The story of The Byrds

Folk singers at the Troubadour

The Byrds began with three folk singers who had all fallen for the Beatles. Jim McGuinn was a Chicago kid who studied banjo and twelve string guitar at the Old Town School of Folk Music. He backed the Limeliters and the Chad Mitchell Trio, played for Bobby Darin, and wrote songs for thirty five dollars a week in New York's Brill Building. By early 1964 he was mixing Beatles songs into his folk act at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles. One night a young singer named Gene Clark, fresh out of the New Christy Minstrels, heard him and liked what he was doing. They started writing together and working as a duo, a little like Peter and Gordon.[1] [2] [3]

Gene Clark came from Tipton, Missouri, the third of thirteen children. He learned guitar and harmonica from his father and was writing songs by the age of eleven. Soon another singer wandered into the Troubadour's front room and started adding a high harmony to their songs. That was David Crosby, the son of the Oscar winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby. McGuinn had met him before and was not sure he wanted to work with him. Then Crosby mentioned he had a friend with a recording studio they could use for free. McGuinn stopped objecting. The trio called themselves the Jet Set, a name that came from McGuinn's love of aircraft.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Crosby's friend was Jim Dickson, a producer with access to World Pacific Studios. He let the trio rehearse there late at night on tape too poor to release, and he quickly became their manager, with his partner Eddie Tickner handling the money. Dickson was a tough taskmaster. According to one account he rationed the band to a single cheeseburger a day. He also arranged a one off single for Elektra Records, released in October 1964 under a fake British name, the Beefeaters. Session players covered the bass and drums. The single went nowhere, and Dickson decided the group needed a proper rhythm section of its own.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The drummer was Michael Clarke, who had hitchhiked west from New York at seventeen. He was hired mostly because he looked like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. He had no drum kit, so he practised on cardboard boxes with a tambourine taped on top. He had been born Michael Dick and took the name Clarke, adding an extra e so nobody would mix him up with Gene. For bass, Dickson brought in Chris Hillman, a bluegrass mandolin player from rural San Diego County. Hillman had never played bass in his life. His teenage years had been hard. When he was sixteen, his father took his own life.[1] [2] [3] [4]

After seeing the Beatles in the film A Hard Day's Night, the band went shopping for the same gear. With borrowed money and McGuinn's banjo traded in, they bought a Rickenbacker electric twelve string, a Gretsch guitar and a Ludwig drum kit. Crosby took the Gretsch, and Gene Clark ended up on tambourine. With a helpful word from the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, they signed with Columbia Records on the tenth of November 1964. Two weeks later, over Thanksgiving dinner at Eddie Tickner's house, they became the Byrds. The name kept the theme of flight, and the odd spelling was a deliberate nod to the Beatles.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Mr. Tambourine Man

In August 1964 Jim Dickson got hold of an acetate of a Bob Dylan song that had not yet been released, Mr. Tambourine Man. The band was not impressed. Crosby in particular thought it was too folky, with too many verses for radio. McGuinn reworked it, adding a Bach inspired guitar introduction and switching it to a rock beat. They cut it down to a single verse and the chorus, just under two and a half minutes. Each singer tried the lead, and Dickson picked McGuinn. To win the doubters over, Dickson invited Dylan himself to a rehearsal. Dylan listened and said you could dance to it. That settled it.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the twentieth of January 1965, the Byrds recorded Mr. Tambourine Man at Columbia's studio in Hollywood. Producer Terry Melcher, the son of the film star Doris Day, did not yet trust the band's playing. So McGuinn was the only Byrd to play on it. The backing came from top session players later known as the Wrecking Crew, with Hal Blaine on drums and Larry Knechtel on bass. McGuinn, Clark and Crosby sang over the top. The famous chime came partly by accident. Engineer Ray Gerhardt ran heavy compression on everything to protect his equipment, and on the Rickenbacker it created a long, ringing sustain that became McGuinn's signature sound.[1] [2] [3] [4]

