THE BYRDS: BYRDS (1973)
1) Full Circle; 2) Sweet Mary;
3) Changing Heart; 4) For Free; 5) Born To Rock & Roll; 6) Things Will Be
Better; 7) Cowgirl In The Sand; 8) Long Live The King; 9) Borrowing Time; 10)
Laughing; 11) (See The Sky) About To Rain.
If I am not too mistaken, this was the first
ever «reunion / comeback experience» in the history of rock music, at least as
far as major league players are concerned. The event happened largely by
accident — by late 1972, it so chanced that all five original Byrds found
themselves at the crossroads, with their solo careers (including McGuinn's
disaster with Farther Along) either
commercially flopping or reaching a certain turning point (for instance,
Crosby, Stills & Nash were on a lengthy hiatus). Had they been the Beatles,
their egos would probably stay too huge and mutually repellent to succumb to
attraction. But they weren't the Beatles, and five years after mutual disagreements
tore them apart, the wounds healed well enough to initiate reunion talks. Throw
in a nice financial proposition from Asylum's David Geffen, and the cat was in
the bag.
One thing that was not in the bag, though, was nostalgia. The reunited band did have
the exact same lineup as the Great Original Byrds of Mr. Tambourine Man — McGuinn, Crosby, Hillman, Clark, and Clarke —
but they immediately came to an agreement that they would do anything but consciously try to recreate the
«harmonies-and-jangle» atmosphere of their early albums, partly because trying
to cohesively work as a single unit was the thing that ended up driving them
apart in the first place, and partly because they were, after all, still too
young and too full of ideas to bow down to pure nostalgia. Consequently, the
reunion album, as everybody seems to agree, is not really a true «Byrds» album
— it is a bunch of solo tracks, collected from four out of five members: more
precisely, McGuinn contributes 2 songs, Crosby contributes 3 (one of them a
Joni Mitchell cover), Hillman and Clark also 2 each, and then there are two
Neil Young covers, suggested by Clark and defended by Crosby (saying that the
band was now covering Neil Young instead of Dylan because Neil was for the
Seventies what Bob was for the Sixties).
It is actually quite curious how the original
Byrds were pigeonholed — reviews at the time were scathing, with people
complaining about the disunity and the lack of jingle-jangle much the same way
that in 1969, somebody could easily
complain about the lack of "yeah yeah yeah"s on Abbey Road. True, the record on the whole sounds more like a James
Taylor album with group harmonies, but even James Taylor in his prime had some
good songs, and if there is no unity, at least there is diversity. Let's face
it, when you have three songs on your record that totally sound like solo David
Crosby, it's still better than when your record consists entirely of songs by solo David Crosby. On the other hand, the
downside is also that in a situation like this, band members may be tempted to
offer their weakest material for the collective pot, consciously or
subconsciously saving up the best stuff for true solo albums.
The bottomline is that Byrds sounds quite nice. Only Crosby's ʻLaughingʼ, one of those
lengthy stoned rants of his set to a completely unmemorable melody, sticks out
unpleasantly with its 5:40 running length (and, adding insult to injury, it was
already released earlier on his first solo album, so there's hardly any other
reason than pure laziness behind its inclusion). Everything else ranges from
cute to sympathetic — even the Neil Young covers, with ʻCowgirl In The Sandʼ remade
as a bouncy, almost cheerful country-pop number and ʻSee The Sky About To Rainʼ
featuring a soulful Clark lead vocal and even, in the form of a small bonus
for the fans, some genuine 12-string jangle in the coda section.
Clark's two originals, ʻFull Circleʼ (also
brought from his solo career) and ʻChanging Heartʼ, arguably have the best
vocal melodies on the album — nothing too breathtaking, but the «alarmed»
intonations on the chorus of the latter agree very well with the song's message
(warning about the fickleness of fame and all that), and although the semantics
of the line "funny how the circle is a wheel" is a bit tautological,
its delivery is inspiring, and so well punctuated by the added mandolin lead
line. As for Hillman, he contributes the album's poppiest tune, ʻThings Will Be
Betterʼ, with colorful power pop riffs and lively choruses that would not be
out of place on a contemporary Big Star or Badfinger album.
This leaves McGuinn, and, surprisingly, he is
probably the second weakest link on the album after Crosby — throwing in his
filler bit ʻBorn To Rock & Rollʼ (which has very little to do with actual
rock'n'roll, not to mention stealing the verse melody from Dylan's ʻI Shall Be
Releasedʼ) and the Jacques Levy collaboration ʻSweet Maryʼ, where I guess Levy
wrote the lyrics and Roger borrowed the melody from some traditional sea
shanty. Not that it doesn't sound nice — it's always nice to hear McGuinn sing
traditional ballads, and the mandolin touch is again a gallant addition — but
it does seem like, out of all the contributors, McGuinn contributed the
smallest efforts to this reunion. It's basically like, "okay, guys, I've
held up the Byrds name for four goddamn years on my own, now I'm just going to
sit back and relax while you do your
job". But I guess he may have thought he earned it, after all. Besides,
less work — fewer reasons for arguing over artistic decisions with his former
pals.
