B – is for the BYRDS

Thursday 16th October

At one time the Byrds were almost as big as The Beatles, at least in America in the mid-sixties.  They were just another struggling new band in California, but fascinated by Bob Dylan and the new folk revival happening in New York they took one of his latest songs “Mr. Tambourine Man”, speeded it up a bit and added high electric guitar and drums and had a number one hit with it.  They had invented folk-rock, that gentler fusion of pop and rock and roll with the traditional folk sound of America.  They were similar to the Beatles in that they featured high harmony vocals but it was the 12 string ringing guitar sound of Roger McGuinn’s Rickenbacker that came to define their sound.  They had a few more hits and wrote such classics as “So You Want To Be A Rock and Roll Star”, “Eight Miles High” and “Chestnut Mare”.

They had a few personnel changes over the years, lead singer Gene Clark shunning the limelight and David Crosby leaving to form Crosby Stills and Nash.  Gram Parsons joined in 1968 and left again after one album, the only constant member was McGuinn.  But boy were they influential.  Almost single-handedly they created the genre which has coalesced into Americana, and they laid the ground for the waves of seventies singer-songwriters, as well as introducing Sitar and Indian sounds into their music – a full year before George did with the Beatles.

They stopped in 1973, McGuinn drifting into obscurity, but they left behind about a dozen studio albums (artists were far more productive in those days).  I am slowly rebuilding my collection of these records, and I find they have dated far less than their contempories.  I especially love the few live versions of “Eight Miles High” which is not about drugs, but flying to London for the first time.

The Byrds speak about: