The Byrds are Okay! Is That Okay?
Hello from 2025, (sung to the tune of "Turn! Turn! Turn!") a time after garage punk and punk, after the innovations of James Brown have penetrated down to every funktional cell in our bodies, a time when Chic vies with the Beatles as the greatest English-singing band of the 20th century, a time after disco, house, and techno, and time when not only The Byrds' Greatest Hits exists but the capacity to create our own Byrds' Greatest Hits exists as well. Hello from a time when it's difficult to recreate the rush that the Byrds provided folks (a word I use advisedly) when almost out of the gate in 1965 the band space traveled to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Mr. Tambourine Man." The Byrds were innovators, that we can still hear. But when critics claim that the band welded Dylan to the Beatles for a brand-new musical fricassee, they neglect to mention that the Byrds exude little of the raucous thrill of the early Beatles, the ones who fused a rump-shaking R&B bottom with crystal-blue harmonizing up top. For instance, Whit Strub is correct when he claims that "the bridge on “You Won’t Have to Cry” threatens to climb a step into straight-up wanna-hold-your-hand-ness." But threaten is all it does - never does one get the sense that a Hollywood Bowlful of girls and boys would start screaming (and, more importantly, dancing) as the band limps back into the verse.
This means that from their onset, the Byrds were keeping pace with the Beatles, concurrently in their Ordinary Phase during which they were Dylanizing their own music and recording the two worst albums in their discography - Beatles for Sale and Help!, albums which Rolling Stone types have overrated if not flat-out lied about for decades. They're just okay like most Byrds albums ever. Will the Boomer gerontocracy ever allow them to just be okay? In short, why is the Wiki for the inconsequential Byrds reunion album longer than the one for an album better than anything the Byrds ever recorded (Greatest Hits included), Love: Forever Changes?
Digesting the first few albums is not a painful experience, especially since they traffic in a concision that often gives the Ramones competition. But the drastic lack of bottom gets deadening for anyone even remotely boogie-besotted. Feel free to lay this shortcoming at drummer Michael Clarke's feet; the Byrds themselves had no problem dunking on his talent (and before you get too snarky about Clarke's abilities to ground the band, check that link for a grueling letter written by him as he was dying of alcoholism at 47). But it's not as if they kicked out any jams after Clarke left and/or was fired in 1967; it's clear that the Byrds never cared about our butt cheeks. Add harmonies that start to sound samey after a song or three, like ghosts who visit nightly but fail to haunt you, and you have a sound too thin to support their overinflated legend.
1967's Greatest Hits has rendered the first three albums superfluous, especially Mr. Tambourine Man, the debut, which lends five songs (out of twelve) to Greatest Hits. Keepers include faster fare like "It's No Use," "It Won't Be Wrong," "I See You," and the bonus track "Why," maybe the friendlier take on Dylan's "Spanish Harlem Incident" or "If You're Gone" with its undergirding drone voices. But really - you can make do with Greatest Hits or, if you fancy more concise jangle, the two early-1980s volumes of The Original Singles.
A measure of how much I don't get this band lies in my appreciation for Younger Than Yesterday, downgraded by both Robert Christgau and Rob Sheffield in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. But David Crosby's "Renaissance Fair" was the best non-Greatest Hits song to date. For once, the harmonies haunt and Chris Hillman's bass leads like they never needed a funky drummer in the first place. Crosby's "Everybody's Been Burned" comes in a scosh less haunting and even Hillman works up some spookiness in the verses of "Thoughts and Words." And while even fans like to rip on Crosby's psychedelic indulgence "Mind Gardens" (in two version on the 1996 CD reissue!), it's no drearier than "2-4-2 Fox Trot (The Lear Jet Song)" from the previous year's Fifth Dimension.
It took me forever (i.e., last week) to figure out The Notorious Byrd Brothers and I still think Love's Forever Changes smothers it in a field of poppies. Psychedelia consists of constantly morphing figures and thus requires time to allow for the permutations. Much as I celebrate albums lasting 28:28, The Notorious Byrd Brothers' concision seemed thin and unyielding all over again. But eventually, I realized that Roger McGuinn & Co. were just getting through the permutations more quickly (albeit less heartbreakingly and ominously) than Arthur Lee & Co. did. "Natural Harmony" and, especially, "Draft Morning" document a scary false idol washing up on the Beach Boys' shore.
By contrast, I got Sweetheart of the Rodeo immediately. Due to the vagaries of a pre-Napster/Spotify world, I heard it many years before the other titles and it was quite possibly the first album where I could grasp irony, the band (with Gram Parsons for a hot minute) loving and lovingly joking about country music. In this mode, the best track, even better than the ace Dylan and Parsons songs, is the faithful-but-not take on the Louvin Brothers' "The Christian Life."
And then, after their victory year of 1968, the decline sets in as so often happens with congregations of more than one person. Hyde is a lesser Sweetheart although "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" would have fit nicely on the latter. It gets the edge over Ballad which is almost entirely covers with originals by such esteemed songwriters as John York and Pamela Polland; all you need is the 2:10 they expend on "Jesus is Just Alright." Preflyte is 25:38 of demos from a band guilty of thinness even at their best, i.e., for scholars only. The live half of the (Untitled) double album is good for doing dishes; the studio half is good for McGuinn/Jacques Levy's "Chestnut Mare."
The one song that kept rolling through my head while listening to this discography was "Outside Chance" by the Turtles of all people. I submit that the Byrds bequeathed far more to popular music than Flo & Eddie & Co. ever did. But "Outside Chance" (co-written by Warren Zevon) bashes harder (thanks to new drummer John Barbata) than almost anything on those first three wildly revered Byrds albums. If that means that the Byrds got to the sound first, then so what? Much as I appreciate an open atrium, eventually I'm going to require a floor to go along with my dwelling.
However demented you find the above, do check out Whit Strub's Byrdstupor blog wherein he endeavors to listen to all Byrds-related recordings ever. Perversely, he hasn't gotten to the 1968 goodies and may never will. Even more perversely, he's not properly worshipful of The Flying Burrito Brothers: The Gilded Palace of Sin (A&M, 1969), another album better than anything the Byrds ever recorded. He thinks part of the problem is that Gram Parsons subjugated Chris Hillman (!). He has kind words for the second-worst song, “My Uncle” (!!). And he may prefer subsequent Burrito albums to Gilded (!!!). But cut the man some slack - he's listened to this right-wing Hillman horror.
Oh and p.s. Hüsker Dü's "Eight Miles High" >>>> the Byrds'.
Grades (all releases on Columbia except where noted):
Labels: discographies, the Byrds, the Turtles
posted by Kevin John at 2:17 PM
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