While they waited for the single, the Byrds took a residency at Ciro's on the Sunset Strip, starting on the twenty first of March 1965. The nights there turned them into a real live band and made them the hottest ticket in town. Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Arthur Lee and Sonny and Cher came to watch, and crowds of teenagers packed the pavement outside. On the twenty sixth of March, Bob Dylan himself turned up and joined them on stage for a Jimmy Reed song. Several historians see those crowds at Ciro's as the first stirrings of the West Coast hippie scene.[1] [2] [3]

Columbia released Mr. Tambourine Man on the twelfth of April 1965. Within three months it was number one in both America and Britain. It was the first big folk rock hit, and the American music press coined the phrase folk rock that June to describe the Byrds. The debut album followed on the twenty first of June and reached number six. On the album, the band played their own instruments, although a myth grew up that session men had played the whole record. Most of the originals were written by Gene Clark, including I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better, which became a rock standard.[1] [2] [3]

America's answer to the Beatles

Columbia pushed out another Dylan song, All I Really Want to Do, though the band thought it was too formulaic. It turned into a chart battle with Cher, who released her own version at the same time. In America Cher won, reaching number fifteen while the Byrds stalled at forty. In Britain it was the other way round, and the Byrds reached number four. The band looked as different as they sounded. McGuinn wore small rectangular glasses that the hippie crowd soon copied. Crosby wore a green suede cape. On stage they were cool and unsmiling, and they smoked a lot of marijuana, which did not always help the shows.[1]

In August 1965 the publicist Derek Taylor, who had worked for the Beatles, took the Byrds on a tour of England. They were billed as America's answer to the Beatles, a label they could never live up to. Poor sound, illness and ragged playing led to savage reviews in the British press. The Beatles, though, were friendly. They met the Byrds in London, later hosted them in Los Angeles, and called them their favourite American group. Writers have heard the Byrds in the Beatles' Rubber Soul album. George Harrison borrowed the guitar figure from the Byrds' version of The Bells of Rhymney for his song If I Needed Someone.[1] [2] [3] [4]

For their next single McGuinn brought in a Pete Seeger song he had arranged years before for Judy Collins. Its words came almost entirely from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. The idea came back to him on a tour bus when his future wife Dolores asked him to play it, and it came out with a rock beat. The Byrds reportedly needed seventy eight takes over five days to finish Turn! Turn! Turn! Released on the first of October 1965, it reached number one on the fourth of December and stayed there for three weeks. With the war in Vietnam escalating, its plea for peace struck a nerve.[1] [2] [3]

Behind the success, there was friction. Jim Dickson wanted to produce the band himself and was openly critical of Terry Melcher. Within a month of the Turn! Turn! Turn! album coming out in December 1965, the band asked Columbia to replace Melcher, even though he had given them two number one singles. Columbia would not let Dickson produce and assigned its own man, Allen Stanton. Meanwhile Gene Clark was writing many of the band's best originals, including She Don't Care About Time and Set You Free This Time. The royalties were making him the richest Byrd, and his bandmates resented it.[1] [2] [3]

Eight Miles High and the drift into space

On a late 1965 American tour, the Byrds' bus had just one soundtrack. McGuinn had taped John Coltrane's albums Impressions and Africa Brass, along with Ravi Shankar, onto his new cassette recorder, and they played them over and over. Out of that came Eight Miles High. McGuinn tried to make his twelve string sound like Coltrane's saxophone, and the vocal melody drew on Indian music. The words grew out of their first flight to London and the rough time the British press gave them. A plane actually flies nearer six or seven miles up, but eight sounded better, partly as a nod to the Beatles' Eight Days a Week.[1] [2] [3]

