Transcript for the 59:00 version version of The Byrds (part 1): There is a Season
The Byrds: There is a Season
Roger McGuinn: Well we had the Beach Boys and there are other rock 'n roll bands in America but we were the first to answer the British invasion and have any kind of hit with something else like other than a surf song.
Anthony DeCurtis: The Byrds came up at a time when the British invasion was completely dominating American popular music and the staked a claim for American music. They essentially combined The Beatles and Bob Dylan. I mean, if you wanted to reduce what they did to a very simple level; that's what was happening. And if you listen to those early Byrds songs like Mr. Tambourine Man, that's what was going on there. It was that incredible beautiful melodic pop that the Beatles did with the smarts and ambition of what Bob Dylan was up to and it was so distinctive. It really just created a whole new genre but just seemed to open up radio and all kinds of new possibilities.
LAURA: ROCK AND ROLL HIT ITS ADOLESCENCE IN THE MID 1960?S. THE BRITISH INVASION RULED THE AIRWAVES, AND FOR WELL OVER A YEAR, EVERY #1 HIT IN AMERICA WAS BY THE BEATLES, THE ROLLING STONES, BASICALLY A BRITISH POP BAND.
THEN IN 1965, AN UNKNOWN AMERICAN GROUP BROKE THE STREAK. THE BYRDS HAD LANDED WITH A MIX OF FOLK AND ROCK MUSIC NOT HEARD BEFORE AND WENT ON TO TEST BOUNDARIES OF HOW FAR ROCK MUSIC COULD GO.
IN THE NEXT HOUR, WE?LL HEAR THE STORY OF THE ORIGINAL BYRDS FROM TWO OF ITS MEMBERS, ROGER MCGUINN AND CHRIS HILLMAN. GUITARIST LENNY KAYE AND SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN JOIN US, AS DO DAVID FRICKE AND ANTHONY DECURTIS, EDITORS FOR ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE.
I?M LAURA CANTRELL, AND WELCOME TO ?THE BYRDS: THERE IS A SEASON.?
SINGER AND GUITARIST FOR THE BYRDS, ROGER MCGUINN.
Roger McGuinn: Actually the idea for The Byrds more started in New York. I was working for Bobby Darin as a songwriter in the Brill building and my job was to emulate the songs on the radio. So I was doing that and we actually had written a Beach Boys song called Beach Ball, which we recorded under the name City Surfers. Bobby Darin was in the band. The Beatles came out around that time and it really flipped me out. I loved the sound of The Beatles. I noticed they were using a lot of folk music chord changes in their progressions in their songs and that gave me the inspiration to start going down to Greenwich Village and taking old folk songs and suping them up with a Beatle beat. And I was doing that for the people in the Village. The guy outside one of the coffee houses in the Village put a sign outside that said Beatles impressions and that really turned me off. So I went out to LA and so that's how The Byrds got together. I was doing the same thing in LA at the Troubadour. I was opening up for Hoyt Axton and Roger Miller and the audience was getting kind of impatient with what they considered to be blasphemy... folk and rock... they didn't like it. But Gene Clark was in the audience and he was a Beatles fan. He'd just got out of the Christie Minstrels so he wasn't a real folk snob or anything. And he came back stage and said hey let's write some songs and that was the nucleus of what The Byrds became.
Music: The Only Girl I Adore (under)
Roger McGuinn: So Gene and I were getting along fine and then we would sit around the folk den with the little part of the Troubadour where t hey sold picks and strings and guitars and things like that and David Crosby came walking in one day and started singing harmony with us and it sounded great. But I'd known David before and I knew what kind of guy he was and I wasn't sure I wanted to work with him. You know, cuz he was a little headstrong even back then when I knew him. He can be like a loose cannon. He bribed me in a way. He said I know this guy who has a recording studio that we could use for free and that was it. That was all I needed to hear.
DAVID CROSBY CAME FROM FOLK, BUT WAS A BIG BLUES FAN. HERE?S A BIT OF AN EARLY TUNE CROSBY AND MCGUINN WROTE, THE AIRPORT SONG.
Music (under): The Airport Song
ROGER MCGUINN, GENE CLARK AND DAVID CROSBY GOT TO WORK WRITING SONGS.
