Transcript for the 59:00 version version of The Byrds (part 2): Farther Along
The Byrds: Farther Along
Radio script hour 2 of 2
Music: Jesus is Just Alright
Anthony DeCurtis: The Byrds were always interesting, they were always doing something interesting. There was never a moment when they made records where you thought ?oh, that?s not much.? They always seemed to be grappling with something, and that made it interesting for you to grapple with.
Sid Griffin: It was quite revolutionary for a band like the Byrds to make a straight country and western album in 1968.
David Fricke: It may seem like a tempest in a teapot 30 years later, but those divisions were really important then. And the Byrds were defying the divisions, because they could see the connections between folk rock and country music and psychedelia and everything that was available to them, and everything that could be played.
THE BYRDS WERE MUSICAL SHAPE-SHIFTERS. AFTER STARTING AS AMERICA?S RESPONSE TO THE BEATLES, THEY BASICALLY INVENTED FOLK ROCK, BRIDGING THE BRITISH INVASION AND BOB DYLAN. THEN SPACE AGE SOUNDS CREPT IN, AND THE BYRDS SET A STANDARD FOR PSYCHEDELIC ROCK.
BUT THE BYRDS NEVER LOST THEIR CORE SOUND, THE JANGLE OF THE 12 STRING GUITAR, THE SWEEPING LYRICS. IT WOULD SERVE THEM WELL IN THEIR NEXT VENTURE, COUNTRY ROCK.
IN THE NEXT HOUR, WE?LL FOLLOW THE BYRDS LATER YEARS WITH BAND MEMBERS ROGER MCGUINN AND CHRIS HILLMAN, MUSIC WRITERS DAVID FRICKE AND ANTHONY DECURTIS, GUITARIST LENNY KAYE AND SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN.
I?M LAURA CANTRELL, AND WELCOME TO ?THE BYRDS: FARTHER ALONG.?
Anthony DeCurtis: I?m not sure the Byrds history can be matched by any other group in terms of the degree of their success, the brevity of the core of their career, and the personnel changes and stylistic shifts. It?s an extraordinary career, and a really really distinctive one. I?m stumped to find any band that can match them in those regards.
BY 1968, THE BAND THAT HAD SPENT YEARS ON TOP OF THE CHARTS WITH HITS LIKE ?MR. TAMBOURINE MAN,? ?8 MILES HIGH? AND ?TURN TURN TURN? WAS AT A CROSSROADS. THREE MUSICIANS FROM THE ORIGINAL BYRDS LINEUP, GENE CLARK, DAVID CROSBY AND MICHAEL CLARKE, HAD QUIT OR BEEN FIRED. GUITARIST AND SINGER ROGER MCGUINN AND BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN CONTINUED ON IN CHARACTERISTIC BYRDS FASHION.
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR FOR ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, ANTHONY DECURTIS.
Anthony DeCurtis: The Byrds were never ones to repeat a formula. There was a sense of, the popular audience had come to have certain expectations of them, but they really followed a kind of internal muse. They had problems because people had concerns that their music was influenced by drugs, so there was hoopla about that. And there was a sense among listeners that if you were expecting something from them, you weren?t necessarily going to get it the next time.
GUITARIST AND WRITER LENNY KAYE.
Lenny Kaye: They were smart, but there was never a sense, at least as a listener for me, that they were calculated. That they were moving as the culture moved. They were moving with the culture, in fact a step or two ahead, but they were moving in such a quality way that they weren?t just doing country songs, they were doing great country songs.
Music (under): Lazy Days
GUITARIST AND SINGER ROGER MCGUINN SET OUT TO REBUILD THE BYRDS.
Roger McGuinn: We knew, we?d gone out with just Kevin Kelley and Chris and myself, and it was just not happening. There was not enough going on to make it a band. So, we needed somebody and had Gene Clark for a while, but then he freaked out again and couldn?t fly and took the train home. And then Gram Parsons was at the bank one day cashing his inheritance check or whatever (laughs), and Hillman happened to be there at the same time and had heard about Gram and invited him over to our rehearsals. And I was interested in pursuing the direction that we had started with 8 Miles High, which was sort of a Coltrane jazz kind of thing, and I asked Gram if he could play any McCoy Tyner type piano. And he sat down at the piano and played a little Floyd Kramer-ish style piano. I figured this guy?s got talent, he can play ? we?ll work with him and figure it out. And I didn?t know that would turn out to be, and I?ve said this before, like a George Jones with a sequined suit, a country monster underneath. But he was obviously a talented musician.
BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: As we picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off and get hold of Gram Parsons, hire Gram as a sideman, hire my cousin to play drums, and we do Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
LET?S GET A TASTE OF THE BYRDS NEW COUNTRY SOUND, ?YOU AIN?T GOING NOWHERE.?
Music: You Ain?t Going Nowhere
?YOU AIN?T GOING NOWHERE? PERFORMED BY THE RE-VAMPED BYRDS WITH DRUMMER KEVIN KELLEY AND GUITARIST GRAM PARSONS.
BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: It was nice. Roger and I were kind of old jaded guys by then, to have a young guy come in that was so full of energy and after the prize as we once were. Sort of woke us up and made for a better outfit for a while, better unit. We played pretty darn good, so?
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, ANTHONY DECURTIS.
Anthony DeCurtis: Essentially having invented folk rock, the Byrds took off in this amazing direction with Sweetheart of the Rodeo and pioneered country rock. You know, people sometimes forget that Dylan recorded in Nashville in 1966, and even though ?Blonde on Blonde? is hardly a country record, just the idea that he would go to Nashville was kind of daring. And I think that implanted the notion in a lot of people?s heads that country music was worth exploring, and the Byrds were right on that. And certainly Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman were the architects of that.
BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN WAS ALSO A BLUEGRASS MANDOLINIST.
Chris Hillman: Gram, being very much an ally in his love for country music, we hit it off very well in the early days and became close friends, and of course, Sweetheart, pretty good record. I didn?t sing very well on it, but the other guys did, and Gram wrote two of the greatest songs he?d ever written on that album, ?One Hundred Years From Now? and ?Hickory Wind?, and he was young, ambitious, focused, working hard.
Music: One Hundred Years From Now
THE BYRDS PERFORMED GRAM PARSONS? TUNE, ?ONE HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW.?
GUITARIST AND SINGER ROGER MCGUINN.
Roger McGuinn: So Gram was in love with this stuff, and it was contagious ? we all fell in love with this music. And it was his idea, maybe it was Gary Escher?s idea, to go to Nashville and get the really cream of the crop Nashville musicians to play along with us. And we did, we got Roy Green, Leon Huskie, a lot of really great musicians on that Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.
THE BYRDS RECORDED IN NASHVILLE, AND IT CAUSED A LOT OF STIR, SOME OF IT FROM THE FANS, SOME FROM COUNTRY MUSIC LOVERS, AND SOME THE BYRDS JUST CAUSED THEMSELVES.
SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: Well, the Byrds had CBS Records pull some strings to get them to perform on the Grand Ole Opry, and in those days particularly, and even now, it?s a very rigid format. You tell them what you?re going to perform before you get on stage, and newcomers get two songs, and the Byrds were going to do a Merle Haggard song and I believe a song from the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album. And I think they went out and did ?You Ain?t Going Nowhere? and people were saying tweet tweet and go cut your hair and all this kind of stuff. And they were about to do their next song and Tompall Glaser said ?I believe this next song is the Merle Haggard song ?Life in Prison,? also off your new CBS album,? and Gram saw his grandmother in the audience and said ?well, no, we?re going to do my song called ?Hickory Wind?. It?s for my grandmother, she?s from Columbia, Tennessee, and we?re going to do it for you now.? So the Byrds played Hickory Wind, and this was being broadcast live, and Tompall Glaser and his brothers felt that he?d been embarrassed and made to look bad on national airwaves. And there was quite a foofaw backstage, but the Byrds got out of it.
Music: Hickory Wind
?HICKORY WIND? PERFORMED BY THE BYRDS.
ANTHONY DECURTIS REMEMBERS THE FAN REACTION TO THE BYRDS NEW COUNTRY ROCK SOUND.
Anthony DeCurtis: At the time the Byrds made Sweetheart of the Rodeo, that was daring. Hip rock and roll people were not listening to country music. That was the furthest thing from their minds, it was regarded as so retrograde. The 60?s version of the culture wars was on and country music was ?Okie from Muskogie? and just everything that was considered square and over about this country. And so for somebody to be singing ?I Like The Christian Life?, it was like ? is this irony or is this serious or is this both? It was again the Byrds just forcing you to come up against something and question your own biases and open up your ears, and it was very dramatic. I remember people wondering about it and arguing about it and being confounded by it and being won over. It was really one of those things that cause people to have to re-evaluate their own musical values.
ACCORDING TO ROGER MCGUINN, THERE WAS NO IRONY.
Roger McGuinn: We got a real bad backlash. The rock fans thought that we had deserted them and gone right wing, because country music has a political stigma. Still does I goes, but it was much more pronounced at that point with Vietnam going on. It was like rock and roll was cool, and country was uncool, and we went to the uncool side of things. And then the country people didn?t accept us, except a couple, I mean Skeeter Davis liked us and some others, but I remember walking into this country radio station in the San Fernando Valley, and I saw the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album pinned up to a billboard and I thought, oh cool, they?re playing it. And I got a little closer and saw that it had a slash through it and written on it ?This is not country music, do not play.? And I said aww man, cause we were sincere about it, we weren?t trying to make fun of it. And we even cut our hair (laughs) and that was a big sacrifice.
BUT IT HAD AN EFFECT ON THEIR CAREER.
BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: We could get played on country radio, and we didn?t do very well on commercial radio except FM rock radio, which was just starting to get going at that time, It was not a best selling Byrds album. People pay more attention to it now than they did back then, I?m trying to say.
UNFORTUNATELY, SOME RADIO HOSTS REALLY DISLIKED IT BACK THEN.
SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: Ralph Emery was on the great WSM as a DJ and wouldn?t play ?You Ain?t Going Nowhere.? He even went on the airwaves and said ?This is not country music.? So Roger had the song ?Drug Store Truck Driving Man,? which he and Gram had written just before Gram left the act, and he put it on the next record with the aside, ?this is for you, Ralph? during the break, and that?s a reference to Ralph Emery.
Music: Drug Store Truck Driving Man
THE BYRDS JAB BACK AT NASHVILLE DJ RALPH EMERY WITH THEIR ?DRUG STORE TRUCK DRIVING MAN.?
IN A MINUTE, A CLOSER LOOK AT WHO GRAM PARSONS WAS, 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.
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, ANTHONY DECURTIS.
Anthony DeCurtis: Gram Parsons is one of these characters that emerged and just had a vision of what music could be. There was a sense in which the world that he came out of as a Southern kid, he grew up liking country music and liking rock and roll, and so he had that sense of how these musics could unify, not just co-exist in some self-conscious fusion, but become inextricable from each other, and be fun. I?m not sure it occurred to anybody else in the Byrds to want to have fun. I think Gram Parsons wanted that.
NO SURPRISE, SINCE GRAM PARSONS HAD SEEN ENOUGH TROUBLE IN HIS LIFE BY THE TIME HE JOINED THE BYRDS. HIS FAMILY HAD FALLEN APART, PLAGUED WITH SUICIDE AND ALCOHOL.
Sid Griffin: Gram?s an incredible story, it?s like a Tennessee Williams gothic novel come to life, something that Truman Capote would have written in one of his darkest hours. It?s just a fascinating story. I mean the Parsons clan had everything just sitting there on a plate, and they blew it.
SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN IS THE AUTHOR OF THE DVD ?GRAM PARSONS: FALLEN ANGEL.?
