byrdsongs, lvii

As much as it hurts me to say anything critical about Roger McGuinn, I think he lost the plot in the 70s and never really found it again. But this is totally understandable when you stop and consider how profoundly he affected rock ‘n roll. He had the misfortune of having his biggest impact relatively early in life, in his 20s, and so the rest of his work thereafter doesn’t measure up to the five or six years during which he was a brilliant innovator. His first solo album, released in 1973, is ok, nothing spectacular. Several of the songs were collaboratively written with Jacques Levy. The problem as I’ve diagnosed it here before is that corporate rock is beneath Roger McGuinn. He was trying to make his talents fit into the CHM* mold when really, in a more just world, he would have been rejecting the mold and doing what he does best, adding his signature jangle and distinct vocal warble to tight, three-minute folk-pop songs.  Then again, perhaps continuing to do so in the 70s would have seemed retrograde and as if he were resting on his laurels. But maybe he could have innovated further if he hadn’t been locked into in the FM radio straitjacket. The unfortunate irony here is that I don’t think any of his solo material received much radio airplay anyway. It seems like he became increasingly obscure as the Byrds faded from recent memory. Even now, you don’t hear much talk of McGuinn’s solo material outside a small circle of obsessive fans.  …The personnel on Roger McGuinn reads like a page out of the 1973 edition of Who’s Who in the LA Rock Scene, and the players tellingly include several of the most egregious purveyors of CHM: Leland Sklar (bass); Daivd Crosby (vocals, guitar); Graham Nash (vocals, guitar); Chris Ethridge (bass); Jim Gordon (drums); Chris Hillman (bass); Bruce Johnston (piano, backing vocals); Hal Blaine (percussion); Michael Clarke (drums); Bob Dylan (harmonica); and so on. In other words, the same old gang, with a growing emphasis on the old part, not necessarily in terms of literal age but certainly in the somewhat dispiriting way in which the music these guys were all involved in by this time stuck to a formula that was so settled in its ways…

*Corporate Hippy Music, the basic characteristics of which were more fully elaborated in yesterday's post.