The Byrds At Twilight - A Love Story In Reverse

It happens to all of us. We come to an artist at what is seemingly the wrong time in their career. We are either too early, or too late, or we fall in love with what is - according to public opinion - the wrong album. I came to the Byrds early, then late, then in the 'wrong' order. And I don't much care. The twilight Byrds - the band that was, at least according to a bunch of critics in long, steady decline ever since Roger McGuinn became head Byrd and, for all intents and purposes, only Byrd, plus a bunch of hired guns. Snobs still kind of dismiss this era, basically closing the chapter on the Byrds once Crosby left. Most still agree that The Notorious Byrds Brothers is a masterpiece - and it is - but everything afterwards splits opinions, not least because of the Byrds' hard turn into country music. The hiring of Gram Parsons and the Byrds full-fledged country rock adventure Sweetheart Of The Rodeo usually still escapes unscathed, mostly due to 'The Cult Of Gram', but everything after, starting with the often-maligned Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde is often considered minor work. People who dismiss this era of course totally miss out on the biggest weapon of the twilight Byrds - guitar slinger (or rather: guitar bender) Clarence White, one of the most talented guitar players of his, or any, era. The songwriting might have been wobbly sometimes - especially once Skip Battin and partner in crime Kim Fowley entered the picture - but the music often was still magnificent, in no small part to White's inimitable guitar playing. 

My first exposure to The Byrds was the 'right Byrds' - "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Mr. Spaceman", both featured on one of the first CDs my dad ever bought, a compilation called California Sounds Of The 60s. That album was probably the single biggest influence of my future love for music from that era, a foundation for my love for both The Beach Boys and The Byrds. But The Byrds then disppeared for a long time - my entire adolescence - from my music hearing habits, only to come back in the weirdest avatar possible. Starting my studies, I stumbled in one of the bookstores adjacent to campus onto a huge bin with CDs for a buck - the One Buck Guy was born! But so was a newly rekindled love for The Byrds - via the worst means, a CD featuring completely fake songs by a couple of chaps of dubious intentions, ex-Animals bassist Danny McCullough together with producer Gerry Chapman. Their original songs were god-awful, and so were their Byrds covers. But you can't keep a great song down, no matter how hard you try. The moment I heard "Chestnut Mare", even in this ridiculously bad version, I knew it was a great song. The very next day I went to the record store and bought The Very Best of The Byrds, the U.K. compilation that was at the time the best and most complete Byrds compilation out there. And the rest is history.

Or almost. Because just as I rekindled my love for the Byrds, the band's re-issue program had reached the end of the Columbia era. So the first Byrds albums I possessed were Farther Along and (Untitled). And while (Untitled) rightfully is considered as the highlight of the twilight Byrds and has their last indisuputedly great song in the aforementioned "Chestnut Mare", Farther Along is considered to be pretty bad, or at least mediocre. But I love that album despite its massive flaws, from its sepia cover art to most of its songs. It's, by all objective measures, the 'wrong album' to fall in love with the Byrds, since it has almost nothing to do with the greatness of their classic era, but you love what you love. I continued to (re-) discover The Byrds in reverse, the last Columbia album from them that I bought was their much-heralded debut album Mr. Tambourine Man. And of course my fondness for the Byrds' twilight years has carried over to today and One Buck Records. 

This very long-winded introduction is the intro to the long-awaited arrival of the Byrds on this blog. I have featured some Byrds-related artists (Gene Clark, Manassas), but nothing from the band itself. I was blocked for months by ambitious plans for cover art on the first of what will be a series of alternate albums of the Byrds' twilight years. Well, all those plans fell through as I'm simply not very gifted in the visual arts department. So, with a resigned sigh I settled for something that had little to do with my ambitious plans, and decided to launch the project anyways. 

So, this will be your weekend double-header: Today's long-ish introduction to the Byrds project, and tomorrow the launch of the first of The Byrds' alternate albums, One Hundred Years From Now. But since some of you hopefully read all the way through my trip down memory lane, you deserve a little something for your trouble, so I compiled an album that covers the Byrds' twilight years, mainly through outtakes, alternative or live versions and single mixes, so as to have not too much overlap with the albums to follow. 

So, enjoy a first stroll down Byrds boulevard, then be back tomorrow to see the boys really saddle up...