The Bells of Rhymney is the prettiest song you’ll ever hear about a mining disaster, and it’s also one of my favorite byrdsongs. The original Pete Seeger version is a typical folky protest dirge, but in Jim McGuinn’s hands it becomes a transcendent piece of folk pop art. The main guitar riff underlying the song is so simple, so perfect. If you hear it and think to yourself that it sounds like a Beatles song, you might be surprised to learn that you have your causal arrow moving in the wrong direction. The story goes that George Harrison heard the Bells of Rhymney and then proceeded to use it in the Rubber Soul period for If I Needed Someone. The give and take between the Beatles and Byrds between ’65 and ‘67 is endlessly fascinating to me. I like thinking about the Beatles and the Byrds and maybe Derek Taylor hanging out in the Hollywood Hills at Peter Fonda’s house… LSD… She said I know what it’s like to be dead…Along with the loveliness of McGuinn’s guitar in the Bells of Rhmney, the stunning harmonies, and particularly David Crosby’s singing on the high end, are what make the song so special (his rhythm guitar playing is pretty great, too). The last harmonized high note in the outro is, without exaggeration, one of the most jaw droppingly gorgeous moments in the history of pop music…
Tonight I bring you an artifact from the very peak of human civilization. It’s been all downhill since, which is not to say it’s been all bad. Some of the best artistry emerges out of periods of gloomy decline. But still… I think you’ll agree when you watch tonight’s clip that the giddy optimism is palpable. The dance routine by itself makes the clip worth multiple viewings, and how can you not dig the girls doing the watusi in their go-go cages? It makes me sad when I mentally juxtapose it all with the general vibe in the air these days. It’s almost as if I’m watching something that took place on a different planet, in a different galaxy, a different universe. Whatever it is, it’s a far superior place. I can only imagine how lovely it must have been to have lived at a time completely devoid of skanky body ink and chronic obesity. But that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is the beauty of the music. The chiming jangle of McGuinn’s guitar sends a pleasing tingle down my spine. The multi-part harmonies never cease to put me in a trance. And then there’s Gene Clark, with his tambourine, and one of his best happy/sad songs. He’s the master of taking downbeat words and fucking with you by putting them in a shiny, upbeat context. Maybe this is another aspect of mid-60s optimism. The outlook is looking so bright that even breakups can take on a sunny aspect…
The video I’m posting tonight doesn’t tell any Byrds fanatic what he or she doesn’t already know, but it’s fascinating all the same. Even when McGuinn is just casually futzing around and demonstrating his licks to the interviewer, he manages to make his 12-string sound utterly sublime. I could watch this stuff for days and days and never get bored. Even the David Crosby bits are palatable…
I went to a party at a friend’s house when I was in 11th grade and worked up the nerve to ask a pretty girl to dance with me. The experience has stayed with me ever since. I recently looked her up on Facebook. I'm not sure why I did this. We were never really friends. She was just a good looking girl who I admired from afar and never saw again after I went away to college. I guess my social world these days has shrunk considerably, and I find myself thinking about people from my past a lot more. I had no problem finding her on Facebook but didn’t ‘friend’ her because doing so would have been pathetic on so many levels. She’s married with kids and looks older, as we all do, but Father Time tends to ravage women much more cruelly than it does men. I don't think it's horrible or sexist to point this out, is it? She’s not unattractive (I’m basing this entirely on photos, mind you), but she’s not the little girl I once knew, that's for sure. I'm sure she'd say the equivalent about me if she saw me today, and if she even remembers me. Anyway, along with my heightened curiosity about people who were in my orbit long ago, my thoughts turned to this girl/woman because I’m back into a Byrds groove these days. In the early Gene Clark period, the Byrds had so many romantically evocative songs. Gene Clark is a hero of mine, among other reasons, because he was so sentimental, and so tragic. Tragic sentimentality gets me every time, especially if it's offered with nice doses of harmony and tambourine. It's that pop life thing I've talked about so often. Clark has a great line in the song, You Movin’ where he sings, ‘now the way you toss your hair, when you swing, swing to the right…' That’s more or less exactly how I remember dancing with the girl on that night in 11th grade. I was a total loser with girls, but I remember her tossing her hair and swinging. It was an overwhelmingly erotic set of gestures, one I was completely unequipped to handle. And every time I’ve heard You Movin’ over the years, I remember that sexy tossing and swinging. I often try to imagine a different version of myself in that situation, a completely different person, really, someone who could have taken the tossing and swinging as an invitation to explore further and get closer. My inability to do this