Roger McGuinn: He brought us over to Jim Dixon who was his mentor. He was an engineer, producer at World Pacific Studios in LA. And Jim let us in every night and play around with the tape machines on this old reel of tape that he'd kind of spliced together from bits and pieces that wasn't good enough to use for any real recording but we could screw around with it. That was our practice machine.
Roger McGuinn: Well, Gene, David and I worked around World Pacific and listened to our stuff. It was evident that we needed a bass player and a drummer. We're 3 guys with 12-string acoustic guitars. It wasn't that interesting musically except for the harmonies. We didn't know anybody who played the drums being folkies. You know drums were verboten in the folk music scene. Dixon put that together. Well actually we found Michael Clark on the street walking down toward the Troubadour on Santa Monica Blvd. and he looked like a combination of Brian Jones and Mick Jagger. And we aid wow this guy looks great man and actually we had met him up in San Francisco in the North Beach area where I'd seen him around at the coffee houses where he'd played congas. So I knew he had some kind of rhythm but he never played the real drums. He learned how to play drums on cardboard boxes that we taped together with... we taped a tambourine on top of these cardboard boxes and it worked out ok.
Music: You Showed Me
?YOU SHOWED ME,? AN EARLY SONG BY THE BYRDS FROM 1964.
CHRIS HILLMAN WAS A BLUEGRASS MANDOLIN PLAYER FOR YEARS BEFORE HIS FRIEND, BYRDS PRODUCER JIM DICKSON, GAVE HIM A CALL.
Chris Hillman: It?s about 1964. The Beatles had just hit Ed Sullivan. It was sweeping the country. Anyway David... they were gonna start a band. And Jim asked me down to the studio to listen to him sing and I came down to listen to him sing. I thought they were great. I was working in a different group then. Ends up that they ask me to play bass. I?m not sure to this day whether I was the 12th guy they called but nonetheless I took the job and bluffed my way through. I thought I don't know how to play bass. I'm a mandolin player and then I realized they didn't know how to plat electric guitars. They were folk guys. We literally all plugged in. We had no blueprint. We were not a garage rock band. We did not know what we were doing. And initially all we wanted to do was emulate The Beatles, to be The Beatles.
Music: You Movin?
?YOU MOVIN?,? THE BYRDS IN 1964 TRYING TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY THEIR NEW ELECTRIC INSTRUMENTS AND BE THE BEATLES.
SID GRIFFIN IS A SINGER SONGWRITER AND AUTHOR OF THE DVD ?GRAM PARSONS: FALLEN ANGEL.?
Sid Griffin: There's no way that anybody could've picked this formula and this type of chemistry and said we were gonna get this or that. It's odd because while they came out of a, from a sort of an artificial Hollywood design to create a band, what they got was unique and breathtaking and unlike anything else in the rock 'n roll cannon.
THEIR BIG BREAK CAME AFTER A PHONE CALL BY A MUSICIAN THAT WAS WELL OUTSIDE THE ROCK SCENE.
BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: And the person who helped us get a demo deal with Columbia Records was Miles Davis. Miles Davis was a friend of Jim Dixon's and Miles actually picked up the phone and called Goddard Lieberson who was the head of CBS Records back in 1964 and said give these guys a break in his Miles voice and we got to go in and do this demo. But Columbia hedging their bets had studio players play on Tambourine Man, which I can understand. We weren't ready, the rest of us weren't. Roger was probably the most experienced musician out in the bunch at the time. So that particular song and the B-side were recorded with studio guys but guys to this day I still know and maintain relationships with. Hal Blaine and even Leon Russell was on that early cut of Mr. Tambourine Man. Leon was doing sessions back then and all these wonderful players that played on it and the only Byrd that played on the track was Roger McGuinn and of course Roger, David and Gene sang it. And then we got some huge success off that first single and then we were, had a brand new contract to do an album, a bunch of albums and the band went on from there.
THEIR FIRST HIT WAS THAT SONG, ?MR. TAMBOURINE MAN.?
Music: Mr. Tambourine Man
BOB DYLAN?S ?MR. TAMBOURINE MAN,? THE FIRST BIG HIT BY THE BYRDS, BUT ONLY SUNG BY THE BYRDS. THAT WAS A BUNCH OF STUDIO MUSICIANS WITH THE VOICES OF GENE CLARK, DAVID CROSBY AND ROGER MCGUINN ON TOP.
