Strikes me that that is indeed McGuinn speaking later with the benefit of hindsight. Not sure I personally buy the line that Croz was deliberately out to get McGuinn - they seemed to have been on good terms (well, relatively speaking I guess) as Croz sang on McGuinn's solo album and McGuinn listened to his advice when he said he should self produce his debut rather than go with Terry Melcher. Seems odd that those two things would've happened if McGuinn had felt that Croz had deliberately tried to sideline him. Anyway, back to the album and See The Sky - it's ok. I know they didn't write it, but it sounds like it was written (or arranged) to be an epic album closer and seems a little self concious because of it to me. Good song though.
Crosby HAD to sing on McGuinn's solo album, or the Byrds reunion album would not have happened. Columbia demanded Crosby appear on the McGuinn album as a condition for allowing McGuinn to appear on the Byrds reunion.
I remembered there was a contemporary McGuinn interview where he talked about that, so I went back and checked it. Interestingly, he mentions the duet album as being a separate project in addition to Crosby's appearance on his solo album, saying the plan is to release it in spring 1974. Obviously that never happened, along with the Byrds tour and possible second Byrds reunion album which he mentions. What’s Crosby’s role with your album? He’s gonna help me out. He’ll sing harmonies and stuff like that. I’ll be producing it myself, but I don’t know if he’ll get a co-producer’s credit or not. We’ll have an album of both of us – a duet album – due out in the springtime. Atlantic had to give Columbia this shot at David so that the original Byrds album could be released on Asylum.
I came across my $1 copy of the reunion album in the basement the other day & gave it a listen. I don't think anything on the album is truly bad, but on the whole it's mediocre. Assuming the individual instruments & voices were well-recorded, something was certainly lost in the mix. The whole record sounds somewhat murky & dull up until the "See The Sky About To Rain" coda, where it suddenly turns very shrill. The lead vocals are too recessed in the mix & while I always like to hear Gene, his vocal on "Cowgirl In The Sand" sounds as if he had dosed himself with a whole bottle of cough syrup. Other than an ill-advised attempt to rock out on "Born To Rock 'n' Roll", it seems they were going for some good old majestic Byrds music & fell pretty short. I'd like to think Melcher or Usher could have helped, but given the circumstances & attitudes involved, maybe they could only have given it a little more polish.
How these guys who wrote 2 songs a year thought they’d put out all these albums in such a small span of time is pretty funny. No wonder McGuinn was hoarding material away from the reunion album.
I think Terry was in a rut after Untitled; He had worked on an abandoned album with Gram Parsons, he did Byrdmaniax which got him canned from the Byrds and then he did the first mix of Roger's first solo album and he was canned from that. Crosby had nothing good to say about Melcher or Usher so, being as he had the most clout, Crosby would have vetoed both of them. I think if they could have collectively sucked it up and allowed themselves a real producer, I think Jack Richardson who did Poco's A Good Feelin to Know or Richard Polodor who worked with the Dillards and Souther Hillman Furay would have been decent choices. We'll never know.
I was just listening to Notorious on SACD. The final outtake where the entire team is railing on Mike is quite illuminating.
I think one of the main points of doing the reunion for Crosby was that he wanted to be in charge (and put McGuinn in his place). I don't know that he would have accepted an outside producer unless it was someone who would basically just do his bidding. And of course the only way the album could have had a chance at being better would have been if they'd had a producer who might have pushed and challenged them. Crosby's outsized clout pretty much doomed the chances of this thing working out creatively.
I really like the album, but with so many of their own originals, those covers were silly to do, if not plain stupid, imo, esp w/ all the negative hoopla over Crosby's songs on NBBros. But, to me, "Laughing" is worth the cost of the whole record, and the closest in sound to the real Byrds. The version on Crosby's first solo album is great, and probably my favorite "Grateful Dead" performance; i was never a fan. Maybe it was a management decision. The inside photo collage is strange as well. Looks photoshopped before photoshop! But, I really do like the album. The CD version, as most here probably know, the last song's intro is clipped. Ridiculous. I don't go for the pot excuse at all. McGuinn just didn't sound into it.
It is indeed a very amateurish job of editing... Hillman's guitar headstock just disappears into thin air. It's unnecessary too. They had a bunch of photos of the guys together, and for some reason they took one and edited it so they are crammed more closely together. There was no reason to do that... an unedited photo would have worked fine: To the best of my knowledge, only the early-90s pressings on the Elektra label (manufactured in Japan and Europe) have the clipped intro. The Wounded Bird from 2004 does not, and to my knowledge neither do any more recent pressings.
Crosby as his own producer worked well on his solo album, but that approach was never going to work on a Byrds album. Hey, maybe they should have called Allen Stanton! After all, 'Fifth Dimension' is my favorite rock album...
I agree... Fifth Dimension has the best sound and the best instrumental performances on the whole of any Byrds album. Yep. They did a series of photos "onstage" at the Troubadour, specifically for the album cover. I wonder if this was the only time all five of them were actually in the same room together?
I always thought Born to Rock and Roll was another Gene Tryp number, being co-written with Levy, with the lyrics being in character (as opposed to “Roger”) with a tinge of Broadway camp.
Draggin also, what a great song that could have been for The Byrds with all the airplane references. You know we are blaming Crosby for the production of The Byrds reunion album but he has to also be blamed for convincing Roger to produce his debut album, Terry Melcher could have really made that album shine I think. Roger's debut is good, but could have been much better I think.