Sid Griffin: And he was a trust fund guy. It was my understanding that he got $50,000 twice a year. Now $50,000 30-40 years ago, you had $100,000 a year. That?s an incredible amount of money. In today?s money, that?s like $700,000 a year. So Graham didn?t have to work, he didn?t have to be in a hit band. He didn?t have to sweat if Sweetheart of the Rodeo or The Flying Burrito Brothers don?t sell. He doesn?t have to get on a plane and in 52 days do 50 shows. He doesn?t have to do that cuz he had this trust fund. So it created a real tension in his life and I think gave him a soft padding to fall upon which he relied upon all too many times. There?s no one in rock ?n roll like Gram parsons. I don?t think anyone in rock ?n roll, in a popular band had such a great chance as Gram did in The Byrds. At the same time, I don?t think there was anyone in these major rock ?n roll bands that was a trust fund baby.
Music: You Don?t Miss Your Water
A BIT OF ?YOU DON?TMISS YOUR WATER? PERORMED BY THE BYRDS.
THE END OF THE GRAM PARSONS ERA WAS NOT VERY PLEASANT FOR THE BYRDS.
Music (under): I Am A Pilgrim
ROGER MCGUINN.
Roger McGuinn: Well let me back you up a little bit. I?d been on tour with The Chad Mitchell Trio and Miriam Makeba in the early 60s, around ?61, ?62. We were down in the south. Miriam was in the back seat of the station wagon, I was sitting next to her and this carload of white boys pulled up and was yelling obscenities and stuff. I said I?m sorry about the way they?re treating you here and she said this is nothing you ought to see it in South Africa. And I said wow. She said if you ever have the chance, you should go there and see it for yourself. I promised her I would. Ok so years later, we?re in The Byrds and this South African tour comes up and I remembered Miriam Makeba and the whole thing. I did want to see it. I was also into expanding my horizons and traveling and seeing as many places in the world as I could. It?s part of the lure of being in the music business and being gable to travel. So we accepted this tour and they promised us that we could play for mixed audiences. So we get to England and Gram, who knew fully what we were into and he knew what Apartheid was; It was nothing new, starts hanging out with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Mick and Keith take us out to Stonehenge and we?re all hanging out. It was fun. Went out there in their Bentleys and Rolls Royces and had to walk around in the mud. Mick pulls over in some little town and buys us all new socks and stuff. And we?re sharing a bottle of Johnnie Walker. It was a really fun time. But Gram didn?t want that to end so time comes to fly down to South Africa, he said I?m not going man. He said I was talking to Keith and he said there?s Apartheid down there and you can?t go. Oh man, we can?t go without you. I mean, it?s not going to work. So we let him stay there and we went down there and Carlos Fernal the road manager tried to play the bass and it was just a disaster. They didn?t pay us and we didn?t get to play to mixed audiences except in, which is now Zimbabwe, it was Salsbury Rhodesia at the time. It was a big outdoor thing and it did have a mixed audience and that was cool but the rest of it was all like? I remember trying to get some folks into the white concert hall and they wouldn?t let us in. Anyway, they were also going to get us on these trumped up charges and we had to sneak out of the country in a chartered DC-3 so the whole thing was a real nightmare. We went back to England and we took the newspapers that had headlines that blasted Apartheid every town we went to, Johannesburg, all the little towns, Fort Elizabeth. They?d interview us and we?d come against Apartheid. We took these headlines to the English musicians union and we showed them what we said down there and they said ok we?ll lift the blackball because they blackballed us for going there. It was a really charged political time. I?m really happy with what happened with South Africa now.
THE BYRDS ONCE AGAIN WERE DOWN A MEMBER.
Roger McGuinn: Well you know I forgave him actually and Chris did too. Chris got into The Burritos with him and I used to hang out with Gram after that. We?d ride motorcycles and go up to my house and play pool. No I didn?t hold a grudge against him but it was unfair what he did to get out of the tour. I wished he?d been honest and said I don?t want to go cuz I want to hang with Keith.
DRUMMER KEVIN KELLEY WAS NEXT.
Roger McGuinn: So Kevin, I don?t know what happened. I guess he quit. So Chris and I were there. We got Clarence to come over and then we had John York so Clarence and John York and Chris and I. Then Chris got mad and threw his bass down at a rehearsal. I don?t know what was going on but he just stormed out and we just kept in going and Clarence brought in, I guess at that point, he brought Gene Parsons cuz he?d been in a band called Nashville West, he and Gene. So then we had another band, it was like a whole new band. Clarence was a monster. He was so good. It was the best time I?ve ever had on stage. It was like having Eric Clapton in your band or something.