The band first recorded Eight Miles High in December 1965 at RCA's studio with engineer Al Schmitt. Columbia refused to release a Byrds recording made in a rival company's studio, so they had to cut it again in January 1966. Some of the band always preferred the first version. The single came out on the fourteenth of March 1966. Weeks later a radio trade sheet, the Gavin Report, suggested the song was about drugs, and many stations stopped playing it. The band insisted it was about an aeroplane. It peaked at number fourteen, their last American top twenty hit. Critics often call it the first true psychedelic rock record.[1] [2] [3]

Before Eight Miles High even came out, Gene Clark was gone. He had a deep fear of flying. As a boy he had witnessed a fatal plane crash. In February 1966, on a plane at Los Angeles bound for New York, he panicked, sweating and shaking, and got off. McGuinn told him that if he could not fly, he could not be a Byrd. McGuinn later said Clark described it as closer to a nervous breakdown, made worse by bad acid trips and a break up. There was more to it too, including anxiety and resentment over his songwriting money. Columbia signed him as a solo artist.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Without Clark, McGuinn, Crosby and Hillman had to write more. The third album, Fifth Dimension, came out in July 1966. It had no Dylan songs for the first time and leaned into jazz, Indian drones and science fiction. McGuinn's Mr. Spaceman was a playful song about aliens, and he half hoped real aliens might pick it up on AM radio. Their co manager Eddie Tickner even announced a spoof million dollar policy with Lloyd's of London against the band being kidnapped by extraterrestrials. The album sold less well than the first two, and by late 1966 the mainstream pop audience had largely moved on.[1] [2] [3]

With producer Gary Usher, the Byrds made Younger Than Yesterday in just eleven days, finishing on the eighth of December 1966. It opened with So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star, a sarcastic dig at manufactured bands like the Monkees, with Hugh Masekela on trumpet. Chris Hillman suddenly blossomed, writing four songs alone and singing them, two with a country flavour and guitar from a bluegrass picker named Clarence White. McGuinn also changed his name. Through the spiritual group Subud he took the name Roger in 1967. In June that year the band fired Dickson and Tickner as managers, and Crosby's choice, Larry Spector, took over business affairs.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Firing Crosby

By 1967 McGuinn and Hillman were tired of what they saw as Crosby's ego. At the Monterey Pop Festival on the seventeenth of June, Crosby made long speeches between songs. He said President Kennedy had not been killed by one man, and suggested giving LSD to the world's politicians. His bandmates were mortified. The next night he sat in with Buffalo Springfield, filling in for Neil Young. Then his song Lady Friend, the only Byrds single written by Crosby alone, stalled at number eighty two. Crosby blamed Gary Usher's mix. His standing in the band sank further.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The sessions for The Notorious Byrd Brothers were tense. In August 1967 Michael Clarke walked out, unhappy with the material and his bandmates, and session drummers Jim Gordon and Hal Blaine filled in. Then Crosby refused to record the Goffin and King song Goin' Back. He wanted his own song Triad on the album instead, a song about a three way relationship. In October 1967 McGuinn and Hillman drove their Porsches to Crosby's house and fired him. Crosby took a cash settlement and bought a schooner called the Mayan. He later gave Triad to Jefferson Airplane, and he was soon singing with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Gene Clark came back to replace Crosby, but it lasted just three weeks. During that time the band appeared on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. After a Midwest tour, his fear of flying struck again and he left. Michael Clarke returned briefly to play on Artificial Energy, and once the album was done, he was gone too. McGuinn and Hillman were now the only Byrds left. The album itself was their most adventurous. It mixed folk rock, country, jazz and psychedelia, with phasing effects and one of rock's earliest uses of the Moog synthesiser, which McGuinn had discovered at Robert Moog's booth at Monterey.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Notorious Byrd Brothers came out in January 1968. Critics loved it, but it reached only number forty seven in America, though it did better in Britain at number twelve. Its reputation has grown ever since, and many fans now consider it the Byrds' finest album. The single from it, Goin' Back, had already flopped at number eighty nine. It was the first Byrds recording to feature a pedal steel guitar, a sign of where they were heading. Clarence White played country guitar on several tracks. Within a few months he would be a Byrd himself.[1] [2] [3]

Sweetheart of the Rodeo

Now a duo, McGuinn and Hillman needed players fast. Hillman's cousin Kevin Kelley, who had been working in a clothing store, came in on drums. Then in February 1968 they hired a twenty one year old singer as a piano player, Gram Parsons. He was paid a salary rather than being made a partner, and he soon switched to guitar. Parsons had a sad family story. His father had shot himself when Gram was twelve, and his mother died from the effects of alcoholism on the day he graduated from school. He came with a trust fund and a burning idea, to make country music cool for young rock fans.[1] [2] [3] [4]

McGuinn had planned a sprawling double album tracing the history of American music, from bluegrass to electronic sounds. Parsons talked him out of it. Instead the Byrds went to Nashville on the ninth of March 1968 to make a country record. On the fifteenth of March they played the Grand Ole Opry, the first hippie band ever to do so. They had even cut their hair shorter for the occasion. It did not help. The audience booed, heckled and mockingly called out tweet tweet. The Nashville DJ Ralph Emery mocked them on air, and Parsons and McGuinn later wrote a sarcastic song about him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Parsons grew more ambitious. He pushed for more money and reportedly wanted the album billed as Gram Parsons and the Byrds. Then the producer Lee Hazlewood claimed Parsons was still under contract to his label, LHI. McGuinn and Hillman replaced several of Parsons' lead vocals, though he still sang three songs on the finished album, including his own Hickory Wind. Parsons later complained bitterly to Cameron Crowe that McGuinn had erased his vocals and ruined them. Sweetheart of the Rodeo came out on the thirtieth of August 1968. It reached only number seventy seven, but it became the blueprint for country rock.[1] [2] [3]

In July 1968, after a charity concert at London's Royal Albert Hall, Parsons quit rather than join a tour of South Africa, which was then under apartheid. He stayed on in England with Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. The Byrds went anyway, with their roadie Carlos Bernal on guitar. It was a disaster. Despite promises, they found themselves playing to segregated audiences. They gave ragged shows, spoke out against apartheid, and left amid bad publicity and death threats. Back home, the liberal press attacked them for going at all. McGuinn argued the tour had been a small challenge to the regime.[1] [2]

After Parsons left, the Byrds hired Clarence White full time in July 1968. White had been a bluegrass prodigy with the Kentucky Colonels and a busy session player. He soon had Kevin Kelley replaced with his friend Gene Parsons, no relation to Gram. Hillman lasted less than a month longer. He was fed up after South Africa and suspected Larry Spector of mishandling the band's money. On the fifteenth of September 1968, after a show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Hillman and Spector came to blows backstage. Hillman threw down his bass and walked out. McGuinn was the last original Byrd.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Clarence White years

McGuinn hired bassist John York and in October 1968 made Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde with Bob Dylan's producer, Bob Johnston. The title hinted at its split personality, part country, part psychedelic. McGuinn thought fans would be confused by new voices, so he sang lead on every track, the only Byrds album where that happened. It was their lowest charting album in America, at number one hundred and fifty three, though it reached fifteen in Britain. When Johnston later added a female choir to their single Lay Lady Lay without telling them, the band was furious, and Terry Melcher came back as producer.[1] [2] [3]

Melcher's return came during a dark season for him. In 1968 the Beach Boy Dennis Wilson had introduced him to Charles Manson, who wanted a record deal. Melcher auditioned him and said no. Melcher then moved out of his rented house at ten thousand and fifty Cielo Drive, and the director Roman Polanski and actress Sharon Tate moved in. On the night of the eighth of August 1969, Manson's followers murdered Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant, and four others there. Melcher was terrified he had been the real target. He hired a bodyguard and was described as the most frightened witness at the trial.[1] [2]

