byrdsongs, vii

Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn Turn Turn after it, both appearing in 1965, are great albums because as a listener you can hear the 60s becoming the 60s.  I know that this maybe doesn’t make a lot of sense on the face of it, and it’s hard for me to explain what I mean because it’s largely an intuitive ‘feel’ thing that comes across in the vibe of the music.  The songs have an electricity about them and give off a sense that youth culture is coming into its own.   Just check out the opening 12-string riff in the song I’ve posted today and the way the second guitar arrives with such ostentatious confidence.  And then the way the harmonies join in with those guitars.  There’s so much promise in the music, so much optimism, and it’s all so very Californian, California as ground zero of this potent fusion of youth, sex, and jet-aged exploration.  It’s fascinating to look back at it now and realize how fleeting it all was.  The equivalent album for the Beatles was Help!, but by the time Rubber Soul was released several months later, you can already pick up on the 60s veering into something different. Rubber Soul has a conceptual unity to it, as opposed to being a collection of discrete songs, which suggests a new level of self-consciousness where the music comes to recognize itself as art and as something socially important, a 'statement.'  It’s gradual and doesn’t happen all at once, but it’s really interesting to think that the 60s were simultaneously becoming the 60s and becoming something else at the same time. The late Ian McDonald, author of Revolution in the Head, which is in my opinion the best book yet about the Beatles, laments the transition from pop to rock, and I would tend to agree.  It’s not that there’s no longer any good pop music after 1965, of course, but more that the unassuming innocence is increasingly replaced with self-importance. Compare the wide eyed earnestness of the Beach Boys’ Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) with the aesthetic pretension of Pet Sounds, out just six months later.  I say this as someone who loves Pet Sounds and thinks it’s about as close as you can get to being a perfect pop record.  But it’s only almost perfect as opposed to flawless precisely because there’s a dark cloud on the horizon.  For the Byrds, the transition takes place gradually over the next three albums after Turn Turn Turn.  I give Jim/Roger McGuinn credit for holding out for as long as he could.  Those three albums – 5D, Younger than Yesterday, and The Notorious Byrd Brothers – are remarkable because the music seems to be struggling with itself.  There’s a sense of not wanting let go, but also of knowing that one can’t hold back the sands of time.  This is why we hear the influences of Bach, John Coltrane, and raga seeping into the songs on those records. It’s funny that when I listen to the pre-country rock Byrds, I feel like I’m joining in the struggle.  I don’t want the age of pop to pass, and yet I also adore the transitional music they made in their slow passage into rock. I’m torn.  But tonight’s song is pre-transition, the apotheosis of pop, representing that brief moment when everything is just perfect.  It’s a warm summer night. The Byrds are the house band at Ciro’s on the Strip.  The cops haven’t cracked down on the kids yet. McGuinn plugs in his Rickenbacker, and Crosby does the same with his Gretsch.  They tune up to pitch with Hillman.  Clark picks up his tambourine, he of the handsome, chiseled features. The room sparkles with energy as the Byrds begin to play.  The kids in the audience dance dances that are freaky but also relaxed and groovy.  If only they could make time stand still…