THOUGH THEIR BREAKTHROUGH WAS WITH A DYLAN SONG, THE BYRD MEMBERS WROTE THE MAJORITY OF THE BAND?S TUNES.
Music (under): You Won?t Have to Cry
Roger McGuinn: Well basically it was one-on-one. Usually I would write with Gene Clark or David Crosby in the early days and then later with Chris Hillman and I think maybe once or twice with Michael Clark; we had a couple of songs that he was on. But for the most part it was Gene doing the writing and Gene caught on pretty quick that he could write all these songs by himself so he didn't need to share the money with anybody. And after the first album, he was the guy with the sports car and we were still taking busses around LA. That was kind of a wake-up call to start writing more.
SINGER SONGWRITER, SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: McGuinn by himself has written some fantastic things, but McGuinn is basically one of the world?s great co-writers.
?YOU WON?T HAVE TO CRY? WAS CO-WRITTEN BY MCGUINN AND GENE CLARK.
Music: You Won?t Have to Cry ? up
THE BYRDS PERFORMED ?YOU WON?T HAVE TO CRY.?
IN A MINUTE, WE?LL HEAR ABOUT THE GIVE AND TAKE BETWEEN THE BYRDS AND BOB DYLAN, AND A LOT MORE MUSIC.
I?M LAURA CANTRELL, AND YOU?RE LISTENING TO ?THE BYRDS: THERE IS A SEASON.?
Break 1
WELCOME BACK TO ?THE BYRDS: THERE IS A SEASON.? I?M LAURA CANTRELL.
SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: Well the interesting thing about The Byrds is they don't do what most rock bands do and they don't do what most rock bands by reputation are thought of as doing. The Byrds are not a bunch of sullen guys in leather jackets who have a lot of songs with distorted electric guitar, fuzz-toned electric guitar, featuring lyrics cursing some poor young lady who should be their girlfriend or was their girlfriend and wasn't satisfactory. I mean that's one of the great hallmarks of rock 'n roll and while The Byrds had their share of photographs where they appeared sort of sullen, they didn't have those sort of misogynistic heavily distorted guitar 4/4 songs. They were a folk band that was electrified; folk musicians rather that were electrified so that kind of lyric and that kind of electric guitar distorted stance is alien to them.
BYRDS GUITARIST AND SINGER ROGER MCGUINN.
Roger McGuinn: Fortunately we didn't write a lot of bubble gum material. There are a couple of little boy girl songs there in the beginning but most of the stuff, it stands up. And I think the reason for it is a lot of it is folk-based and folk being a timeless art form.
BYRDS BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: Well basically what that is, when I say style or substance over style, I mean we're looking at lyrics. Do we go for a boy girl love song, do we go with something with a little bit of a message, do we go with something in-depth in the lyric? Dylan was the perfect guy at the time for what he was writing for us to take his songs and do them in our style. You know, that worked real well of course for a while. Then we moved up the ladder a bit and started doing our own stuff. We had a great songwriter originally in the band, Gene Clark. He was a wonderful songwriter. A lot of his songs from the early days are standing up right now as far as lyrically and everything.
Roger McGuinn: He had an Elizabethan quality to him. He was kind of like Prince Valiant or something. He'd pick up the girl and save her from the dragon, that kind of thing. He wrote a lot of songs like that. Some of the early ones were Beatle-esque and then after we started, got a hit with Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, he started going in a more Dylan direction trying to write really interesting songs that had a lot of poetry in them, that sorta thing.
LET?S HEAR ONE OF GENE CLARK?S ORIGINALS, ?I?LL FEEL A WHOLE LOT BETTER.?
Music: I?ll Feel a Whole Lot Better
THE BYRDS PERFORMED ?I?LL FEEL A WHOLE LOT BETTER? WITH THEIR MIX OF POP SWEETNESS AND POETIC FOLK LYRICS.
