Byrds Nyrds: Talk about anything Byrds related here (Part 04)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by stereoptic, Mar 17, 2015.

  1. MarcS

    MarcS Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey
    I always thought it was a missed opportunity for the surviving 3 not to have put vocals on the Stranger or Bound to Fall backing tracks. It would have made nice additions to the box set.
     
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  2. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Remember that at the time the box set was assembled, they were not "the surviving three" as all members were still alive. But yeah, as long as Gene was included it would have been far more rewarding to see them do that, rather than create the flaccid new recordings the three of them came up with. There's at least five complete backing tracks we know of, right: You and Me, Stranger in a Strange Land, Flower Bomb Song, Bound to Fall, Flight 715.
     
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  3. MarcS

    MarcS Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey
    And its not like the were being reverent to the original tracks, McGuinn overdubbed 12 string on a bunch of the Sweetheart outtakes and the alternate Lover of the Bayou; and there were overdubs all over some of the Never Before material.
     
  4. Chrome_Head

    Chrome_Head Planetary Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA.
    Was just spinning Dr Byrds late last night myself. There's some great stuff on this record, namely, the two tracks you mention being my favorites ("Bad Night.." in particular, wow, I've always loved that one). I really wish more of the album sounded like these, and less the country rock. But that's where the band's head seemed to be at this time.
     
  5. Maggie

    Maggie like a walking, talking art show

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Well said, except I like their arrangement of "Satisfied Mind." I get why you don't like it, and it's not country, but I like the weary earnestness they bring to it, and the harmony stack is gorgeous (particularly David's part). At the very least, it doesn't sound like anybody else's version of the tune.

    IMO the album version of "The Times They Are A-Changin'" is much, much, much worse. (Though the outtake version is pretty good. Another deranged sequencing decision, unless putting a piss-take on the album was the plan, or somebody high up warned them about putting too much mono on a stereo LP.)

    "Oh Susannah" is sort of acceptable as a closing joke track, but "Wait and See" should have been a b-side at best and the album take of "Times" should have been burned. Although, on the other hand, "Times" is useful for demonstrating how dumb a lot of early Dylan lyrics are.
     
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  6. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    To me it sounds like it came from the album "Les Baxter's Balladeers Sing Top Country Hits" or "Up With People Down on the Farm." It's straight-up folk, not folk rock, and you know how I feel about that. All the more disappointing to me because it's a country song with the country completely emasculated from it.

    No argument it's a lousy arrangement and it would definitely be my fourth track to go. Now that I think about it, side two of Turn Turn Turn basically amounts to a preview of their 1973 reunion album: a couple nice tracks by Gene, and a bunch of misguided, halfass crap by everyone else.
     
  7. Clarkophile

    Clarkophile Through the Morning, Through the Night

    Location:
    Oakville, ON
    “Up With People Down on the Farm”!!! :laugh::thumbsup:
     
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  8. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    Was listening to Sweetheart Of The Rodeo today while doing some work in the garage. The album is kind of like a signpost pointing the way forward, not necessarily for the Byrds, but for the Flying Burritos Brothers. It is as much the 'first Burritos' album as it is a Byrds album. Where did that leave the Byrds?

    Sweetheart reportedly took the place of a concept album that Hillman and McGuinn had in mind about the history of American music (running on parallel tracks with the White Album?). That's an album that I would have like to have heard. Not that Sweetheart is a wrong turn, necessarily, even if a sharp one. it just feels like the Byrds are hovering in one corner of Americana a little too long. Is it a good demonstration of their ability to play country music? Yes. Beyond that? Maybe the album served as Hillman's fulfillment of steering the Byrds in this direction, leaving his work with the band done.

