The Byrds would never be as popular as the Fab Four, but their sound – driven by Roger McGuinn’s jangly, 12-string Rickenbacker guitar, and the voices of McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby and Chris Hillman – earned them an important moniker: the American Beatles.
They’re known for a range of work, from their electrified folk hits (“Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Mr. Tambourine Man”) to their sonic experimentations, whether on the then-primitive Moog synthesizer or with country rock.
This week, Sony Legacy released a four-disc set of the group’s music, along with a DVD of television appearances. We spoke with former members and admirers about the Byrds, and put together this oral history of the band’s rise and fall:
Chris Hillman, bassist and singer: “I came from a very traditional, roots-oriented and folk-music background. The other guys had more of a commercial, Kingston Trio background. If you saw the Chris Guest movie, ‘A Mighty Wind,’ that’s the kind of stuff the other guys played.”
In 1965, Jim Dickson, hired to manage the band, wanted the Byrds to record “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a then-unreleased Bob Dylan song.
Dickson: “It had, to me, everything. It had all the pop things, plus it had great lyrics. It starts out with the name of the song, which you can’t forget. And it had a phrase Johnny Mercer had used, ‘jingle jangle.’ David Crosby was dead set against it. When I first brought it in, we started to rehearse it. David talked Gene Clark, who was then the lead singer, out of doing it. He told him, ‘Your songs are better than that.’ To everybody else, he said, ‘Gene’s songs are no good.’ When Gene wouldn’t do it, McGuinn said, ‘I’ll try it.”‘
On June 26, 1965, “Mr. Tambourine Man” hits No.1. A few months later, another Byrds cover, of Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” topped the charts.
Roger McGuinn, guitarist and singer: We were just kids on the street. Starving musicians, sort of, and we went from 0 to 60 in two seconds. It was just an amazing thrill to get a No.1, to hang out with Dylan and beat the Beatles.”
Success brought conflict. By 1966, Clark had left the band. Some speculate that the other Byrds were upset he was being paid more as the band’s primary songwriter. Dickson also left.
Carla Olson, Texas singer who recorded with Clark in the 1980s: When they first got their publishing checks, everybody’s check was like $6,000, and Gene’s was 36 grand. So the hatred started pretty early.”
Crosby left soon after, and McGuinn and Hillman hired a Southern-born Harvard dropout named Gram Parsons. In his short life, Parsons, who died of an overdose in 1973, would become famous for his recordings with Emmylou Harris and his friendship with the Rolling Stones. During his short tenure in the band, the Byrds recorded 1968’s “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” album, the first time a mainstream rock band embraced country.
Parsons was kicked out of the band when he refused to go on a tour.
Hillman: “Bringing Gram in, hiring him as a sideman, gave us new blood. We were already old men, had gone around the block. Gram gave us a sense of energy.”
McGuinn: (He had been asked to appear in a Gram Parsons documentary in recent years.) “I declined. I didn’t really want to be up there and say anything negative.” Pause. “I liked him; actually, we got along fine. We rode motorcycles together and played pool and it was fine.”
Hillman: “Roger had a real bad experience with the Parsons family in that Gram’s supposed daughter, Polly, hit everybody with a frivolous lawsuit about Gram being cheated out of his royalties. What Polly didn’t know was that Gram was never a member of the Byrds. He was a hired hand, a sideman.”
McGuinn and Hillman insist the three living original Byrds will never get back together.
Hillman: “I could retire on my net for six weeks of work. David would do it in a minute. He was saying, last time we talked about it, ‘do it just for the music.’ But Roger didn’t want to. Initially I was sort of upset because I like the music. Then I realized he was a little smarter than us.
“He said, ‘two guys are gone, we don’t look the same. We can perform the songs as good or a little better.’ But getting back together would open a door that’s been shut.
McGuinn: “I’m happy to leave it as a good memory. This is a wonderful body of work, and it’s there on the four-CD set. Paul McCartney was once asked about re-forming the Beatles, and he compared it to reheating a soufflé.”