at the time still haunts me today, believe it or not. It’s weird because, although You Movin’ did not appear on any Byrds record, and to my knowledge was not until very recently made available to fans on anything other than hard-to-find bootleg collections, it's a nifty little tossed off song from the treasure trove of demos they cut for Columbia in ‘64 and early ’65. Check out McGuinn's frenetic guitar solo and Crosby’s lovely high harmony in the bridge and chorus. The whole thing captures the sparkling energy of Los Angeles at the dawn of the Mondo Mod era. It’s total bliss, in other words. And yet, for me the pleasure is tinged with all kinds of complex, somewhat masochistic feelings, pain and sweetness become one and the same, almost as if I love the song precisely because it puts me in touch with a lingering emptiness I have inside me and turns it into something as alluring as that girl flicking her hair and gyrating her bouncing body from side to side…
It’s been a little while since I’ve posted here. For those of you still reading me, I know I have unfinished business with Bowie and the Bee Gees, and I promise to get back to them when my ears turn in those directions again. But it’s much more fun for me to write about music that’s currently on my mind. And right now I’m all about the Byrds (once again). I’d have to say that, along with the Beatles and David Bowie, the Byrds made my favorite music. They happen to be in my head at the moment because I’m learning how to play a 12-string guitar. It’s pretty damn difficult and has given me a renewed appreciation for the greatness of Roger McGuinn. The Byrds changed pretty dramatically over time, but whether they were fusing the Beatles and Dylan into their own brand of L.A. folk pop in 1965, or playing bloodshot country rock in 1971, McGuinn’s 12-string was the one constant tonal center. It still blows my mind that McGuinn and Clarence White were actually in the same band – together! -a tandemmatched in sheer pound-for-pound greatness only by the Yardbirds and maybe early Fleetwood Mac. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Some random thoughts on the Byrds: In the beginning, the key players were McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, and Chris Hillman. We can overlook Michael Clarke, who seems to have been in the band more for his groovy looks than his drumming. ...Hillman was at heart a blue grass traditionalist. A lot is made of Gram Parsons as the guy who pushed the Byrds in the direction of country and western music, but really the initial impetus seems to have come from Hillman, who contributed Time Between and The Girl With No Name to Younger Than Yesterday, about two years or so before Parsons’ fleeting stint with the Byrds. There are also more oblique nods to c&w from McGuinn and Gene Clark as early as Turn Turn Turn and 5D. …You could argue that Hillman was, during his tenure with the Byrds, the most accomplished musician in the band, another in the fairly well established tradition of blue grass players who went on to be great at rock ‘n roll. I imagine that this tradition exists because rock is so much easier to play than blue grass. Moving from blue grass to rock is like having an All Star play AAA ball. …Gene Clark was a folkie who cut his teeth in the somewhat toothless New Christy Minstrels, and McGuinn had worked with the Chad Mitchell Trio and as a songsmith on the Brill Building’s conveyor belt of pop. I think Crosby was just a rich kid who grew up in Santa Barbara, but it’s hard to imagine those shimmering harmonies of the Byrds’early period without his celestial voice. …I recently watched a fascinating interview with McGuinn on youtube. I’d always assumed that George Harrison’s use of an electric 12-string guitar came about as a result of his listening to the early Byrds records. It’s well-known, for example, that the riff from If I Needed Someone is lifted directly from the Byrds’ cover of Pete Seeger’s The Bells of Rhymney. But McGuinn says in this interview that he saw Harrison using an electric 12-string guitar, liked the way it sounded, and then appropriated it for himself. In any case, the Byrds, the Beatles and Dylan all appear to have been in a mutually giving and taking relationship with one another in the mid 60s. What a great time to be alive! …Those of you who are fans of the Turtles might recognize tonight’s song from the fantastic record, The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands. But the song was actually a McGuinn and Clark penned demo that the Byrds recorded for Columbia, likely in the latter half of 1964, prior to the release of the Mr. Tambourine Man single in the spring of ’65. The Byrds’ original version of the song was not available to the public until the release of the demos on Preflyte in 1969. I think you’ll agree that it oozes with Hard Day’s Night-era Beatles-ness. But the song also has a rootsy vibe that obviously channels Dylan. It’s certainly not as unique sounding as the material on Mr. Tambourine Man, where the styles of the Beatles and Dylan are just as obvious but the band uses them to create something much more unique. I think the Turtles' interpretation of You Showed Me is a little better and definitely more polished, but the original is still pretty great and in retrospect we can say that it was a small taste of the excellence to come…