    It really does take up an odd space in their discography, having quickly emerged on the heels of what is possibly their best work - Notorious Byrd Brothers. Notorious had as much Crosby as anyone could handle, without him even finishing the album, plus it had enough parts Clarke, and even dashes of Gene Clark. Notorious feels like it is straddling the past, present, and future. The act of Hillman and McGuinn finishing NBB was practically an ode to the Byrds themselves, as all the ghosts of Byrds past make an appearance. They could have called it quits at this particular moment. The rest of their career is almost a post-mortem. (The super long-haired, post-Hillman Byrds look like a zombie posse from the Old West.)

    Getting back to Sweetheart... It's a swell enough album; the instrumentation and vocals are all done very well; what harmonies there are are 'nice'. While the Byrds collective may have had a passion for this genre of music, what I don't hear a lot of is an unabashed passion within the individual songs themselves. 'Hickory Wind' comes close, yet it doesn't veer far from the textbook. It also sounds like they're trespassing, stylistically, through someone else's backyard, but doing so in a very polite and respectful manner. And the songs with Gram's lead vocal do not sound like Byrd songs at all. This sweetheart must be in by 8 pm, every night.

    But it's not like it's an unlikable album, either, that's the other odd thing about it. It's not quite underwhelming. They're nothing 'bad' going on here. The worst that could be said for it is that it could easily come off as a pose, yet it even somehow manages to avoid that. Maybe it's that it doesn't stand for anything? Is it supposed to? This album gets excused, however, because at least it's audacious enough to present itself for what it is in the face of anything else going on: it's a Country album by the Byrds. And in that, at least the Byrds have taken their own advice from the spirit of their last album, 'Change Is Now'. It is a radical change, even if it pivots toward the relatively safe confines of podunk preoccupations.

    Yet all the waves being made are happening with Crosby's boat that has sailed. Did all the clever rebellion really depart with Crosby and Michael Clarke? It would seem so. Sweetheart is the sound of a band that has willingly joined a walk-in witness protection program. Who are they hiding from? The draft board? It could be they were merely hiding from themselves... just long enough for Parsons and Hillman to run for the hills.
     
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  9. Maggie

    Maggie like a walking, talking art show

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    The relationship between Sweetheart and the abandoned history-of-music project has always interested me. The finished product tends to be regarded (even by myself) as a sharp turn away from the ambitions of the concept. But is it?

    We need to take care not to imagine the history-of-music project as akin to Smile or Lifehouse or other 60s unrealized projects of enormous ambition. First of all, being a Byrds album, especially a Byrds album in the post-Crosby era, it was never likely to contain a huge amount of new original material; nor would said material likely have been as audacious as that on Notorious.

    Taking McGuinn's account of the concept at face value, the album would have started with string band music, proceeded through honky-tonk, moved on to some approximation of modern jazz, and finally landed on electronic music, perhaps with rock and roll or Dylan in the middle somewhere. It seems that what we likely would have ended up with would have been less of a historical continuum encompassing everything in American music -- in the cut and paste Notorious style -- than a sequence of discrete genre vignettes, maybe four or five genres represented in total. Remember, Gram was originally auditioned in the hopes that he could play some modern jazz piano; no sense in bringing in a full-time band member if you only plan to do one song (or sections of songs) in the style. Each vignette would likely have relied on a packet of representative material (e.g., "You're Still on My Mind" representing honky-tonk, or "I Am a Pilgrim" representing string band music) with perhaps an original or two per genre vignette. The overall approach would probably be relatively "folk revival" in its understanding and deployment of material, because that was McGuinn's wheelhouse.

    All this is to say, Sweetheart as we have it is probably pretty close to what disc 1 of the history-of-music double set would have been. If you rearrange the running order, you have the first several elements McGuinn mentioned. As for disc 2, in addition to it not being the kind of music Hillman was eager to make again, he and McGuinn probably recognized that they had covered that territory already on Notorious and Fifth Dimension.