Music: Pretty Boy Floyd
THE BYRDS PEFORMED ?PRETTY BOY FLOYD? WITH NEW MEMBERS CLARENCE WHITE ON GUITAR AND GENE PARSONS (NO RELATION TO GRAM) ON DRUMS.
BASSIST CHRIS HILLMAN.
Chris Hillman: Eventually I had got him into The Byrds. As a matter of fact, I had played two shows with him, if that and then I left. I didn?t bring Gene in. I think that was Clarence?s suggestion. At the time, The Byrds were just really, and to quote McGuinn who had said this years ago, we were spinning our wheels. We didn?t have any idea what we were doing. We had done Sweetheart of the Rodeo. We had gone through this debacle with Graham parsons over South Africa, which in hindsight, I should?ve realized at that time that he was going to be a problem later on but as it turns out, he left and then we got Clarence and my cousin was still playing drums and he didn?t work out so we let him go. So it was really Roger and I, and then Clarence brought Gene Parsons in. I think I did one show with them and then I left. Parsons and I got back together; I don?t regret that in a sense because the first Burrito Brothers album was to me still one of the better ones, better things I?ve worked on in my life.
SO, IF YOU?RE KEEPING A SCORE CARD, THAT LEAVES ONLY ONE ORIGINAL BYRDS MEMBER, ROGER MCGUINN. GUITARIST CLARENCE WHITE HAD BEEN ON MANY BYRDS RECORDING SESSIONS AND KNEW THEIR MUSIC AND STYLE.
SENIOR EDITOR AT ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, DAVID FRICKE.
David Fricke: And certainly Clarence White even though he was not an original member and came from an entirely different background than the original Byrds, his guitar playing was really important in the continuation because he was connecting the original country roots with the kind of country he had played. He had a very sharp, precise? he was doing on guitar in many ways what Crosby had done vocally.
CHRIS HILLMAN WAS A FAN.
Chris Hillman: He was just an amazing musician and I knew that when I saw him playing bluegrass when he was 16. I said oh my God this guy has a sense of timing about him and he?s so innovative in his playing and what he had done. He literally started the entire flat-picking craze in bluegrass that you hear today. It really goes back to Clarence and Clarence learned from Doc Watson and he learned from Joe Maphis who was out here on the coast and various others. He took the acoustic guitar out of just strumming it as an accompanying instrument into a lead instrument in folk and bluegrass. HE was perfect for The Byrds at that point.
JIMI HENDRIX STARTED TO COME TO BYRDS SHOWS MORE OFTEN.
SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: Hendrix was a big fan of Clarence White and Hendrix used to go see The Byrds, not so much to hang out with McGuinn, it was his buddy and all that and he liked the psychedelic breaks McGuinn did on the 12-string, but really it was to see Clarence White. And Hendrix was a big Clarence White fan. He would come backstage and hang out with Clarence and give him a hug and shake his hand and tell him how amazing he was. It?s been documented many times.
Music: This Wheel?s On Fire
CLARENCE WHITE?S DISTINCT GUITAR SOUND CAME FROM BOTH HIS TECHNIQUE AND A LITTLE CONTRAPTION ON THE GUITAR NECK.
GUITARIST AND SINGER ROGER MCGUINN.
Roger McGuinn: The B-String bender is an invention that Clarence White and Gene Parsons came up with. Gene was very gifted with mechanical things, he had a lathe and he knew how to build things.
WRITER DAVID FRICKE.
David Fricke: There was a device on the b string on the guitar and Clarence tended to play Telecasters, that enabled him to mimic the glide and almost the meow of a pedal steel guitar, but to do it with a regular guitar. And of course then you add the distortion he put on it, and you get this whole interesting, amazing sound. ?This Wheel?s On Fire? is a great example of that, this growling thing with a piercing tone and then all of that really caustic distortion. The way it had been devised, it was for a country music sound. But then when the Byrds took it over, when Clarence brought that into the Byrds, it brought on whole new possibilities for soloing and bringing country language and technique into rock and roll and also to electrify country language and technique.
