Track listing Side one No. Title Writer(s) Length 1. "Artificial Energy" Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, Michael Clarke 2:18 2. "Goin' Back" Carole King, Gerry Goffin 3:26 3. "Natural Harmony" Chris Hillman 2:11 4. "Draft Morning" David Crosby, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn 2:42 5. "Wasn't Born to Follow" Carole King, Gerry Goffin 2:04 6. "Get to You" Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn (credited on the album to Hillman and McGuinn[12]) 2:39 Side two No. Title Writer(s) Length 1. "Change Is Now" Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn 3:21 2. "Old John Robertson" Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn 1:49 3. "Tribal Gathering" David Crosby, Chris Hillman 2:03 4. "Dolphin's Smile" David Crosby, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn 2:00 5. "Space Odyssey" Roger McGuinn, Robert J. Hippard 3:52 1997 CD reissue bonus tracks No. Title Writer(s) Length 12. "Moog Raga" (instrumental) Roger McGuinn 3:24 13. "Bound to Fall" (instrumental) Mike Brewer, Tom Mastin 2:08 14. "Triad" David Crosby 3:29 15. "Goin' Back" (alternate - version one) Carole King, Gerry Goffin 3:55 16. "Draft Morning" (alternate ending) David Crosby, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn 2:55 17. "Universal Mind Decoder" (instrumental; song ends at 3:32; 4:32 begins radio advert which ends at 5:41; 6:42 begins "Dolphin's Smile" [in-studio argument]) Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn 13:45 Personnel Adapted from So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star: The Byrds Day-By-Day (1965–1973), The Notorious Byrd Brothers (33⅓ series), and the compact disc liner notes.[7][19][28][35] Roger McGuinn – vocals, lead guitar, Moog synthesizer David Crosby – vocals, rhythm guitar on "Change is Now", "Tribal Gathering", "Dolphin's Smile", "Triad", and "Goin' Back" (alternate); rhythm guitar on "Draft Morning", "Bound to Fall" and "Universal Mind Decoder"; vocals, electric bass on "Old John Robertson" Chris Hillman – vocals; electric bass all tracks except "Old John Robertson"; guitar on "Old John Robertson"; mandolin on "Draft Morning" Michael Clarke – drums on "Artificial Energy", "Draft Morning", "Old John Robertson", "Tribal Gathering", "Dolphin's Smile", and "Universal Mind Decoder" Gene Clark – possible backing vocal on "Goin' Back" (master) and "Space Odyssey" Additional personnel James Burton, Clarence White – guitars Red Rhodes – pedal steel guitar Paul Beaver – piano, Moog synthesizer Terry Trotter – piano Gary Usher – Moog synthesizer, percussion, backing vocals Barry Goldberg – organ Dennis McCarthy – celeste Jim Gordon – drums on "Goin' Back", "Natural Harmony", "Wasn't Born to Follow", "Bound to Fall", and "Triad" Hal Blaine – drums on "Get to You" and "Change Is Now" Curt Boettcher – backing vocals William Armstrong, Victor Sazer, Carl West – violins Paul Bergstrom, Lester Harris, Raymond Kelley, Jacqueline Lustgarten – cellos Alfred McKibbon – double bass (bowed) Ann Stockton – harp Richard Hyde – trombone Roy Caton, Virgil Fums, Gary Weber — brass Jay Migliori – saxophone Dennis Faust – percussion Firesign Theatre – sound effects on "Draft Morning" unknown musicians – trumpet on "Draft Morning"; string quartet and additional fiddle on "Old John Robertson"
Artificial Energy Kicks off with a couple of alternating chords and brass and a dense sound from the start. The verse starts on the B chord but the verse finally gets to an E chord which is the song's key. Kind of a reverse blues. I like those funky sounding seventh chords from McGuinn. The vocals sound unusual and harder than any other Byrds song. Hillman sounds a little McCartneyesque on the bass at times…sorry. At :22 the song hangs on the E chord for a heavy boogie type sound not very typical of the band. I guess you can call this section the chorus. The verse returns at :30 and the “chorus” follows. The break is a great one with horns and twists and turns. The final verse comes in and the chorus follows. Some bendy effects on the E chord bring the song to an end. Awesome opener. Very somewhat different sounding from their earlier work. But yet has some trademarks. I don’t think there is a single minor chord in the song. Lots of awesome root movement……I am thinking Chris wrote most of the music. A drug song and IIRC they did not get in trouble when it was released which is ironic considering the Eight Miles High fiasco. Weird processing on the vocals make it sound atypical for a Byrds song considering their immaculate harmonies. A rare Michael Clarke co credit.