THE BYRDS NEW FOLK ROCK SOUND MAY HAVE OFFENDED SOME TRADITIONALISTS, THE BAND FOUND ITS AUDIENCE IN THE HIP BOHEMIA OF LOS ANGELES. LENNY BRUCE STOPPED BY TO LISTEN TO REHEARSALS. THEY WERE NOW FIRMLY IN THE COUNTER-CULTURE.
GUITARIST AND SINGER ROGER MCGUINN.
Roger McGuinn: Well fortunately I was on the fringe, on the periphery of folk music. I was never like imbedded into it like Joan Baez or somebody or Dylan or even Pete Seeger. So I was never, I was never a folk fascist. My friends weren't either. They were all coming from the commercial end of it. So, it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't like what happened to Dylan when he went to Newport and that sort of thing.
BOB DYLAN WENT ELECTRIC SHORTLY AFTER THE BYRDS RELEASED ?MR. TAMBOURINE MAN.? THE UPROAR SPLIT HIS FANS. THE BYRDS, HOWEVER, HAD FANS THAT EXPECTED A LOT OF ELECTRIC JANGLE.
THOUGH THE BYRDS PLAYED A LOT OF DYLAN SONGS, THEY DIDN?T FIND THEMSELVES CAUGHT UP IN THE POLITICS OF FOLK MUSIC.
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR FOR ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, ANTHONY DECURTIS.
Anthony DeCurtis: I think David Crosby wanted The Byrds to be a more overtly political group or certainly became gripped by certain issues, you know, the Kennedy assassination probably, prime among those. But, you know, the Vietnam War. The Byrds were really more effective when their politics were a little bit unspoken. If you listen to Chimes of Freedom or you listen to He Was a Friend of Mine, there's a kind of implied politics in those songs that work effectively for what the music is. You listen to Bells of Rimney, you know, the kind of sense of, (I hear a telephone ringing) you know, the lives of coal miners, you know, that kind of sense of politics that are imbedded in the hard realities of people's lives and people's hopes of a more positive future. Those are the things? that?s the kind of political reality that I think The Byrds' music sustains.
Music (under): Chimes of Freedom
OVER THEIR ENTIRE CAREER, THE BYRDS PLAYED A LOT OF BOB DYLAN SONGS. THEIR VERSIONS WERE THE WAY IN TO DYLAN?S MUSIC FOR A LOT OF LISTENERS.
SENIOR EDITOR OF ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, DAVID FRICKE.
David Fricke: Well the one thing that certainly the first important thing that The Byrds did for Dylan is that they helped make him a pop star. When they recorded Mr. Tambourine Man, he was not a rock icon. He was very much a folk star. He was huge on campuses. He was huge in New York and LA and down in the Village but he was not an American icon. He was not an American master yet. Mr. Tambourine Man made him a top 40 star. And The Byrds were also the pre-eminent interpreters of his songs during that period, all through the mid and late 60s.
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR OF ROLLING STONE, ANTHONY DECURTIS.
Anthony DeCurtis: I mean Dylan was somebody that required translators at various points in his career. Early on, you have Peter, Paul and Mary having a hit with Blowin' in the Wind and then you have The Byrds who came along with something like Mr. Tambourine Man, these are versions of Dylan's songs that preserve what the originals are about but make them palatable for a mass audience that then is ready for Bob Dylan. In a lot of ways, Dylan was the kind of muse of The Byrds. Throughout their career they would return to his body of work. I mean, there are so many artists that have but The Byrds and Bob Dylan, there just seemed to be a kind of marriage of song writing and interpretation so right. Dylan songs in the hands of The Byrds are almost a kind of genre in themselves.
Music: It?s All Over Now, Baby Blue
BOB DYLAN?S TUNE ?IT?S ALL OVER NOW, BABY BLUE? PERFORMED BY THE BYRDS.
THE BYRDS VERSIONS WERE OFTEN A WAY FOR PEOPLE TO APPRECIATE THE SONGWRITING OF DYLAN. PETE SEEGER HAS HAD INTERPRETERS LIKE THAT FOR HIS 60 PLUS YEARS OF WRITING. MOST SEEGER SONGS THAT BECAME WELL-KNOWN WERE VERSIONS DONE BY OTHER ARTISTS, AND THE BYRDS DID THEIR PART IN THAT.
THEY ADAPTED HIS TUNE, ?THE BELLS OF RHYMNEY.?