Music (up)
THE BYRDS PERFORMED BOB DYLAN?S TUNE ?THIS WHEEL?S ON FIRE.?
IN A MINUTE, THE BYRDS ALMOST GO BROADWAY AND THEIR SORT OF COLLABORATION WITH BOB DYLAN.
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.
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, ANTHONY DECURTIS.
Anthony DeCurtis: McGuinn saw the whole thing through, he was sort of the last man standing in the whole difficult, tragic, complicated history that is the Byrds personal history. These were not guys who pal?d around and loved each other. There was a lot of friction in this group. McGuinn was somebody who, because he was the voice and partly because he had the look and certainly had a tremendous amount of talent, but so did all the other guys, there was a sense in which McGuinn kind of toughed it out. It became his band, in a way. He became the symbol in a certain way, when people thought about the Byrds, they thought about his voice, they thought about those glasses. It was what emerged out of the struggle of what the band was, and he carried it on, even though there were periods where whoever had rights to name the Byrds was in contention. There was a sense in which McGuinn was the main guy.
AND MCGUINN ONCE AGAIN REBUILT THE GROUP.
Roger McGuinn: Well once we got Clarence, it was pretty much locked in that we were going to continue on that country rock direction, cause that?s where he was, with the b bender that was like a steel guitar, and Gene Parsons came from there, and John York, he quit because his girlfriend didn?t want him going on the road. And then we got Skip Batten, and Skip could fit into that country rock thing, too. So I think we stayed in that kind of direction for the rest of the time we were together.
Sid Griffin: The longest lineup is Batten, McGuinn, White and Parsons, Gene Parsons. That?s the longest serving Byrds lineup. I think they made it like 3 or 4 Christmases.
SINGER SONGWRITER SID GRIFFIN.
Sid Griffin: Well it was again one of those wonderful organic things like what happened with the original 5 Byrds. If you listen to Gene Parsons? drumming, he was a great banjo player, and he hardly ever played the banjo except for the live concerts when they?d go down to an acoustic set, like 5 songs in the middle of it. He played the drums. And if you listen to the live stuff they played on Untitled, he?s not really a 4/4 drummer. He plays around the beat, kind of like a jazz country and western drummer, which of course there?s no such thing, there?s no such animal. But Gene Parsons brought a unique style to say the least to the drum kit. And although they had a couple of bass players, when they finally settled on Skip Batten, he had a very driving, driving powerful sound, and then Clarence White was quite simply the Caucasian Jimi Hendrix.
Music: Lover of the Bayou
THE NEW BYRDS LINEUP TORE INTO MCGUINN?S SONG ?LOVER OF THE BAYOU.?
GUITARIST LENNY KAYE.
Lenny Kaye: And I think this constant reinvention spoke to who they were inside. They never did anything not them. There was always a logical progression. And as their music expanded and changed, they did the thing which any musical group needs to do, which is grow. And they never just stayed where they would become irrelevant.
MUSIC WRITER DAVID FRICKE.
David Fricke: The Byrds were great adaptors, particularly as Roger became more and more the defining leader. They, when Gene Clark left, when they got over that, they showed that they were capable of getting over anything. And they did. There was always somebody new and interesting to work with, whether it was Gram Parsons, Clarence White, Gene Parsons. They all brought something new and something defining, and it all became part of the Byrds sound. They didn?t change the Byrds sound to the degree that it changed the sound. What they did became the Byrds. The Byrds took it in. So when you listen to Untitled, you don?t think that?s not the same band that recorded Turn, Turn, Turn. It?s not, but it?s not so different and not so radical that you can?t say ?I can?t see the connections.? The connections are there.
THEIR LOVE OF BOB DYLAN SONGS REMAINED THE SAME. HERE?S A 1970?S LIVE RECORDING.
Music: It?s All Right Ma
BOB DYLAN?S ?IT?S ALL RIGHT, MA (I?M ONLY BLEEDING)? PERFORMED BY THE BYRDS.
