic.twitter.com/iu3Lcx5OcT

— Allison Hussey (@allisonhussey) December 4, 2019

Jesus is just not alright with the Croz.

I won't lose a follow
by heeding God's call
for what is a retweet
that wants you to fall?

Is Crosby ill? This is like the second or third time I’ve seen some sort of reference to him approaching death but with no specificity or suggestion that it’s anything other than him getting old.

Everybody has been blocked before
Everybody knows the pain
Anyone in this place
Can tell you to your face
Why you shouldn't try to @ someone

Listening to THE PREFLYTE SESSIONS for a few days.

'Boston' and 'You Moving' have always been such refreshing pop bursts. It's a downer to look them up in Johnny Rogan's TIMELESS FLIGHT REVISITED and find them dismissed. That's an odd book: hundreds of pages but not much sense, I think, of the excitement of the Byrds. The negative feelings it always leaves me with remind me a little of the negativity of MacDonald's REVOLUTION IN THE HEAD.

Anyway, early Byrds forever.

Since the block on Twitter was mentioned: earlier this week, McG. retweeted a tweet from a tweeter who chided either him or Crosby for the Bible thing, and McG. said no,but that he *had* sent Bibles to the imprisoned Croz, who "shrugged them off. He blocked me for saying that no one wants to work with him any more."

I would paste it, but Twitter can be twitchy.

So at least here you have an example get an idea what a Twitter war would have been in the 60s...

"NEIL OUT! CSN FOREVER!"

Grace Slick would be all into it for a bit and then her feed would just turn into cat pictures.

Sad about the latest feud.

Does anyone else like THE PREFLYTE SESSIONS?

I do!

also like this---Dennis Hopper could be a really good photog, at least as good as actor or director:

Hey kids - that’s the Byrds playing at Jane Fonda’s Fourth of July party 1965 - photo by Dennis Hopper. pic.twitter.com/M5l4E26YTl

— Pat Thomas (@PatThomas1964) July 4, 2022

I'm not buying the photo book - way out of my price range - but those photos really are awesome. For whatever reason, the Byrds hit a nostalgic sweet spot for me more than anyone else, at least for the '60s. For the 50th anniversary tour for Sweetheart of the Rodeo, they did a handful of classics beyond that album, and as soon as McGuinn played the opening notes to "Mr. Tambourine Man" on his 12-string, it was mana.

Yes that's one super photo.