byrdsongs

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 tandem matched 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…