In 1969 the Byrds got a boost from the film Easy Rider. Its star Peter Fonda asked Dylan for a theme song. Dylan scribbled a few lines on a napkin and told Fonda to give it to McGuinn, who finished the song. Dylan later asked for his name to be taken off the credits. The Byrds' Wasn't Born to Follow was also in the film. Bassist John York was let go in September 1969 and replaced by Skip Battin, a veteran of the pop duo Skip and Flip. At thirty five he was the oldest Byrd by eight years, and this line up became the longest lasting of all.[1] [2] [3] [4]

This version of the Byrds toured relentlessly and was widely considered their best live band ever, built on McGuinn and White's twin guitars. White's secret weapon was the StringBender, a device he and Gene Parsons built into his Telecaster that let him copy the cry of a pedal steel guitar. In September 1970 they released a double album called Untitled, one live disc and one studio disc, with a sixteen minute Eight Miles High. It included Chestnut Mare, written for an abandoned musical based on Ibsen's Peer Gynt. In Britain it reached number nineteen, their first top twenty hit there since 1965.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

It did not last. The band recorded Byrdmaniax in a rush between tours, and while they were away, Melcher added strings, horns and a gospel choir, reportedly without their consent. Rolling Stone called them a boring dead group. Gene Parsons called it Melcher's folly. The cover showed silver death masks of the four members. A quick self produced follow up, Farther Along, made in London in July 1971, reached only number one hundred and fifty two. Gene Parsons was fired in July 1972. McGuinn sacked Skip Battin in February 1973, and after a shambolic show in Passaic, New Jersey, on the twenty fourth of February, he disbanded this version of the Byrds.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The reunion and a summer of deaths

McGuinn had broken up his working band to make way for something else, a reunion of the five originals. David Geffen of Asylum Records had offered each of them a large sum to make an album. In October 1972 they met at McGuinn's house, then recorded at Wally Heider's studio in Hollywood. Crosby produced. He had always said there were only ever five Byrds, and he got McGuinn to promise not to use the name without him. The album, simply called Byrds, came out on the seventh of March 1973 and reached number twenty in America. But reviews were poor, and a planned tour never happened.[1] [2] [3]

The members themselves were critical of the reunion album. McGuinn and Hillman felt that everyone except Gene Clark had held back their best songs for their own solo records. Clark's songs, and his lead vocals on two Neil Young covers, were widely seen as the highlights. The five quietly went back to their own careers, and McGuinn's first solo album that June effectively marked the end of the Byrds. Then came a terrible summer. In the early hours of the fifteenth of July 1973, in Palmdale, California, Clarence White was loading equipment into a car with his brother Roland after a show when a drunk driver hit and killed him. He was twenty nine.[1] [2] [3]

At White's funeral, Gram Parsons and Bernie Leadon of the Eagles sang the hymn Farther Along, the title song of White's last Byrds album. That evening, Parsons reportedly told his road manager Phil Kaufman that if he died, he wanted to be cremated in Joshua Tree in the California desert. Two months later, on the nineteenth of September 1973, Parsons died at the Joshua Tree Inn after an overdose of morphine and alcohol. He was twenty six. His last song, In My Hour of Darkness, was partly a tribute to White. By then he had made two solo albums with his singing partner Emmylou Harris.[1] [2]

Parsons' stepfather arranged a private funeral in New Orleans. But Phil Kaufman and a friend took his body in its coffin from Los Angeles, drove it to Joshua Tree, poured petrol into it at Cap Rock and set it alight. They were arrested and fined seven hundred and fifty dollars for stealing the coffin. What remained of Parsons was buried near New Orleans. Fans still gather at the rock, and park guides may tell the story on tours. For the surviving Byrds, it was the end of an era.[1] [2]