THE BAND HAD A LONG HISTORY OF TRYING OUT NEW THINGS, AND ROGER MCGUINN KEPT THAT GOING. HE AND JACQUES LEVY WROTE A LOT OF MATERIAL FOR THE THEATER AS THEY TRIED TO ADAPT HENRIK IBSEN?S STORY OF ?PEER GYNT.? THEY WERE GOING TO CALL THE SHOW ?GENE TRYP.?
WRITER DAVID FRICKE.
David Fricke: Taking all the songs, even though the show was never mounted, they wrote an amazing amount of material, which became very important, particularly on Untitled and Byrdmaniax. They were very great, creative songs considering they were written for a Broadway musical.
ONE OF THOSE SONGS STOOD OUT FOR DAVID FRICKE.
David Fricke: ?Chestnut Mare? is a marvelous song, a marvelous fantasia about wild horses and freedom, and it?s got this very poetic image of the wild stallion, but that was also very much part of the time.
Music: Chestnut Mare
?CHESTNUT MARE? PERFORMED BY THE BYRDS FROM A COLLECTION OF TUNES WRITTEN FOR A BROADWAY MUSICAL THAT WAS NEVER PRODUCED.
IN THE LATE 60?S, THE FILM ?EASY RIDER? WAS IN THE WORKS, AND IT?S THEME SONG BECAME AN UNEXPECTED COLLABORATION BETWEEN BOB DYLAN AND THE BYRDS.
SID GRIFFIN IS A SINGER AND SONGWRITER.
Sid Griffin: Well, there?s two interesting things about Easy Rider. The first one is Dylan wrote on a cocktail napkin in New York City ?(lyrics)?, and handed that cocktail napkin to Peter Fonda because Fonda had walked up to Dylan at some party or some nightclub in NYC, said we?re making this movie, two guys on a motorcycle kind of like Montgomery Clift and John Wayne in ?Red River.? Two guys on a motorcycle instead of herding cattle, making this trip across America, all these things happen to them, I?ve got the Byrds enlisted to do the soundtrack, blah blah blah, we need a theme, would you write us a song? Bob Dylan scratched those lines on a cocktail napkin, handed it to Peter Fonda, said ?give this to McGuinn, he?ll know what to do.? McGuinn saw the cocktail napkin when Fonda flew back to LA, cause he was dear friends with Fonda and wrote the rest of the song ?Ballad of the Easy Rider? from the lyrics that Bob Dylan wrote on the cocktail napkin.
THE BYRDS HAD DONE A FEW SONGS FOR MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS BUT HAD NOT BEEN ACTORS ON STAGE OR SCREEN. IT TOOK A COUPLE OF BYRDS FANS, PETER FONDA AND DENNIS HOPPER, TO BRING THEM THERE.
Sid Griffin: But the other weird thing about that movie, which is interesting to Byrds fans, is that the Peter Fonda character is clearly based on McGuinn, based on McGuinn?s look at that time, he?d cut his hair but it was still kind of long in a bowl shape, and McGuinn?s laconic, cerebral, laid back, don?t speak much demeanor, while the Dennis Hopper character is clearly both in the behavioral pattern and in terms of the look, based on David Crosby as Crosby went through life. So you?ve got McGuinn, his sort of persona is snatched in the Peter Fonda character, and if you look at Dennis Hopper, he?s doing a David Crosby imitation with the haircut and the buckskin jacket and the knife on his hip and a maniacal, very excited, very emotional, very visceral reactions to things going on around him. One guy?s doing McGuinn, one guy?s doing Crosby, cause those are two Byrds fans exploring the dynamic of their favorite group on screen. And Fonda has admitted to such since.
HERE?S THE THEME, ?BALLAD OF EASY RIDER.?
Music: Ballad of Easy Rider
?BALLAD OF EASY RIDER? FROM THE CLASSIC ROAD FILM, WRITTEN BY THE BYRDS WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM BOB DYLAN.
Music (under): Farther Along
?THE BYRDS: FARTHER ALONG? 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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