Music: The Bells of Rhymney
A BIT OF THE PETE SEEGER SONG ?THE BELLS OF RHYMNEY.?
IT WAS ANOTHER PETE SEEGER TUNE THAT PUT THE BYRDS ON THE CHARTS ONCE AGAIN. ?TURN TURN TURN? WAS ADAPTED FROM THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES IN THE BIBLE, AND THE BYRDS MANAGER JIM DICKSON WARNED THE BAND THAT IT WOULD BE THEIR LAST #1 SINGLE.
BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: I think Jim was looking at Turn, Turn, Turn and he said what Turn, Turn, Turn is it lays everything out in black and white. It?s either this way or that way in the verse. And I said Yeah And! Well he said I just thought that would be your last #1 single. And I said well I don?t agree with you. I said the reason why we didn?t have another a #1 single was because we weren?t cohesive as a unit anymore. We weren?t hungry. We weren?t looking for that material.
Music: Turn Turn Turn
THE BYRDS PERFORMED PETE SEEGER?S ?TURN TURN TURN.?
SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: Byrds songs while many of them are in 4/4, they don't really rock out. The Byrds are nominally a rock 'n roll band but at the end of the day, The Byrds don't really play that much rock 'n roll. Their best songs don't rock out; they don't kick out the jams. They don't smash down walls. The best Byrds songs float rhythmically.
THE SOUND OF THE BAND WAS MATURE CONSIDERING THEIR BEGINNINGS.
AGAIN, SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: I don?t know, I think it?s quite incredible that The Byrds, in a way, they were a manufactured band like The Monkeys. I mean Jim Dixon and Eddie Tinkner took some musicians and tried to assemble an answer to The Beatles sensing that there was a place in the marketplace for an American band to answer The Beatles. So in a sense they were a manufactured band, a boy band of today or The Monkeys of yesteryear. But when they did assemble the component parts because they did pick talented people, they got a chemistry, an organic chemistry that was something new and even surprising to the managers, Eddie Tinkner and Jim Dixon themselves.
IT WASN?T THE ONLY GROUP TO BE FORMED IN THAT WAY BACK IN THE 1960S, BUT THE BYRDS TOOK THEIR OWN PATH. A BAND LIKE THE MONKEES HAD A VERY DIFFERENT PROCESS. THE BYRDS WROTE A SONG ABOUT THAT PROCESS, CO-WRITTEN BY BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: Once again, we?re looking at a television sitcom that?s a takeoff on A Hard Day?s Night, and that song never was meant as any insult to the individuals playing the parts, we looked at them as actors, but the concept of putting that together was so contrived and it was so totally lightweight, and that?s where ?Rock and Roll Star? came from.
Music: So You Wanna Be A Rock And Roll Star
?SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROCK AND ROLL STAR? PERFORMED BY THE BYRDS.
IN A MINUTE, A LOOK AT THE TENSIONS THAT LED TO THE BREAKDOWN OF THE ORIGINAL BYRDS LINEUP.
I?M LAURA CANTRELL, AND YOU?RE LISTENING TO ?THE BYRDS: THERE IS A SEASON.?
Break 2
WELCOME BACK TO ?THE BYRDS: THERE IS A SEASON.? I?M LAURA CANTRELL.
GUITARIST LENNY KAYE.
Lenny Kaye: It was a great look, a great combination of elements, just the kind of great combination of elements I like which is mongrel music when you take this music and that music and combine them into something new. I?m not a purist. I like when the unexpected happens. Surely The Byrds were about as unexpected a sound on the Top 40 as could ever be anticipated.
THE BYRDS HAD A UNIQUE SOUND ON RECORD, BUT UNFORTUNATELY THEY WERE MUCH LIKE OTHER GROUPS BEHIND THE MUSIC.
SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: Well the interesting history of all the famous West coast harmony bands, The Byrds, I think you throw The Springfield in here as well, but certainly The Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, even up towards more modern bands like The Bangles, I mean, the history of all these West coast harmony bands is they have incredible harmony in the studio, terrific harmony onstage as well and backstage and outside the studio they?re the most unharmonious acts ever split by in fighting and petty jealousies and perhaps very real jealousies that someone?s getting a greater slice of the pie than they deserve. That?s just one of the weird facts of rock ?n roll. All of the harmony bands of the West coast, none of them got along off the stage
BUT THAT FIGHTING DIDN?T GET IN THE WAY OF BREAKING NEW GROUND.
