The Byrds' adventures in stone cold country...

Your old pal and mine, FTIII has chimed in with some swell cover art that blows my low-budget b&w original (in which I was very disappointed) out of the water. As he would say "Should youse bums be desirous..." (and why wouldn't we be?)

Roger McGuinn knows about best laid plans of mice and men. His ambitions often outweighed the results he had to show for them. Like the musical Gene Tryp!, a hippie reworking of the Peer Gynt story, he was working on with Jaques Levy throughout most of 1969 and parts of 1970 that never came to fruitition. When Sweetheart of the Radio hit shelves in August 1968 and reintroduced the new, very different Byrds as all-out country players, this wasn't the record the ever ambitious McGuinn had planned. His big project after The Notorious Byrds Brothers closed the book firmly on the classic era of the band was to lead the Byrds into jazz and a vaguely defined "Space Music", composed on his beloved Moog. Well, Sweetheart of the Radio was...not that. As they say, plans changed. 

Plans mainly changed due to one Ingram Cecil Connor III, better known as Gram Parsons. As McGuinn half-humorously, half-horrified explained: "When I hired Gam Parsons, it was as a jazz pianist...I hired a piano player and I got George Jones in a Nudie suit!". Yup, that he did. And got way more than he bargained for. Parsons' love for country music reignited Chris Hillman's own soft spot for the genre, and while it took some convincing, soon McGuinn was on board, hatching another super-ambitious plan that, again, didn't come close to fruitition: an album presenting an all-encompassing American musical history of the 20th Century, starting with traditional old-time bluegrass, then country music, then rhythm'n'blues and rock'n'roll to finally move into - you guessed it - the music of the future, "space music". But Parsons' traditionalist country leanings soon put the kibosh on McGuinn's expansive plans and any notions of "space music". Instead it was all country, outfitted with enough rock energy to appeal to the counter-culture. 

But that, of course, wasn't the end of the story, either. Parsons more or less hijacked the group from underneath McGuinn's nose, not only dictating the musical direction, but also taking the lion's share of lead vocals, essentially refashioning the Byrds as his band and relegating McGuinn to a bit player, while simultaneously lobbying to include pedal steel player J.D. Maness as a full-time Byrd. Then fate, in the shape of a possible contract dispute with Parson's old label, Lee Hazlewood's LHI, intervened. Not being sure that Parsons had fulfilled his contractual obligations over there, CBS wanted Parsons' vocals to be wiped off the album, so McGuinn began re-recording all of Parsons' lead vocals. When the dispute got cleared up, only Parsons' sentinemental classic "Hickory Wind" hadn't been touched. To appease Parsons, two covers with his lead vocals, Merle Haggard's "Life In Prison" and 'You're Still On My Mind" were put on the album, but as Parsons himself rightfully pointed out, these pedestrian covers were recorded as warm-up numbers, not necessarily serious contenders for the album. Not to mention that a Parsons outtake such as "Lazy Days", could have been put on the album instead. In the end, this reversal of fortunes was no doubt something McGuinn was secretly happy about. His status as King Byrd had been re-established while forcing Parsons in the supporting role he was originally supposed to have. 

Sweetheart of the Rodeo remains a slightly baffling album, and for me personally, not a favorite of the band. Its importance in the band's discography and in the development and cultural acceptance of crossing the borders between country and rock'n'roll is undeniable and gives it classic status, but as an album of music it just doesn't do it for me. So this Byrds album logically is the first to get the patented OBG alternate album treatment. First order of the day: Chuck those mediocre country covers, while also re-installing some of Parsons lead vocal work. Unlike what has long been reported, not all Parsons leads were irrevokably erased (in fact, traces remain on the original album, with McGuinn and Hillman dubbed over them), so future expanded and deluxe editions wielded a number of tracks with Parsons' original lead vocals in tact. On the finished album, McGuinn had - in what became somewhat typical for him - imitated the source, aping Parsons' vocals rather than singing in his normal style, with questionable results. "The Christian Life" was an especially egregious example. The irony of Parsons - who probably knew every deadly sin's second name and favorite pet -  evoking Christian values and a life of purity was one thing, but in McGuinn's mannered ersatz vocal, the song sounded like pure parody. 

With Parsons' lead vocals on "You Don"t Miss Your Water" and "The Christian Life" restored, I now wanted to rebalance the album, so McGuinn's slightly psychedelic take on the folk standard "Pretty Polly" gets reinstated here. I split the difference between Parsons' own take on "One Hundred Years From Now" and the excellent album version that features co-leads by Hillman and McGuinn, so both get the nod, one as the opener, the other as the closer. Given its presence, it naturally becomes the new title song (I never liked Sweetheart of the Rodeo as a title much either). And there is some small amount of justice for Kevin Kelley, who got the short end of the stick when the band drafted in Clarence White who in turn asked for old bandmate Gene Parsons to join, so Chris Hillman had to tell his cousin that his services were no longer required. For years, Kelley's lead vocals on "All I Have Is Memories" were considered lost, but have now also been recovered, so Kelley at long last gets a highlight spot on the only Byrds album he played on. 

So, One Hundred Years From Now it is, an album that I think genuinely runs better than the original Sweetheart, while also giving a pretty democratic view on the Byrds as a country group with balanced contributions by everyone. 

So, let's revisit those country roads with them country Byrds once more, shall we...?!

My original, very not awesome cover art...