Acknowledgements

Eternal thanks go to my wife Karen and daughters Amy and Zoe for putting up with me while writing the book. A huge thanks also go to ‘my drummers’ Jim and Bob for their continuous help (and beers), and to Dave, John and Martin for their advice. Gratitudes also to Tony and Michael for their top-10s and comments, and to ‘Watty’ and Mr. Livingston – my friend and teacher – for making my first BASF tape of the Byrds in 1982! Life has never been the same since.

I’d also like to express gratitude to David Wells at Grapefruit Records, music journalist Barney Hoskyns, author Richie Unterberger, and musician and writer Sid Griffin for their opinions and insight. Special thanks go to Martin Orkin – author of the book Rivals of the Beatles – who was always gracious and generous with his opinions and advice, and whose kind words lifted my spirits as deadlines loomed. Immense thanks also to Stephen at Sonicbond for allowing me the chance to write my book, and for all his help and guidance.

I would also like to pay tribute to the late Johnny Rogan, whose Requiem For The Timeless was a constant source of information. Thanks also to Rob Hughes for his inspiring features in the Uncut Byrds Ultimate Music Guide from 2018. Kudos also to Shindig magazine for helping keep the spirit of this great music alive while still having the foresight to champion great new music.

Finally, thanks to the musicians who created the music written about in this book. Your restless creativity helped create some of my favourite music.

Just as my first draft was being completed, news arrived of the death of David Crosby. His influence on most of The Byrds’ best material is incalculable, and the sound of his dreamy harmonies and flowing melodies will live forever. And perhaps he said it best: ‘The Byrds, man, that’s important stuff!’.

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This book is dedicated to Margaret, who was an avid reader. She would’ve gotten a kick out of her wee boy writing a book. This one’s for you, Mum.

Foreword

It’s my dad’s fault, and my sister’s. My dad regularly played classical music and jazz in the house when I was growing up. In 1979, Susan bought my first album: A Tonic for The Troops by The Boomtown Rats. I’ve been listening to, reading about and collecting music ever since.

I was first affected by The Byrds in the early 1980s, when it was difficult to find all their albums. There was no Spotify, YouTube, Discogs etc. The 1990s reissue craze hadn’t started. On a trip to London in 1983, my dad and I visited Oxford Street. The only Byrds albums you could find in Scotland were mid-price reissues of Mr. Tambourine Man or Fifth Dimension, and some compilations. But while raking through London’s flagship HMV store, there in all its glory was Younger Than Yesterday. I stared at the cover for about ten minutes. I had found another of my holy grails.

My initial Byrds obsession was their trilogy of albums recorded in 1966 and 1967. I discovered them in 1982 and was instantly hooked by their otherworldly sound, which was probably a reaction to a lot of contemporary synthesizer and A.O.R. music that my 15-year-old tastes didn’t like. And they’ve been a lifelong love that a few years back saw me write a master’s essay called ‘Always Beyond Today: How The Byrds’ repertoire and musical sources pioneered folk rock, acid rock and country rock sub-genres, and influenced popular music thereafter’. I don’t really like these labels. But for the purposes of describing their pioneering work, let’s go with them.

When I started writing this book in spring 2022, I was listening to a Soho Radio broadcast by the wonderful Shindig magazine. They played a track by The Hanging Stars, and I could hear Byrdsian harmonies and guitars. In 2022. That’s the thing: The Byrds’ shadow has never gone away. Why is their lineage over 50 years in wingspan? Hopefully, this book will help explain why.

The Byrds’ thing was beautiful, and its influence, lasting. They were the original electric music for the mind and body. Their prime happened in the 1960s, which seem like a golden age to us these days. As such, to put The Byrds’ work in context, I will speak briefly about the 1960s in the introduction, before considering all their recordings. My knowledge of musical structure is too limited for overly-technical discussion, so the track descriptions don’t include much discussion of chord changes or scales. The descriptions are of what I hear, with some back-story context and analysis as to what influenced the writing and recording processes. Also, I refer to us Byrds fans as Byrdmaniacs quite a lot! A few track discussions have significantly more narrative – these cover key recordings that were paradigm-shifting. The reduction in narrative for later albums isn’t me flagging near the end, it’s just that their later material was generally less interesting. Generally, I’ve tried to stay objective and not make the first six albums too much of a hagiography. Ultimately, I hope I’ve put enough life into the tracks – both good and bad – to make you want to listen and form your own opinion. And if it’s different from mine, that’s fine.

Now for a plea: Chris Hillman thinks Tom Petty was the one person that could’ve gotten the remaining original Byrds back together. But with Petty’s death in 2017, and Croz’s recent passing, that chance is gone. However, a proper Byrds documentary similar to 2013’s The Byrd Who Flew Alone documentary about Gene Clark – but centring on the three musical genres The Byrds pioneered – is still to be made.