    So it is really no surprise, nor really much of a loss, that the larger concept was abandoned. The more exciting part had already been done, and the other part would more or less have been Sweetheart as we now have it -- folkier than the Burritos, country approached mainly in the rather academic way that McGuinn was wont to do.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2018
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  10. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    Don't get the hate for Satisfied Mind -- I love it. Agree with you on the album version of The Times They Are A-Changin'. Dylan's original is dark, brooding and apocalyptic, The Byrds' version kind of bouncy and upbeat--total misread.

    Oh Susannah...I don't hate it, but it's not a high point, either. Ditto Wait And See. Surely there were other tunes that could have been inserted instead to better effect, but still it's important to remember it was 1965 -- singles were still the focus. The Beach Boys had just released Party!, after all, and if you put the Turn! Turn! Turn! lp into context with the rest of the pop/rock world of the time, it comes out very strong indeed, maybe even trailblazing.

    Compare Turn! Turn! Turn! with this contemporary late 1965 (November IIRC) UK release:

    [​IMG]

    Full disclosure: I have the above LP and like it, but I like using it as counterpoint in these sorts of discussions. Rubber Soul and All Systems Go! both released in November 1965.

     
  11. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Indeed. The major difference between this album and most other legendary aborted albums is that this project never got beyond the conceptual stage. No songs were written for the project, much less recorded, and it's unclear if McGuinn had even devoted any time to thinking about what outside material might be used. The concept may not even have been an idea that Hillman was on board with (IIRC, only McGuinn has ever discussed it retrospectively). The fact that Hillman quickly embraced Parsons' idea of switching to country instead of doing this album suggests he wasn't all that excited about the idea. And even McGuinn seems to have given up on it fairly easily, without much of a fight.

    You make a good case that the McGuinn and Hillman-selected songs on Sweetheart would likely have comprised much of the first half of the album... Sweetheart is more diverse (and less country) than it's often made out to be. To some degree one could argue that Dr. Byrds presents some indication of what the second disc would have been like, except there's no jazz. Maybe they would have had another bash at Milestones to represent the jazz portion. At any rate, I think it's likely the concept would have been abandoned regardless of whether Parsons had joined, unless they'd happened upon hiring a new member who was really into the idea and also was a songwriter conversant with jazz and electronic music. That seems unlikely though.
     
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  12. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I fully admit that I've a strong prejudice against straight-up New-Christy-style folk, and that informs my dislike of this song. The whitebread folkie vocal style just removes all the country grit from this song, and that's not good in my opinion.

    I don't think there was any chance "Wait and See" might be released as a single. My big problem with parts of the TTT album is that I don't think the track choices were made necessarily to make it more commercial or to make it better, but instead they were made to benefit McGuinn. It's notable that the worst material on the album (with the exception of "Satisfied Mind") is either cowritten by McGuinn, carries a "trad, arr by McGuinn credit" (he erroneously took this credit for "Oh Susannah" upon initial release) or at minimum is arranged and sung by him. McGuinn was the leader and had Melcher's ear, and I think choices were made more to keep the spotlight on him than to present the best possible record.
     
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  13. I feel the same about We Five in 65 - had they only done more of this and fully embraced this sound - note the 12-string!

    Pixie cut is all the rage; uh uh.........


    Videos
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2018
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  14. PretzelLogic

    PretzelLogic Feeling duped by MoFi? You probably deserve it.

    Location:
    London, England
    Also, around this time (‘91), Crosby added a new lead vocal to CSNY’s ‘The Lee Shore’ which was a similarly unfinished outtake for a box set.
     
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  15. Alien Reg

    Alien Reg Forum Resident

    Depends which box set we are talking about. "Stranger" and "Bound to fall" did not appear till after Gene and Michael were gone.

    Regarding overdubs - no, please, never! It's like digitally enhancing the Mona Lisa. All The Byrds, surviving or not, should be barred from the studio whenever the old tapes are brought out.

    Just my opinion...
     
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  16. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    Could very well be, especially considering the consistent high quality of Gene Clark's material at the time.
     