Solo roads and the battle for the name

Through the seventies the former Byrds scattered. Crosby found huge success with Crosby, Stills and Nash, sometimes with Neil Young. Hillman played in the Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas and the Souther Hillman Furay Band. Michael Clarke drummed for Firefall, who had a top ten hit. McGuinn toured with Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. Gene Clark made his ambitious album No Other in 1974, but it cost over a hundred thousand dollars and David Geffen publicly berated him. It stalled at number one hundred and forty four. Today it is hailed as a lost masterpiece. In 1977 McGuinn, Clark and Hillman reunited on stage at London's Hammersmith Odeon and formed a trio.[1] [2] [3] [4]

McGuinn, Clark and Hillman had a hit in 1979 with Don't You Write Her Off, which reached number thirty three. But Clark was drinking heavily and using heroin, and he drifted out. The trio became a duo and split in 1981. Crosby's addiction to cocaine was spiralling. He was arrested in a Dallas nightclub in 1982 with a pistol and a freebase pipe, and later in California for drink driving and a hit and run. He served five months in a Texas prison in 1986 and later said it ended his cocaine habit. In 1994 he had a liver transplant, paid for by Phil Collins.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1985 Gene Clark wanted a twentieth anniversary Byrds reunion. McGuinn, Crosby and Hillman said no. So Clark put together a tribute band with Michael Clarke, John York and members of the Band, and promoters started billing it simply as the Byrds. The others were furious, and McGuinn called it a cheap show. Clarke kept a version going and tried to trademark the name. In January 1989 McGuinn, Crosby and Hillman played shows as the Byrds and sued him. In May 1989 a judge refused their injunction, and Clarke kept the name. Gene Clark, still under a cloud, was left out of the official reunion.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the sixteenth of January 1991, the five original Byrds put their differences aside at the Waldorf Astoria in New York for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They played Turn! Turn! Turn!, Mr. Tambourine Man and Clark's I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better. Later line ups, including Gram Parsons and Clarence White, were passed over. It was the last time all five stood together. Gene Clark's health was failing. A Tom Petty cover of I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better had brought him a windfall in royalties, and he had gone back to heavy drinking. He had also recently been diagnosed with throat cancer.[1] [2] [3]

Gene Clark died at his home in Sherman Oaks on the twenty fourth of May 1991, aged forty six. The cause was heart failure brought on by a bleeding ulcer, with years of alcohol abuse a factor. It happened to be Bob Dylan's fiftieth birthday. His gravestone in Tipton, Missouri, reads No Other. Michael Clarke followed on the nineteenth of December 1993 at his home in Treasure Island, Florida. He had started drinking at fourteen, and his liver failed at the age of forty seven. In his last days he asked to warn children about alcohol, and his wife started a campaign in his name.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Last flights and legacy

The Byrds' last performance came almost by chance. On the eighth of August 2000, at a benefit in Santa Monica for Fred Walecki, a music shop owner who had lost his voice to throat cancer, McGuinn walked on unannounced to join Crosby and Hillman. He introduced them as the Byrds, and they played Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn! to standing ovations. That same summer McGuinn told a Senate committee that the Byrds had never received royalties for their two number ones, only small advances split five ways. In 2002 Crosby bought the rights to the band name from Michael Clarke's estate, finally ending the long fight over it.[1] [2] [3]