The vocals are sped up, which makes me wonder... did the Byrds record the entire track and then speed it up (the approach used on a couple of tracks on the first Burrito Brothers album)? Or is the instrumental backing appearing in its natural key, and only the vocals are sped up? I'm curious of your opinion on that.
My guess is that just the vocals are sped up slightly. It is just a guess though because there is really no way to tell if the song was originally recorded with everyone tuned down a half step. Except of course for the brass instruments that are already tuned down a flat. Now I'm really confused. The CD booklet discussion seems to imply that just the vocals were sped up and distorted. McGuinn discussed it but could not remember what the name of the device was and just that someone suggested it. He thought everyone sounded like "Donald Duck".
The instruments sound a little unnatural which makes me think the track was sped up as well. You can also hear on the last few seconds the pitch of the recoding being monkeyed with.
The original newspaper ads for the album included Moog Raga in the track list. I wonder where they planned to put it.
I would have said it should go as the opener of side two. Wait a minute, too much like Sgt. Pepper so I would say closer on Side One. I did not know it was listed on the ads as being included.
I think The Notorious Byrd Brothers is a album of contradictions: it's a classic album, but it has no truly classic songs; its recording was fragmented due to internal conflicts, but it flows incredibly well; and it was the most far-out production of the band, but soon afterwards they recorded their most rootsy album. Although the record has its own identity, I think we could say this is the Byrds' take on Sgt. Pepper. It also has a very uniform sound, which could be a strength or a weakness depending on the mood of the listener. Here the songs seem to be designed to serve the psychedelic sound, so that psychedelia is no longer an additional ingredient but the main course.
Not surprisingly, wikipedia has a few things wrong here. Crosby does not play bass on "Old John Robertson" but on "Change is Now." The error originated in the first edition of Rogan's book, but he corrected it in the later edition. The three songs recorded during the time Michael Clarke left the band (Change is Now, Dolphin's Smile, and Tribal Gathering) are shrouded in a bit of uncertainty, with different sources making different claims about who plays drums on them. I'd say there is no way that's Clarke playing on the released version of Dolphin's Smile, since it's completely different than what he played on the outtake/argument version, and unlike his work altogether. I also have my doubts he's on Tribal Gathering. On the flipside, if that's not Clarke on Change is Now then I'll eat my hat. There's some extremely Clarkeish drumming on there.
McGuinn and Hillman say it was not. And more importantly, so does the photographer Guy Webster, and he'd really have no reason to lie about it: "I get asked about this cover shot for The Byrds all the time. This was shot a couple of years after I first worked for them. The picture was done up in [Topanga] Canyon. The group was going through changes. I got a call to shoot the album cover. They wanted to go out to the country, since their first album cover was shot in a studio. So I found this abandoned barn with four open windows. There was a horse in the field. I put each one of the guys in the windows. And in the last window I put the horse. I was mistakenly accused of denigrating David Crosby. It wasn’t to replace Crosby, who had been fired; it wasn’t to insult anyone. It was just to balance the composition. It was just a space and a horse — and what an image.” My favorite comment about this is when McGuinn said that if they'd meant for the horse to represent Crosby, they would have turned him around.
good eyes! ha. there's some promo shots of them upthread ( or the other one ) all at hillmans blue heights drive pad but i dont know how to post pics. it's the house that turned his hair from "beatlesque" to 'fro.
It definitely sounds like Michael on the Universal Mind Decoder take; I wonder if the session guys are on the country parts and those were spliced in. Sounds cumbersome but I guess its possible.
i wonder how clarke handled being the drummer and "fighting for tracks" with blaine and gordon ever present.
Artificial Energy. An obvious choice for the opener, working very well at that function. The explosive acidified intro reminds me to other contemporary album openers, particularly "The Ballad Of You And Me And Pooneil" (from After Bathing At Baxter's) and "Armenia City In The Sky" (from The Who Sell Out). An interesting track and one of my favorite songs of the album.
I think it sounds like Clarke on the country portion of the song, too. Supposedly Clarke did versions of all three of the songs in question, but so did Blaine/Gordon, so it's unclear which versions ended up on the finished album.
