![]() However, this piece is intended as an introduction for those who are unfamiliar with The Byrds.Ī brilliant and experimental band, who in their early days boasted one of music’s finest ever lineups, they always deserve to be revisited. Regardless, the band’s output in the ’60s is nothing short of iconic, and in actuality, we could spend all day discussing the band’s history because it is that complex. Realising that the band had fizzled out and not wanting to damage their reputation further, McGuinn called time on the project. Things finally ground to a halt after a shambolic show at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey in 1973. After this, and moving into the ’70s, with each release they became increasingly removed from the band that everyone once loved. This can be regarded as the final nail in the coffin for The Byrds’ original run. Hillman had left the group in late 1968 and to join Parsons in The Flying Burrito Brothers. The band would then work with different musicians, and 1968 saw the dawn of what is now known as the ‘ Gram Parsons Era‘, an interesting and overlooked chapter.Īfter this explicitly country-rock oriented period, the band would then hire guitarist Clarence White, before eventually splitting up in 1973 owing to comments such as this from the media, which described them as “a boring dead group”. Why such a change of fortunes you may ask? Crosby and Clarke were kicked out, leaving just McGuinn and Hillman as the last men standing. Owing to drug use and David Crosby’s overbearing egotism, the end of the band’s original iteration was nigh. As well as branching into country and western, their 1967 record The Notorious Byrd Brothers, saw the band use pioneering studio techniques such as phasing and flanging, which again, helped to mark them out as one of the era’s most important bands, even if many did not properly heed this at the time.Īs with any massive band, tension and acrimony soon arose. The track was a satirical and heavily sarcastic jibe at the manufactured nature of groups like The Monkees, marking The Byrds out to be so much more than the constant Bob Dylan cover band they are often regarded as.Įverpresent on the ’60s music scene, they became increasingly experimental as the decade wore on. In December 1966, they released their jazz-inspired fourth album, Younger Than Yesterday, which included the McGuinn and Hillman penned ‘So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’. Told by McGuinn, “If you can’t fly, you can’t be a Byrd”, Clark would then embark on a celebrated solo career, but that is a story for a different day.Ĭertainly definable as a band of the ’60s, The Byrds would carry on their prolific run. Gene Clark departed the band citing a fear of flying, a deeply embedded fear he’d had since witnessing a fatal aeroplane crash as a child. ![]() Starting off as a folk-rock band, given the ascendancy of the counterculture and drugs such as LSD and marijuana, by 1965, only a year after forming, the band would become psychedelic heroes. This is the lineup that would send The Byrds to the superstardom they enjoyed back in the ’60s. Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, Michael Clarke and Chris Hillman all took pioneering strides. At the time of the band’s formation in 1964, they were not plucked from surrounding successful bands, rather, it is a reflection of the huge figures of rock they would all become. The truth is, only retrospectively, can the band be hailed as a supergroup. No discussion of the band would be complete without touching on the brilliance of their original lineup. ![]()
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