Parsons, who had attempted a country-rock marriage with his previous group, the International Submarine Band, was a Byrd for only five months in 1968. Clark, a prolific writer of melodically imaginative, bittersweet ballads, left in 1966 Crosby was fired in 1967 during the making of The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968). Spaceman” and “5D (Fifth Dimension),” McGuinn, an aviation and technology enthusiast, charged the Byrds’ music and image with space-age optimism he was also one of the first pop musicians to embrace the Moog synthesizer.įormed more out of common ambition than fraternal bonding, the Byrds were racked by dissent. Hillman, a teenage mandolin prodigy, was a prime, underacknowledged force in the Byrds’ fusion of rock and country. Crosby’s interest in modern jazz and Indian ragas inspired the Byrds’ forays into modal psychedelia, including the hit “Eight Miles High” (1966). (McGuinn had been a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio and a sideman for Judy Collins Clark had been a member of the New Christy Minstrels.) But the Byrds brought new, formidable influences to folk and pop. On early albums, the Byrds covered Dylan, Pete Seeger, Porter Wagoner, and Stephen Foster with a jangly clarity that reflected young America’s changing mood and its fantasies of a Pacific Coast utopia.įormer folkies converted by Beatlemania, McGuinn (who was called Jim before changing his name to Roger later in his career), Clark, and Crosby founded the Byrds-initially as the Jet Set and the Beefeaters-in 1964. The Byrds’ trademark sound-a luminous blend of 12-string electric guitar and madrigal-flavoured vocal harmonies-spiked the Appalachian folk music tradition with the rhythmic vitality of the Beatles and the sunny hedonism of southern California. They introduced Dylan’s songwriting to a new, commercially empowered, teenage pop audience and, in the process, established Los Angeles as the creative hotbed of a new, “mod,” distinctly American style of rock. Tambourine Man,” went to number one in 1965, breaking the British Invasion’s year-long dominance of Top 40 airplay and record sales in the United States. The Byrds’ debut single, a version of Dylan’s “ Mr. September 19, 1973, Yucca Valley, California), and Clarence White (b. November 5, 1946, Winter Haven, Florida-d. 19, 1993, Treasure Island, Florida), Gram Parsons (original name Ingram Cecil Connor III b. December 4, 1942, Los Angeles), Michael Clarke (b. August 14, 1941, Los Angeles, California), Chris Hillman (b. May 24, 1991, Sherman Oaks, California), David Crosby (original name David Van Cortland b. July 13, 1942, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.), Gene Clark (in full Harold Eugene Clark b. The principal members were Roger McGuinn (original name James Joseph McGuinn III b. The Byrds, American band of the 1960s who popularized folk rock, particularly the songs of Bob Dylan, and whose changes in personnel created an extensive family tree of major country rock bands and pop supergroups.
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