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  17. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    "Stranger" and "Bound to Fall" were not released until after Gene and Mike died, but what he was saying was that they could have been released on the first box set (the tapes were not missing or anything), and that it would have been a good idea to have the members overdub vocals to the finished instrumental tracks. I agree it would have been interesting. I'm against overdubbing unnecessary new stuff onto finished tracks (ie "Lazy Days" or "Pretty Polly") or replacing existing instrumental tracks (eg the hideous Never Before version of "Lady Friend"). But adding vocals years later to an unfinished track in order to finish it... I've got absolutely no problem with that. I can think of lots of examples where it's worked well: Bad Girl by Paul Revere and the Raiders, a few tracks by The Chocolate Watchband, the Monkees album a couple years ago. The Byrds in the early 90s would have been more than capable of finishing some of those tracks, and the results would have been a helluva lot more interesting than those awful pseudo-reunion tracks on the first box.
     
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  18. Noise Annoys

    Noise Annoys Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ireland
    Did I read somewhere that Moog Raga, which was recorded on November 1st 1967 (and a bonus track on the Notorious expanded edition) was an attempt to create the 'electronic' part of the proposed History of American Music album? It was only a few months before the March/April 1968 Sweetheart sessions.

    I may be mis-remembering that, however.
     
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  19. Byrdman77

    Byrdman77 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Leigh On Sea, UK
    That Good Times Monkees album really made me wish The Byrds could do that, it was largely successful against the odds in producing some minor classics.
     
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  20. Raoul V.

    Raoul V. Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Belgium
    I'm against overdubs too...except for the bum bass notes on Spanish Harlem Incident - they could and should have corrected that.
     
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  21. MarcS

    MarcS Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Don’t know about that but it was on the original running order and appears listed in the original ads for Notorious but I think they left it off because it was a bit out of tune.
     
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  22. Strawberry Fields Forever

    Strawberry Fields Forever Well-Known Member

    Location:
    London, England
    On my copy of the album 'Oh Susannah' has no writing credit.
     
  23. Strawberry Fields Forever

    Strawberry Fields Forever Well-Known Member

    Location:
    London, England
    Worth mentioning that McGuinn when interviewed after the album described it as a ‘special edition’. He used the analogy comparing Byrds albums to a series of magazines with this one as a special issue. The experimental side of the Byrds was still evident, at least in McGuinn’s imagination – that incredible idea of a complete history of music, double album. Pity he didn’t pursue it, although it seems clear that Hillman and Parsons had little or no interest in the grand notion, least of all the futuristic moog stuff that McGuinn intended. We can hear some of that in tracks like ‘Moog Raga’. Sweetheart is brave and pioneering though. Anyone who went through the period of Notorious to Sweetheart surely can’t help being impressed by their audacity and willingness to challenge their audience.
     
  24. Maggie

    Maggie like a walking, talking art show

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Moog Raga was definitely intended for Notorious. The electronic stuff for the next album never made it past the planning phase.

    @czeskleba has suggested that some of what happens on Dr Byrds might be an attempt at pursuing this concept, e.g. the Moog noise at the end of "This Wheel's on Fire." That's quite possible, as is the scenario where the concept was dropped altogether because it was already pretty well done on Notorious (e.g. "Natural Harmony," which also has modern jazz elements). My interpretation of Dr Byrds is that it was just an attempt to get some Byrds-like product out ASAP (padded out with a jam and the soundtrack cuts) to make up for the commercial failure of Sweetheart and possibly Notorious too, but it went astray in the production.
     
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  25. Dee Zee

    Dee Zee Once Upon a Dream

    Well I LOVE Satisfied Mind. I was a pop rock kid of 14 and the Byrds introduced me to that timeless classic folk song. The harmonies are superb.

    The first box suffered from neglecting Gene Clark, a huge disrespect to the man’s talents and contributions to the band.
     

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