#233 - The Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man (1965)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:
BACKGROUND – THE BYRDS
The Byrds formed in Los Angeles in 1964. The band underwent multiple line-up changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn remaining the sole consistent member, until the group disbanded in 1973. Initially, they pioneered the musical genre of folk rock. As the 1960s progressed, the band was also influential in originating psychedelic rock, raga rock, and country rock. The band’s signature blend of clear harmony singing and McGuinn’s jangly twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar has continued to be influential on popular music up to the present day. Among the band’s most enduring songs are their cover versions of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn, along with the self-penned originals, “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better”, “Eight Miles High”, “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”, “Ballad of Easy Rider” and “Chestnut Mare”.
The nucleus of the Byrds formed in early 1964, when Jim McGuinn, Gene Clark, and David Crosby came together as a trio. All three musicians had a background rooted in folk music, with each one having worked as a folk singer on the acoustic coffeehouse circuit during the early 1960s. In addition, they had all served time, independently of each other, as sidemen in various "collegiate folk" groups. McGuinn had also spent time as a professional songwriter at the Brill Building in New York City, under the tutelage of Bobby Darin. By early 1964, McGuinn had become enamored with the music of the Beatles, and had begun to intersperse his solo folk repertoire with acoustic versions of Beatles' songs. While performing at the Troubadour folk club in Los Angeles, McGuinn was approached by fellow Beatles fan Gene Clark, and the pair soon formed a duo, playing Beatles' covers, renditions of traditional folk songs, and some of their own stuff. Soon after, David Crosby introduced himself to the duo at The Troubadour and began harmonizing with them on some of their songs. Impressed by the blend of their voices, the three musicians formed a trio and named themselves the Jet Set, a moniker inspired by McGuinn's love of aeronautics. Crosby had a connection that allowed them studio time to continue working on their desired Beatles-folk hybrid style. Drummer Michael Clarke was added to the Jet Set in mid-1964. Clarke was recruited largely due to his good looks and Brian Jones-esque hairstyle, rather than for his musical experience, which was limited to having played congas in a semi-professional capacity. He didn't own his own drum kit and initially had to play on a makeshift setup consisting of cardboard boxes and a tambourine.
In August 1964, band manager Jim Dickson managed to acquire a copy of the then-unreleased Bob Dylan song "Mr. Tambourine Man", which he felt would make an effective cover for the Jet Set. Although the band was initially unimpressed with the song, they began rehearsing it with a rock band arrangement, giving it more of a rock feel. In an attempt to bolster the group's confidence in the song, Dickson invited Dylan himself to World Pacific to hear the band perform "Mr. Tambourine Man". Impressed by the group's rendition, Dylan enthusiastically commented, "Wow, man! You can dance to that!" His ringing endorsement erased any lingering doubts that the band had over the song's suitability. Soon after, inspired by the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night, the band decided to equip themselves with similar instruments to the Fab Four. In October 1964, Dickson recruited mandolin player Chris Hillman as the Jet Set's bassist. Hillman's background was more oriented towards country music than folk or rock, wo week's after securing a recording contract with Columbia Records courtesy of Miles Davis, the group renamed themselves "The Byrds" a moniker that echoed the deliberate misspelling of the Beatles.
While the band waited for "Mr. Tambourine Man" to be released, they began a residency at Ciro's Le Disc nightclub on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. The band's regular appearances allowed them to hone their ensemble playing, perfect their aloof stage persona, and expand their repertoire. It was during their residency at the nightclub that the band first began to accrue a dedicated following among L.A.'s youth culture and hip Hollywood fraternity, with scenesters like Kim Fowley, eter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Arthur Lee, and Sonny & Cher regularly attending the band's performances. After an impromptu drop-in from Bob Dylan and performance with the band one night, the excitement generated by the Byrds at Ciro's quickly made them a must-see fixture on L.A.'s nightclub scene and resulted in hordes of teenagers filling the sidewalks outside the club, desperate to see the band perform. A number of noted music historians and authors have suggested that the crowds of young Bohemians and hipsters that gathered at Ciro's to see the Byrds perform represented the first stirrings of the West Coast hippie counterculture.
The Byrds enjoyed tremendous popularity among teenage pop fans, with their music receiving widespread airplay on Top 40 radio and their faces adorning countless teen magazines. Much was made at the time of the Byrds' unconventional dress sense, with their casual attire strikingly at odds with the prevailing trend for uniformity among contemporary beat groups. With all five members sporting Beatlesque moptop haircuts, Crosby dressed in a striking green suede cape, and McGuinn wearing a pair of distinctive rectangular "granny glasses", the band exuded California cool, while also looking suitably non-conformist. In particular, McGuinn's distinctive rectangular spectacles would go on to become popular among members of the burgeoning hippie counterculture in the United States.
Although McGuinn was widely regarded as the Byrds' bandleaderby this point, the band actually had multiple frontmen, with McGuinn, Clark, and later Crosby and Hillman all taking turns to sing lead vocalsin roughly equal measures across the group's repertoire. Despite the dizzying array of personnel changes that the group underwent in later years, this lack of a dedicated lead singer would remain a stylistic trait of the Byrds' music throughout the majority of the band's existence. A further distinctive aspect of the Byrds' image was their unsmiling air of detachment, both on stage and in front of the camera. This natural aloofness was compounded by the large amounts of marijuanathat the band smoked and often resulted in moody and erratic live performances. The music press was extremely critical of the Byrds' abilities as a live act during the mid-1960s.
The tour enabled the band to meet and socialize with a number of top English groups, including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. In particular, the band's relationship with the Beatles would prove important for both acts, with the two groups again meeting in Los Angeles some weeks later, upon the Byrds' return to America. During this period of fraternization, the Beatles were vocal in their support of the Byrds, publicly acknowledging them as creative competitors and naming them as their favorite American group. Multiple music columnists and biographers have commented on the Byrds influence on the Beatles' late 1965 album Rubber Soul, most notably on the songs "Nowhere Man" and "If I Needed Someone", the latter of which utilizes a guitar riff similar to that in the Byrds' cover of "The Bells of Rhymney."
The Byrds' second album, Turn! Turn! Turn!, was released in December 1965. While it received a mostly positive reception, critical consensus deemed it to be inferior to the band's debut. It was a commercial success, peaking at number 17 on the U.S. charts and number 11 in the UK. Turn! Turn! Turn!, along with Mr. Tambourine Man, served to establish the Byrds as one of rock music's most important creative forces. In 1965, the Byrds recorded a new, self-penned composition titled "Eight Miles High" which was released as a single included on the group's third album, Fifth Dimension. The song represented a creative leap forward for the band and is often considered the first full-blown psychedelic rock recording by critics, although other contemporaneous acts such as Donovan and the Yardbirds, were also exploring similar musical territory. Upon release, "Eight Miles High" was banned by many U.S. radio stations, following allegations made by the broadcasting trade journal the Gavin Report, that its lyrics advocated recreational drug use. The band and their management strenuously denied these allegations, stating that the song's lyrics actually described an airplane flight to London and the band's subsequent concert tour of England. Just prior to the release of "Eight Miles High", Gene Clark left the band. His departure was partly due to his fear of flying, which made it impossible for him to keep up with the Byrds' itinerary, and partly due to his increasing isolation within the band. Clark, who had witnessed a fatal airplane crash as a youth, had a panic attack on a plane bound for New York and as a result, he disembarked and refused to take the flight. In effect, Clark's exit from the plane represented his exit from the Byrds, with McGuinn telling him, "If you can't fly, you can't be a Byrd." However, it has become known in the years since the incident that there were other stress and anxiety-related factors at work, as well as resentment within the band that Gene's songwriting income had made him the wealthiest member of the group
After their 4th album, Younger Than Yesterday, while the band worked on The Notorious Byrd Brothers album throughout late 1967, there was increasing tension and acrimony among the members of the group, which eventually resulted in the dismissal of Crosby. McGuinn and Hillman became increasingly irritated by what they saw as Crosby's overbearing egotism and his attempts to dictate the band's musical direction. It didn't help that Crosby gave lengthy in-between-song speeches at the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival on controversial subjects, including the JFK assassination and the benefits of giving LSD to "all the statesmen and politicians in the world". He further irritated his bandmates by performing with rival group Buffalo Springfield at Monterey, filling in for ex-member Neil Young. His reputation within the band deteriorated even more following the commercial failure of "Lady Friend", the first Byrds' single to feature a song penned solely by Crosby on its A-side. ensions within the band finally erupted in August, when Michael Clarke quit the sessions over disputes with his bandmates and his dissatisfaction with the material that the songwriting members of the band were providing. Crosby felt that the band should rely on self-penned material for their albums, rather than cover songs by other artists and writers. In October, McGuinn and Hillman drove to Crosby's home and fired him, stating that they would be better off without him Crosby subsequently received a cash settlement, with which he bought a sailboat[. Soon after, he began working with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash in the successful supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash.
Following Crosby's departure, Gene Clark briefly rejoined the band, but left just three weeks later, after again refusing to board an aircraft while on tour. Michael Clarke also returned to the recording studio briefly, towards the end of the album sessions, before being informed by McGuinn and Hillman that they were dismissing him from the band. Now reduced to a duo, McGuinn and Hillman elected to hire new band members. Hillman's cousin Kevin Kelley was quickly recruited as the band's new drummer, and the trio embarked on an early 1968 college tour. It soon became apparent, however, that recreating the band's studio recordings with a three-piece line-up wasn't going to be possible and so, McGuinn and Hillman, in a fateful decision for their future career direction, hired Gram Parsons as a keyboard player, although he quickly moved to guitar. Following his induction into the band, Gram Parsons began to assert his own musical agenda in which he intended to marry his love of country and western music with youth culture's passion for rock and, in doing so, make country music fashionable for a young audience. Although McGuinn had some reservations about the band's proposed new direction, Parsons convinced him that a move towards country music could theoretically expand the group's declining audience. McGuinn was persuaded to change direction and abandon his original concept for the group's next album, which had been to record a history of 20th century American popular music, and instead explore country rock. While recording in Nashville, the band played at the legendary Grande Ole Opry, but were booed and heckled off the stage due to them being "hippie longhairs" and a more conservative audience. After completing the album, the band flew to England for a performance at Royal Albert Hall. After that show and prior to departing to South Africa for a tour, Parsons quit on the grounds of not wanting to perform in a racially divided country, but the band had suspicions that he quit to hang with the Rolling Stones. The ensuing South African tour was a disaster, with the band finding themselves having to play to segregated audiences—something that they had been assured by promoters they would not have to do. The Byrds left South Africa amid a storm of bad publicity and death threats, while the press in the U.S. and the UK attacked the band for undertaking the tour and questioned their political integrity.
The band continued on with Clarence White on guitar and with other lineup changes, and would continue to write and release music into 1972. Morale within the crurrent version of the group slowly deteriorated over typical things (band pay, dissatsifaction with fellow band members performances, etc). Discussions regarding a reunion between the original give had taken place as early as July 1971, around the same time as the then current line-up of the band were recording the Farther Alongalbum. Plans for a reunion accelerated in mid-1972,when the founder of Asylum Records, David Geffen, offered each of the original band members a sizable amount of money to reform and record an album for his label. The reunion actually took place in early October 1972, recording their first album together in seven years. Following completion of the album, Crosby persuaded McGuinn to dissolve the Columbia version of the Byrds, who were still touring at that time. In keeping with the new spirit of reconciliation that the reunion fostered, McGuinn permanently disbanded the Columbia lineup of the group in February 1973, following a very bad performance in New Jersey. McGuinn canceled the band's remaining concert commitments and made way for the reunion of the original five-piece line-up. The reunion album, titled simply Byrds, was released to mixed reviews. As a result, a planned tour in support of the album failed to materialize. Among the album's shortcomings, critics made note of a lack of sonic unity and the absence of the Byrds' signature jangly guitar sound. Between 1977 and 1980, McGuinn, Clark and Hillman worked on and off together as a trio, modeled after Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The 1980s saw more reunions in various forms, but disputes over who could use the name "Byrds" created more issues, reuniting one last time at their RnR HOF induction.
In January 1991, the Byrds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an occasion that saw the five original members performing together for the last time. Gene Clark died of a heart attack in 1991, and Michael Clarke died of liver failure in 1993.
In the months following the release of the Mr. Tambourine Man album, many acts began to imitate the Byrds' hybrid of a British Invasion beat, jangly guitar playing, and poetic or socially conscious lyrics. The band's influence can be heard in many recordings released by American acts in 1965 and 1966, including the Turtles, Simon & Garfunkel, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Mamas & the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, and Sonny & Cher. The jangly, folk rock sound that was pioneered by the Byrds on Mr. Tambourine Man has also been influential on acts like Big Star, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, the Smiths, the Bangles, the Stone Roses, and Wilco, among others.
ALBUM BACKGROUND – MR. TAMBOURINE MAN
Mr. Tambourine Man is the first studio album by The Byrds. It was recorded in the early portion of 1965. The album contains Byrds standards such as “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better”, and “All I Really Want to Do”. Mr. Tambourine Man is considered to be the first successful album to combine folk music with rock and roll and pop influences.
Although they only attained the huge success of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys for a brief period in the mid-'60s, time has judged the Byrds to be nearly as influential as those groups in the long run. They were not solely responsible for devising folk-rock, but they were responsible for melding the innovations and energy of the British Invasion with the best lyrical and musical elements of contemporary folk music.
Mr. Tambourine Man is the debut studio album by the American rock band the Byrds and was released in June 1965. Along with the Dylan-penned single of the same name, Mr. Tambourine Man established the band as an internationally successful act and is widely regarded by critics as representing the first effective American challenge to the chart dominance of the Beatles and other British Invasion bands during the mid-1960s.
The album was also influential in popularizing the musical subgenre known as folk rock, by melding intelligent lyrical content with electric guitars and a rock backbeat. The term "folk rock" was first coined by the American music press to describe the Byrds' sound in mid-1965, around the same time that the Mr. Tambourine Man album was released.
The album peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Top LPs chart and reached number 7 in the United Kingdom. It is the band's most successful album on either chart.] The "Mr. Tambourine Man" single was released ahead of the album in April 1965 and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart. A second single, "All I Really Want to Do", also a Dylan cover, was moderately successful in the U.S., but fared better in the UK, where it reached the top ten.
Although the band's musicianship improved following the recording of their debut single, it was assumed by both Columbia and the band's management that their entire debut album would be recorded with session musicians. The band, however, had other ideas and insisted that they be allowed to perform the album's instrumental accompaniment themselves. By the start of recording sessions for the album, the label felt satisfied that the group had polished their sound enough to be able to produce professional-sounding backing tracks and the Byrds were allowed to record the rest of the Mr. Tambourine Man album without any help from session musicians.