Been aware of this thread for over half a decade....and every time I log in and scan the titles in the forum I see "Laura Nyro". Perhaps a psychiatrist could explain it.
McGuinn seems to have been in the habit of redoing an entire solo from scratch if he wasn't happy with it, rather than trying to "comp" it as he does in "Everybody's Been Burned." "Why" is a good example where there are still traces of the original solo audible on the track. Perhaps this redoing from scratch was an attempt to save tracks for other purposes, although McGuinn also overdubbed extra guitar when he thought it necessary (e.g. the ending of the Columbia "Eight Miles High"). Perhaps it was just an attempt to preserve spontaneity. In any case, for "Burned" he took a different approach.
LOL. I’m on my armchair, so I’ll take a shot. Looking at the title, two words , that sit together contain. many of the letters in the name Laura Nyro:...........Nyrds, Talk........... Take a look, now. There are 9 letters in the name- Laura Nyro. 2 repeat themselves. That leaves 7 different letters. Nyrds, Talk contains 5 of those 7 letters. Now, if your scrolling the threads looking for Laura Nyro, it’s even easier to confuse them. The Byrds should have covered Eli’s Coming!
Kubernik: Interviews on Chris Hillman in Anticipation of Upcoming Autobiography Chris Hillman is arguably the primary architect of what's come to be known as country rock. On November 17, 2020 BMG Books will publish his autobiography Time Between: My Life as a Byrd, Burrito Brother, and Beyond. Dwight Yoakam penned the Foreword for the 315 page volume.
Also. I couldn’t get this thread to come up in a search! I wanted to alert folks that Chris Hillman was the guest DJ on the Tom Petty SiriusXM channel this week. Oh well, I hope folks heard it. He mentioned the Byrds quite a lot.
I listened to the Turn Turn Turn album today. I often wonder, are all four singing Byrds on Satisfied Mind? Your thoughts?
It sure sounds to me like his voice is in there along with McGuinn, Croz, and Clark. Since he's the one that pitched the song, it stands to reason he'd sing on it. One of the things I don't like about the Byrds' arrangement in fact is that it has kind of a New Christy Minstrels feel to it, like there's a bunch of guys singing along.
Don’t have it with me, but I seem to recall Rogan stating that the song marked Hillman’s singing debut on a Byrds track.
That’s precisely why I love it, a group effort. I’ve always thought Hillman did sing on that song. And I love Crosby’s high harmony.
I know you’re being facetious here, but the sheer unlikelihood of this underscores the fractious nature of the in-it-for-myself dynamic that made the Byrds both fascinating and frustrating. Did Michael ever make an attempt? Hard to imagine, isn’t it? And if he did, he likely faced ridicule rather than encouragement. The Byrds were a ruthless and uncompromising lot. Contrast that with the comparatively brotherly situation in the Beatles. Let’s face it, singers don’t get much flatter or dryer than Ringo Starr, yet he was encouraged to sing. They gave him the throwaways and covers, sure, but a few years later he was given a top-tier Lennon-McCartney original on Pepper.
Ringo was encouraged to sing one song per album as a joke or a novelty. George Harrison getting squeezed out of the Beatles’ songwriting was not dissimilar to what happened to Gene Clark or, to some degree, to David Crosby.
George had to be coerced to write his first song, Gene was strong from the start, I think George started taking it more seriously around Help!
Just saying that there were power politics in both bands. Lennon and McCartney squeezed out Harrison, and later started bickering amongst themselves over who would get the a-sides of the singles, a battle McCartney mostly won from 1967 onwards. Letting Ringo sing his one novelty song per album doesn’t mean the Beatles were any less competitive internally than were the Byrds.
I agree with that. That Gene songs such as “She Don’t Care About Time” were squeezed off of the albums boggles the mind. Out of both bands, the songwriter who had the biggest complaint was Gene.
Never really had a problem with the arrangement of Satisfied Mind, largely because it, along with He Was a Friend, breaks up the 12-string monotony that mars the debut (my least favourite Byrds album - shoot me). I will say though, that moment that Crosby picks out that high harmony on "and suddenly it happened" is a highlight of the Byrds' entire output for me.
Songwriting credits and the royalties flowing therefrom are a totally different feature within the inter-band dynamic. I don’t understand the relevance of the dismissive “novelty songs” comment. The fact remains he sang, he improved, and he eventually sang lead on some of their most popular songs. Would/Could that have happened in the context of the Byrds? That’s what I’m asking.