In retrospect, I think that the record does
deserve a mild thumbs
up, because of all the little pretty things and the essential lack
of ugly bad things. Formally, it is
sort of a belated Abbey Road for
these guys — a «let's-come-together-and-be-friendly-for-the-last-time» type of
album, except, of course, that there is not even a small attempt at the
grandness of vision that characterizes Abbey
Road; in the end, The Byrds never truly had
a «grand vision», and they weren't about to try and develop one at the end of
the road. It is not likely that anybody would want to revisit Byrds on a regular basis — however, it
is still very comforting and satisfying to have it, witnessing the band coming
«full circle» indeed. From Mr.
Tambourine Man all the way to Byrds
— such a long, strange, bizarre trip, beginning in one place and ending up in
several completely different ones. Very instructive, at the very least.
Bleah, I've never liked it. From the circumstances of its creation (blatant nostalgic cash grab, what with the individual names of the performers listed prominently at the top) to its slipshod construction, this just does nothing for me. I'd prefer to stick with "Farther Along" as the swan song of the "real" Byrds, at least in the sense of being a working group still attempting to evolve and develop.
ReplyDeleteThis album has at least several very good songs that would have been highlights on any post YTY Byrds album. The Gene Clark songs are wonderful and I had like a day where I would keep listening to Cowgirl in the Sand on repeat. I still prefer the original, but this one is excellent in a different way.
ReplyDeleteWhen I listen to it, I enjoy it well enough. But when I remember that it's !!!The Byrds!!!, I'm disappointed. It's the problem of expectations, like you wrote at your old site, and for me it's inescapable.
ReplyDeleteThe songs are pleasant and there's no true clunker, but when I lower my expectations enough to appreciate it, I stop caring about listening to it. I guess from the perspective of the entire career of The Byrds' name it's worthwhile to have the original five put together an acceptable last hurrah, but I don't see how it represents them 'coming full circle'. They barely seem to be working *together* in any way besides playing on each other's tracks. It feels like listening to a compilation of solo songs [actually, wikipedia suggests this was intentional: to avoid the sorts of conflicts that split the original band, they didn't write any songs together - too bad! tension could have led to something more interesting].
I can only truly admire the coda to the last song. Suddenly, that old chiming electric guitar appears, now mixed with layers of acoustic guitar and mandolin. But soon it's over. It's tantalizing... now that's a way to honor their past, their present, and point to something new. I wish it were the first song, not the last. Then the album would open with a cover (a satisfying nod to Tambourine Man and Turn! x3) in the country-rock, rootsy style you would expect of these guys at this time, but after that pause in the song that glorious updated jangle would kick in. Conceptually it would have been a great statement: "Here's our cover of our 'songwriter of the decade'; yes, we have become masters of country-rock; yes, we can still effing harmonize; sounds nice, right? oh, did you think we forgot the jangle? Did you!? [pause] WRONG!" ***JANGLE-BOMB***
I wonder if the rest of the album would seem more remarkable if I just rearranged the song order a bit... could be a fun exercise to think through a re-ordering of the album... but in the end the songs probably needed a bit more work and input from the other songwriters.
Fine album, likeable. But disappointing, given the legacy of the name and the musicians. Probably doomed from the start...
There's a book called The Worst Albums of All Time or something and of course this made the list. My favorite comment was: "Putting Crosby in the producer's chair is the equivalent of assembling the New York Yankees and batting Phil Rizzuto cleanup." Not sure how many baseball fans are out there, but I thought it was funny.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy the fact that at least now I can sing "Cowgirl in the sand" along with the tune - something that Neil Young's Sesame Street voice always disallowed me to do.
ReplyDeleteHere I will defend David Crosby. I don't deny that he was (still is?) a cocaine drenched decadent asshole and a lazy songwriter.
ReplyDeleteBut his solo album "If I Could Only Remember My Name", is one of the rare singer-songwriter albums that I dig from the beginning to the end. The culmination of his creativity. It consists entirely of songs by solo David Crosby, and is a superbly fine album, way better than this half-assed reunion. There is a huge difference in the execution of the Laughing number between those two.
In 1973 I was buffing floors nights at a medical center. All I could listen to was Muzak. It was everywhere. Believe it or not after midnight they would play the David Crosby record. Some of it anyway. I really didn't care for it much until recently when I have trouble sleeping. I have it on my player now along with Another Self Portrait. I remember when this Byrds record was released but I never got it. I think I bought the Doobie Bros instead
ReplyDelete