MUSIC WRITER ANTHONY DECURTIS
Anthony DeCurtis: Despite the fact that they never seemed to be able to get along very well, you know, The Byrds were constantly pushing themselves and had a tremendous sense of daring and ambition, at the same time they didn?t particularly wear that ambition on their sleeves. You know, if you listen to something like Eight Miles High, it seemed to grow in a natural way out of what they had been doing. At the same time, as it broke new ground, you know, they were not sending out press releases every week about now they?re doing this and now they?re doing that, The Byrds evolved like artists evolved. They listened to new things. They incorporated those things into their sound. They had new experiences. This is what you hear when you hear something like Eight Miles High.
Music: Eight Miles High
THE BYRDS STRETCH ROCK MUSIC INTO PSYCHEDELIA WITH ?EIGHT MILES HIGH.?
UNFORTUNATELY, THE NEW SOUND HAD ITS CRITICS. BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: Eight Miles High, we got shafted on that by Bill Gavin calling it a drug song, which it wasn?t. It immediately, it was like a Salem witch hunt and we lost our chart position. That was a major departure for The Byrds because we had left the Bob Dylan thing behind and we were out on our own. To this day I always wonder where we would have gone musically if we had stayed intact as a 5-piece, the original five guys. Go from a song like Eight Miles High, where else would we have gone with our quest so to speak.
THE BYRDS BEGAN TO SPLINTER AS TIME WENT ON. THEY HADN?T REALLY BEEN FRIENDS BEFORE THE BAND FORMED, LIKE THE BEATLES HAD BEEN, AND THE ROLLING STONES. 5 AMBITIOUS AND TALENTED MUSICIANS EXISTED IN A CHARGED ATMOSPHERE WHERE ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE.
SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: the five different personalities with five slightly different slants on what they wanted to do did bring a strength for the 2-3 years the original line up was together. But it didn?t last long. In fact when you think about the original 5-piece line up, it probably only lasted about a year and 3/4.
BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: I think everybody has that sort of place where they peak and if you can maintain a level below that, great. Sometimes you do sometimes you don?t. It?s tough. Like I said earlier, when you?re after the prize and I?ve always used the analogy, a band, when you?re working with other people on a creative endeavor, it?s like everybody?s holding the paintbrush. Everybody?s got a paintbrush and we?re all trying to paint the Mona Lisa smile and get that result, right? And once we get that result, then we start dropping the paintbrushes. It?s not happening. We?re getting too much outside stuff. But I think all in all, we made some darn good records.
Music: Time Between
?TIME BETWEEN? PERFORMED BY THE BYRDS.
THE FIRST BYRD TO LEAVE WAS SINGER GENE CLARK, IN EARLY 1966.
ROGER MCGUINN.
Roger McGuinn: Well, yeah, Gene kinda freaked out. He had a nervous breakdown and it manifested itself on an airplane when we were set to go to New York for a Murray the K TV shoot. I was late to the plane. They were just closing the doors. I came back to the seats and Gene and I were going to be sitting next to each other and he was standing up in a cold sweat. You could just feel his vibe of fear all around him. I thought maybe this guy?s psychic or something. Maybe he knows something. We all thought that. We thought, gee, what?s going on here? He had to get off the plane. He just was freaking out. He got off the plane and we all stayed on it. It didn?t crash and it was cool. Basically, the idea was that if Gene couldn?t fly, he couldn?t be a Byrd. That was what we said so?
SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: So when they lost Gene, you lost your visual front man, the most handsome, conventionally handsome guy in the band, the guy with a terrific build and chiseled features. And you lost a terrific vocalist and the guy that literally stood center stage and the most prolific writer of the band. So you really did lose quite a package when you lost Gene Clark and it?s just one of the great questions of 1960s rock ?n roll is how can this guy open the door to a solo career and freedom from The Byrds and it?s just complete darkness? He enters a complete dark room where he stays in it for the next 25 years of his career until he dies. He never became anything than an ex-Byrd and no matter what move he made, he couldn?t sell a record. He was always an ex-Byrd. He was always the one trying to get a full Byrds reunion back on. When they did have The Byrds reunion in ?73 with the David Geffen album, his songs are the best but it just never worked out for him. He definitely had some kind of a hex in life.
BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: We were vicious, shark tank, back biting killers. No, we got along great. When you?re all trying to grab the golden ring, you?re after that golden ring together; it?s a tight bond, it?s a team, it?s a unit. We?re on a mission. Once you grab the prize then problems happen usually, usually outside sources. It?s like a bad novel. It?s happened to so many bands with the exception of The Stones because maybe Jagger is the leader and he leads that band quite well. But every single band has had similar problems, which we encountered too. We were young; we were making a little money. All of a sudden, we were listening to other people lead us astray and outside influences and you don?t need this guy, you can do that, yadayadayada.
Music (under): Everybody?s Been Burned
DAVID CROSBY WAS NEXT BYRD TO EXIT, BUT UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES.
ROGER MCGUINN.
Roger McGuinn: Yeah I was reading the liner notes and Chris makes it look like it was my idea and he went along with me. It was Chris? idea and I thought it was a good idea at the time cuz Crosby was just insufferable. I mean, you couldn?t get along with the guy. You know when a marriage goes bad; you?re just arguing all the time. You can?t play music and have harmony with somebody like that. It?s just not working. So we drove our Porsches up to David?s house, you know, I didn?t want to do it; I didn?t like it you know. But we went up and climbed the stairs and said sit down David. We just want to talk to you. We can?t work together with you man. We?re just not getting along.
Music (up)
A BIT OF DAVID CROSBY?S TUNE, ?EVERYBODY?S BEEN BURNED? PERFORMED BY THE BYRDS.
DRUMMER MICHAEL CLARKE LEFT A MONTH AFTER CROSBY WAS FIRED.
ROGER MCGUINN.
Roger McGuinn: Clarke just quit, he?d had it, you know. The band wasn?t as popular anymore and he was just in it for the chicks (laughs). That?s what motivated most of us.
SO BY THE END OF 1967, THE BYRDS HAD TWO MEMBERS, ROGER MCGUINN AND CHRIS HILLMAN.
Music (under): Universal Mind Decoder
Chris Hillman: You couldn?t have found 5 more diverse characters to make up a band. Seriously, if you looked at everyone?s personality and everyone?s background, what makes the Byrds still around was sort of bubbling under the surface, and that legacy and that legend. 5 of the strangest human beings in the world (laughs) which worked as one for a very short period. And it?s too bad, cause it was soaring
Roger McGuinn: We were very much into experimenting and I think what drove us was the label thing where we got pigeonholed as folk rock right away and we didn?t want to be in any particular pigeonhole so we started messing around with other stuff. We?d do something else and they?d call it Rhaga rock or psychedelia or something. We?d something else and it?d be country rock so we basically kept moving from one genre to another to escape this typecasting thing that happens. It?s very convenient for journalists and the public I guess to do that but we didn?t want to get there and most artists don?t want to be locked in a box.
THAT EXPLORATION KEPT THE BAND GOING FOR LONG AFTER, BUT IT?S A STORY FOR THE NEXT HOUR OF OUR HISTORY OF THE BYRDS.
Music (under): My Back Pages
?THE BYRDS: THERE IS A SEASON? WAS PRODUCED BY JOYRIDE MEDIA, PAUL CHUFFO AND JOSHUA JACKSON ARE THE PRODUCERS.
OUR EXECUTIVE PRODUCER IS JOHN VERNILE.
ALL SONGS ON THIS PROGRAM CAN BE FOUND ON THE COLUMBIA/ LEGACY SET ?THE BYRDS: THERE IS A SEASON.?
SPECIAL THANKS GO TO JEFF JONES, ADAM BLOCK, JOHN JACKSON, ERIC MOLK, TOM BURLEIGH, TOM CORDING, STEVE BERKOWITZ, SHANNON MUELLER, DAVID WEST, JEFF LEONARD, NADINE NASSAR AND ANDY CAHN.
I?M LAURA CANTRELL, AND THANKS FOR LISTENING.
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