The Byrds were an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1964.  The band underwent multiple line-up changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn remaining the sole consistent member, until the group disbanded in 1973.  Although they only managed to attain the huge commercial success of contemporaries like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and The Rolling Stones for a short period of time (1965–66), The Byrds are today considered by critics to be one of the most influential bands of the 1960s. The original five-piece line-up of The Byrds consisted of Roger McGuinn (lead guitar, vocals), Gene Clark (tambourine, vocals), David Crosby (rhythm guitar, vocals), Chris Hillman (bass guitar, vocals), and Michael Clarke (drums).  However, this version of the band was relatively short-lived and by early 1966, Clark had left due to problems associated with anxiety and his increasing isolation within the group.  The Byrds continued as a quartet until late 1967, when Crosby and Clarke also departed the band.  McGuinn and Hillman decided to recruit new members, including country rock pioneer Gram Parsons, but by late 1968, Hillman and Parsons had also exited the band.  McGuinn elected to rebuild the band's membership and between 1968 and 1973, he helmed a new incarnation of The Byrds, featuring guitarist Clarence White among others.  McGuinn disbanded the then current line-up in early 1973, to make way for a reunion of the original quintet.  The Byrds' final album was released in March 1973, with the reunited group disbanding soon afterwards.

Folk Rock - On January 20, 1965, The Byrds entered Columbia Studios in Hollywood to record Mr. Tambourine Man for release as their debut single on Columbia.  Since the band had not yet completely gelled musically, producer Terry Melcher hired a collection of top session musicians, retroactively known as The Wrecking Crew, including Hal Blaine (drums), Larry Knechtel (bass), Jerry Cole (guitar), and Leon Russell (electric piano), who (along with McGuinn on guitar) provided the instrumental backing track over which McGuinn, Crosby and Clark sang.  By the time the sessions for their debut album began in March 1965, Melcher was satisfied that the band was competent enough to record its own musical backing.  However, the use of outside musicians on The Byrds' debut single has given rise to the persistent myth that all of the playing on their debut album was done by session musicians. Psychedelia - On December 22, 1965, The Byrds recorded a new, self-penned composition titled Eight Miles High at RCA Studios in Hollywood.  The song represented a creative leap forward for the band and is often considered the first full-blown psychedelic rock recording by critics, although other contemporaneous acts, such as Donovan and The Yardbirds, were also exploring similar musical territory.  The song is marked by McGuinn's groundbreaking lead guitar playing, which saw the guitarist attempting to emulate the free form jazz saxophone playing of John Coltrane, and in particular, Coltrane's playing on the song India from his Impressions album.  Eight Miles High also exhibits the influence of the Indian classical music of Ravi Shankar in the droning quality of the song's vocal melody and in McGuinn's guitar playing.

Country Rock - Following his induction into the band, Gram Parsons began to assert his own musical agenda in which he intended to marry his love of country and western music with youth culture's passion for rock and in doing so, make country music fashionable for a young audience.  On March 9, 1968, the band decamped to Columbia's recording studios in Nashville, Tennessee, with Clarence White in tow, to begin the recording sessions for the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.  While in Nashville the Byrds performed at the Grand Ole Opry, on March 15, 1968.  Being the first group of hippie longhairs ever to play at the venerable country music institution, the band was met with heckling, booing, and mocking calls of tweet, tweet from the conservative Opry audience. This period was marred by infighting between Parsons and McGuinn for control of the band.  Futher problems arose with Parsons being under contract to Lee Hazelwood prompting McGuinn and Hillman to replace Parsons' lead vocals on the songs You Don't Miss Your Water, The Christian Life, and One Hundred Years from Now before the legal problems could be resolved.  However, album producer Gary Usher would later put a different slant on the events surrounding the removal of Parsons' vocals; the alterations to the album arose out of creative concerns, not legal ones; Usher and the band were both worried that Parsons' contributions were dominating the record and so, his vocals were excised in an attempt to increase McGuinn and Hillman's presence on the album. Parsons left the band on the eve of their South African tour stating that he did not want to perform in a racially segregated country.  The South African tour was a disaster, with the band finding themselves having to play to segregated audiences — something that they had been assured by promoters they would not have to do.  The under-rehearsed band (without Parsons) gave ramshackle performances to audiences that were largely unimpressed with their lack of professionalism and their antagonistic, anti-apartheid stance.  The Byrds left South Africa amid a storm of bad publicity and death threats, while the liberal press in the U.S. and the UK attacked the band for undertaking the tour and questioned their political integrity.

After Gram Parsons' departure, McGuinn and Hillman decided to recruit noted session guitarist Clarence White as a full-time member of the band in late July 1968.  White, who had contributed countrified guitar playing to every Byrds' album since 1967's Younger Than Yesterday, was brought in at Hillman's suggestion as someone who could handle the band's older rock repertoire and their newer country oriented material.  Shortly after his induction into the band, White began to express dissatisfaction with drummer Kevin Kelley and soon persuaded McGuinn and Hillman to replace him with Gene Parsons (no relation to Gram), who White had previously played with in the country rock band Nashville West.  The McGuinn–Hillman–White–Parsons line-up was together for less than a month before Hillman quit to join Gram Parsons in forming The Flying Burrito Brothers  Hillman had become increasingly disenchanted with The Byrds since the South African debacle and he was also frustrated by business manager Larry Spector's mishandling of the group's finances As the only original band member left, McGuinn elected to hire bassist John York as Hillman's replacement.  In October 1968, the new line-up entered Columbia Studios in Hollywood to begin recording the Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde album with producer Bob Johnston.  The sessions saw the band juxtaposing their new country rock sound with more psychedelic-oriented material, giving the resulting album a stylistic split personality that was alluded to in its title.  In the wake of the recent changes in band personnel, McGuinn decided that it would be too confusing for fans of the group to hear the unfamiliar voices of White, Parsons and York coming forward at this stage, and so they were relegated to singing backing vocals on the album.  As a result, Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde is unique in The Byrds' back catalogue for being the only album to feature McGuinn singing lead vocals on every track. Following the release of Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, the band issued a cover of Dylan's Lay Lady Lay as a non-album single in May 1969, but it failed to reverse the group's ailing commercial fortunes in the U.S. and stalled at number 132.  The Ballad Of Easy Rider which was issued in October 1969 in America and reached number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart . Composed primarily by McGuinn, with some input from Bob Dylan (although Dylan is not credited as a co-writer), Ballad of Easy Rider was written as the theme tune for the 1969 counterculture film Easy Rider.  However, The Byrds' rendition of the song does not appear in the film and instead, an acoustic rendition credited to McGuinn alone was used.  Also from the Easy Rider album are Oil In My Lamp and Jesus Is Just Alright.

Wanderin' Spirit
December, 2012
"The Byrds"

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