THE BYRDS: BALLAD OF EASY RIDER (1969)
1) Ballad Of Easy Rider; 2)
Fido; 3) Oil In My Lamp; 4) Tulsa County; 5) Jack Tarr The Sailor; 6) Jesus Is
Just Alright; 7) It's All Over Now, Baby Blue; 8) There Must Be Someone; 9)
Gunga Din; 10) Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos); 11) Armstrong, Aldrin And
Collins.
Almost everybody will tell you that Ballad Of Easy Rider was a huge advance
over Dr. Byrds, even if,
paradoxically, it is far less ambitious and creative. For starters, the
heavy-rocking component has pretty much been chucked out the window — a few
distorted guitar solos crop up every now and then, but nothing even remotely
approaching the thunder of ʻWheel's On Fireʼ; here, the Byrds settle for a far
calmer, softer roots-rock sound, somewhat of an amalgamation of the early
folk-based sound and the Sweetheart
country-soaked approach.
Second and more important, there is only one
song here written by Roger McGuinn; everything else is either contributed by
other members of the band or comes completely from outside. This is not meant
to sound as an insult to his general songwriting skills, but the material
written for Dr. Byrds, although
experimental, was clearly weak, and getting rid of that whole «space cowboy»
baggage was probably necessary to avoid further embarrassment. Actually, there is one track here that is more space-cowboyish
than ever — ʻArmstrong, Aldrin And Collinsʼ merges NASA voiceovers with a
little acoustic ditty about the latest American heroes, written by country guy
Zeke Manners; but it is just a short amusing epilogue that does not aspire or
amount to much.
At the heart
of the record are tracks like the title one or ʻGunga Dinʼ — haste-less, regal,
slightly transcendental in their unnerving acoustic bliss, well comparable to
the Byrds' classic legacy and, for that matter, completely absent on Dr. Byrds. Dylan, who originally began
work on the title track as the theme of Easy
Rider, pretty much stopped after writing "the river flows, it flows to
the sea" and telling the contractors to pass it on to McGuinn — and sure
enough, McGuinn put it to a melody that would probably evoke visions of a river
flowing to the sea without a single word. The idea to orchestrate the song
belonged to producer Terry Melcher, who seeked to emulate the effect of
Nilsson's ʻEverybody's Talkingʼ, and they do
emulate that effect, except that ʻBallad Of Easy Riderʼ has no tragic overtones
and is essentially a static, beautiful soundscape — perfect as the movie theme
(it is, after all, about /the impossibility of/ finding paradise on Earth),
perfect as a Byrds song, one of McGuinn's tenderest and sincerest vocal
performances.
Interestingly, new drummer Gene Parsons almost
has Roger beat, or at least, matched, by contributing ʻGunga Dinʼ, a song
about personal tribulations and discriminations set to an equally becalming
arpeggiated melody — no orchestration this time, and the multi-tracked vocals
are not as moving as Roger's solo parts, but chorus harmonies are cute (it's
quite endearing how in the final "I know that it's a sin... Gunga
Din" the title is delivered almost with a «sigh» of some sorts, in the
«life is tough, but we'll get over it» kind of sense). His is clearly the best
contribution of all the new band members — John Yorke's ʻFidoʼ is amusing, but
first, it is another song about a dog
(as if ʻOld Blueʼ was not enough; and they would return yet again with
ʻBuglerʼ), which is discriminating towards cat lovers, and second, its melody
is pretty much a complete rip-off of Manfred Mann's cover of Dylan's ʻQuinn The
Eskimoʼ, differing only by the inclusion of a rather gratuitous drum solo.
Probably they should have just gone ahead and covered the song instead. With
some certified Inuit drumming for an interlude.
The covers are largely selected from the
traditional folk/blues/country pool, although Bob gets his share — finally,
they come out with an official release of ʻIt's All Over Now Baby Blueʼ, recorded
at an ultra-slow tempo with triple repetition of "it's all over now",
which may not be such a good idea (does the message really need rubbing in?).
There's an alternately funny and disturbing reinvention of ʻJesus Is Just
Alrightʼ as a semi-progressive rocker with «alarmed» vocal harmonies, sounding
as if the band were performing an exorcism or a general ward-off-evil ritual
with the song; an empathetic cover of Woody Guthrie's ʻDeporteeʼ, which would
have made a good inclusion on Sweetheart
at the expense of, say, ʻChristian Lifeʼ; and some gorgeous vocal harmonies on
the old anthem ʻOil In My Lampʼ. None of these songs are masterpieces of the
human spirit, but they're nice, listenable, and reliable, and the new Byrds do
them full justice.
In all, the goodness of Ballad lies precisely in its new-found humility — it's short,
quiet, friendly, and almost completely free of ambitions and presumptions. It's
as if the Byrds are no longer interested at all in the big race, but just want
to share with us their love for the weather-worn American spirit, and not even
in a «defying» way, as it was with Sweetheart,
without locking themselves into one single narrow formula to which some of us
furthermore might be alergic. If Dr.
Byrds showed the world that the band could no longer be «relevant» even if
it tried, Easy Rider shows that they
no longer care about being relevant —
and, in the process, are rewarded by the good fairy with a record that, almost
haf a century later, sounds timeless, rather than time-bound. Naturally, this
deserves a thumbs
up.
Very likely the best of the latter day Byrds lineup releases, even if some of that crazy (desperate?) experimentation from the Dr. Byrds days is missed. BOER makes an excellent companion and comparison to the Burritos' Gilded Palace Of Sin (at a time when the Burritos' lineup contained more Byrds than the group McGuinn was leading).
ReplyDeleteWhile the Burritos definitely have the edge in sheer songwriting skill, the Byrds of BOER and Untitled do have the advantage of being the better road band (just picture Gram Parsons trying to duel with Clarence White). It's a pity that both bands fizzled out at almost the exact same time, with Gram getting dismissed from the Burritos for rampant unprofessional behavior, and the Byrds nose diving into the Melcher-directed muck of Byrdmaniax.