Anyway, please enjoy the book, but remember – these are my views. Yours may be different, as it should be. Enjoy your trip Byrdmaniacs, where things may get stranger than known, and where you’ll come back younger than now, and always beyond today!

Contents

The 1960s: Do You Believe in Magic?

The Byrds: Always Beyond Today

Meet The Byrds

Interlude: Jingle Jangle Mornings

Mr. Tambourine Man (1965)

Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965)

Interlude: Stranger Than Known

Fifth Dimension (1966)

Younger Than Yesterday (1967)

The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968)

Interlude: Callin’ Me Home

Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968)

Dr. Byrds & Mr Hyde (1969)

Ballad of Easy Rider (1969)

(Untitled) (1970)

Byrdmaniax (1971)

Farther Along (1971)

Byrds (1973)

Epilogue

Postscript

Compilations and Live Albums

Byrds Solo and Post-Byrd Years

These Charming Men: The Byrds’ Legacy

Bibliography

The 1960s: Do You Believe in Magic?

It’s difficult to write about the impact of 1960s music succinctly, but it’s important to put The Byrds’ musical experiments in context. Their pioneering work was recorded during perhaps the most creative musical decade in the history of pop music – or, to be precise, half-decade. While the front cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan announced a new pop-culture cool in May 1963, the 1960s really took off in July 1964 when The Beatles’ A Hard Days Night effectively invented modern pop music.

By the early 1960s, most rock-’n’-roll pioneers were entering bland mediocrity or even obscurity. Using the charts as a barometer, it was one of the worst eras in popular music, where safe white-bread acts like Frank Ifield and Pat Boone littered the pop charts with banal pop music. That makes what came just after even more remarkable, because the fertile body of work produced between 1964 and 1969 (justifying the labels of being the most revolutionary and competitive period in pop history) includes some of the most timeless and important music ever recorded. The musical revolutionaries included Bob Dylan – the Woody Guthrie-obsessed folky who was to take literate music into the mainstream – and Brian Wilson, influenced heavily by maverick genius Phil Spector, who scaled new heights of pop composition and arranging. While being anointed the Godfather of Soul, bandleader James Brown invented funk music; Aretha Franklin – after a rather inauspicious start at Columbia – signed to Atlantic Records, becoming the greatest singer of her generation, defining the very essence of soul music; British R&B band The Rolling Stones – specifically from 1968 to 1972 – morphed and justifiably earned the tag of ‘greatest rock-’n’-roll band in the world’, and former Little Richard backing musician Jimi Hendrix electrified the blues, and invented the rock-guitar hero. There was also Motown – the Detroit ‘Motor City’ record label that rose from humble beginnings to produce an unparalleled body of work, and made three-minute pop singles fashionable. There were also creative hubs in London, San Francisco, Memphis, New York and countless other fulcrums.

Then there was Liverpool, where the 1960s were conceived on 6 July 1957 at a church fete in Woolton. Mutual friend Ivan Vaughan introduced John Lennon to Paul McCartney, and nothing was ever to be the same again. The Beatles changed everything. They influenced generations of musicians by innovating with everything they did, and at times transformed pop music into art.

In Los Angeles, The Byrds listened to it all. In various incarnations, they investigated unexplored pop music tracts, creating a gumbo of sounds that were to influence their contemporaries, and pioneered musical paths, leaving a musical legacy that’s still felt today. They burst onto the scene in that giddy summer of 1965, where instead of giving people what they want, pop musicians began to consider their performances as self-expression. You couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing a classic – ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’, ’My Generation’, ‘Ticket to Ride’, ‘Respect’, ‘Do You Believe in Magic’, ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’, ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ and countless others.

In the 2001 Walk On By documentary, British musician Elvis Costello observed, ‘It was only in the 1970s that you realised what we lived through in the 1960s. Motown’s springiness, the Bacharach melodies and the modernist sound of The Byrds were all happening simultaneously’. In a recent Rock’s Back Pages podcast, writer Richard Goldstein referred to this era as being like a second jazz age.

Largely forgotten about in the late-1970s, in the early-1980s, a new generation of music fans embraced mid-to-late 1960s pop culture, and The Byrds’ guitar stylings and harmonies began to permeate parts of the musical zeitgeist. The 1980s alternative, college and indie music scenes all paid homage to The Byrds and The Velvet Underground, continuing through the 1990s and 2000s. This will be discussed briefly in the legacy chapter at the end of this book.

The Byrds: Always Beyond Today

If you could listen to only one artist all week, who would it be? That was a question posed by David Hepworth in a recent Word in Your Ear podcast. Surely it would be the ‘Fabs’ – moptop era one day, psychedelic the next, post-Pepper the following day. It’s a bit obvious, though. Or The Rolling Stones – Brian era one day, then Mick Taylor next, then the Ronnie Wood era. What about Bob? – Protest Bob, Thin Wild Mercury Bob, mid-1970s Bob. Surely Joni would work – the earlier songs followed by the jazz-influenced material. But Blue is maybe so honest a listen that it would feel like a therapy session.

What about The Byrds? With all they’ve invented and influenced, their transformative powers took electric guitars to traditional folk music, brought jazz into psychedelic pop and helped the counterculture slowly embrace Nashville. One day folk rock, one-day acid rock, one-day country rock. And you’d still have days left for raga rock, space rock, abstract electronics, early Americana and all the crossover material that defines most of their albums. A week of listening to The Byrds? Their first six studio albums – recorded in three cosmic years – were like a thesis on how to pioneer modern American music.

The Byrds were ahead of their time, always beyond today. They influenced so many of the musical movements that followed as they constantly progressed. Hungry to push the boundaries of popular music, their range and originality created music so inventive that they needed new genres. Their groundbreaking sound, textures and innovations yielded songs that pushed toward the future and opened doors for other musicians. Between 1965 and 1968, they pioneered folk rock, psychedelia and country rock. In essence, they changed the sound of rock ‘n’ roll, and theirs is the story of helping turn pop into rock.

It’s impossible to consider the modern musical landscape without The Byrds, as there have been so many imitators. They even have their own adjective – Byrdsian – describing that chiming 12-string Rickenbacker guitar sound, especially when accompanied by glowing three-part harmonies. Though they were initially known for their radical electrified cover versions, they were also one of the first bands to write their own songs and influence other artists to do the same. Having virtually invented folk rock through their worldwide 1965 hit ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’, they went on to explore acid rock with their jazz and Eastern-influenced 1966 single ‘Eight Miles High’, then initiated country rock with the release of Sweetheart of the Rodeo in 1968. By investigating their repertoire and exploring their work, I’ll consider what influenced the group’s tastes and innovations in popular music, and contemplate their legacy.

The roots of the band go back to a rather preppy commercial folk scene full of folk purists who hated rock ‘n’ roll, and by the early-1960s, guitarist Jim McGuinn wanted to get into something else. The fact that no original members came from a rock background was crucial to the creation of their sound, which had roots also in country, bluegrass, blues and even jazz. Initially, they were folkies who became Beatle-ised Dylans. The Byrds might easily have evolved without Dylan, but never without The Beatles. By 1964, McGuinn didn’t want to combine folk and rock as much as just imitate what The Beatles were doing, with passing folk chords. Gene Clark and David Crosby were also astounded by The Beatles’ audacity, and the pair left the staid folk world behind after they saw the movie A Hard Days Night. Soon The Byrds would help put the death knell in the folk scene, via the new British-invasion sound.

It’s not that someone wouldn’t have stumbled into playing folk songs on an electric guitar – indeed, The Searchers and The Beau Brummels predated The Byrds in anticipating the folk rock sound with their chiming guitars and soaring harmonies. However, it was defined by The Byrds’ musical authority – especially that of Jim Roger McGuinn, whose eclectic taste and 12-string expertise were beyond most pop interpreters of the time. More than any other act, The Byrds were responsible for conceiving folk rock, by combining The Beatles’ backbeat with lyrical components of folk music. Dylan and The Beatles were the catalysts for folk rock, but The Byrds delivered it through those harmonies and arrangements, and provided the basis for much of the new pop of the next two years.

After their folk rock beginnings, they plunged into a psychedelic whirlwind with a new repertoire that included the transformative ‘Eight Miles High’, inspired by John Coltrane’s tenor-sax solos. As the cultural significance shifted in the late-1960s from the single to the album, each new window of The Byrds’ psychedelic world produced essential music, including sub-genres like space rock, raga rock, and a stony pastoral rock mainly via their stupendous Holy Trinity of albums: Fifth Dimension, Younger Than Yesterday and The Notorious Byrd Brothers. They also pioneered country rock with the release of Sweetheart of the Rodeo. In just two years, these psychedelic pilots had become acid hillbillies. Though not initially popular with rock or country audiences, the album has had a lasting impact on everyone from 1970s singer-songwriters to the 1990s alternative country movement.

At the end of 1968, The Byrds became a backing band and a front for Roger McGuinn, and opinion is divided about the quality of post-Sweetheart albums. But it’s fair to say that none of them had the same innovative quality of the group’s classic 1965-1968 period. Later Byrds material tended to suffer from the law of diminishing returns. After six more studio albums – from two decent 1969 albums, through their creative nadir of the early-1970s to the poorly-received 1973 reunion album – they split up.

The group’s time in the commercial sun only lasted for around a year, but today they are revered as one of the most innovative and influential acts of their era. They yielded three different sounds that have remained part of rock culture. As well as influencing their peers such as The Beatles and Bob Dylan, The Byrds’ innovation has reverberated through the