More of the family passed on. Kevin Kelley died in 2002. Skip Battin died in Oregon in July 2003 after years with Alzheimer's disease. Terry Melcher died in 2004, and Jim Dickson, the manager who had brought them together, died in 2011. McGuinn became a travelling solo troubadour, recording a traditional song every month for his online Folk Den. Hillman found country chart success with the Desert Rose Band. In 2017 Tom Petty co produced Hillman's album Bidin' My Time, with Crosby and McGuinn singing on it. In 2018 McGuinn and Hillman toured with Marty Stuart for the fiftieth anniversary of Sweetheart of the Rodeo.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Crosby kept asking McGuinn to reform the Byrds, about once a year by his own account, and McGuinn kept saying no. He was not invited to the Sweetheart anniversary shows. David Crosby died in Santa Ynez, California, on the eighteenth of January 2023, aged eighty one. His family said it followed a long illness. He had been tweeting and planning a tour right up to the end. His death left Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman as the last two founders. As of 2026 both are still alive. McGuinn has said firmly that he does not want another Byrds reunion.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Byrds' hit making run was short, but their influence is enormous. They invented folk rock, helped launch psychedelic rock with Eight Miles High, and pointed the way to country rock with Sweetheart of the Rodeo. They even nudged Dylan toward electric music and were one of the few bands to influence the Beatles. McGuinn's ringing twelve string can be heard in Tom Petty, R.E.M., the Smiths, the Bangles and countless jangly guitar bands since. In 2004 Rolling Stone ranked them forty fifth among the greatest artists of all time. As one historian put it, the Byrds did it first and then kept moving.[1] [2] [3]

The people around The Byrds

Roger McGuinn and David Crosby. They built the Byrds' sound together, McGuinn's twelve string and Crosby's soaring high harmonies. But McGuinn was wary of Crosby from the start, and Crosby's speeches and ambitions wore him down. In October 1967 McGuinn and Hillman fired him. They reunited for the 1973 album and later shows, yet Crosby spent his last years asking for a Byrds reunion that McGuinn always refused.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark. They met at the Troubadour in 1964 and started the band as a duo. Clark was the natural songwriter, and his royalties made him the richest Byrd, which bred resentment. McGuinn told him he could not be a Byrd if he could not fly. They reunited in McGuinn, Clark and Hillman in the late seventies, but after Clark's death they disagreed over who wrote Eight Miles High.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons. Hillman found a kindred spirit in Parsons, a fellow lover of country music, and together they steered the Byrds to Nashville. They then founded the Flying Burrito Brothers and wrote songs together while sharing a bachelor pad. Hillman later insisted Parsons was only ever a salaried hired hand in the Byrds, and doubted his reasons for quitting.[1] [2] [3]

The Byrds and Jim Dickson. Dickson was the manager who put the band together, gave them free studio time, found Mr. Tambourine Man and brought Dylan to hear it. Hillman called him their Brian Epstein, and McGuinn called him a stern father figure. The band fired him in 1967, which he said ruined him in the business, but he came back to help edit the live half of Untitled.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Byrds and Terry Melcher. Doris Day's son produced their first two albums and both number one singles, then was pushed out after clashing with Jim Dickson. He returned in 1969 for Ballad of Easy Rider and Untitled, insisting on managing them too. It ended badly when he added strings, horns and a choir to Byrdmaniax while the band was on tour.[1] [2] [3]

The Byrds and Bob Dylan. Dylan's songs made their name, starting with Mr. Tambourine Man, and hearing their electric version helped push him toward electric music himself. He joined them on stage at Ciro's in 1965 and again in 1990 at a Roy Orbison tribute. He also gave McGuinn the opening lines of Ballad of Easy Rider, then asked for his name to be removed.[1] [2] [3]

The Byrds and The Beatles. The Byrds formed because they loved the Beatles, and even chose their guitars after watching A Hard Day's Night. When the Byrds toured England in 1965, the Beatles welcomed them, took them to dinner and called them their favourite American group. The influence flowed back, with George Harrison borrowing a Byrds guitar figure for If I Needed Someone.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Clarence White and Gene Parsons. They played together in the country band Nashville West, where Parsons, an amateur machinist, built White the StringBender that made his Telecaster cry like a pedal steel. When White joined the Byrds he got Parsons hired as drummer. They formed the heart of the Byrds' best live line up until Parsons was fired in 1972.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Clarke and McGuinn, Crosby and Hillman. The drummer who got the job for his looks ended up owning the band's name. Clarke toured with a tribute act billed as the Byrds, and in 1989 his old bandmates sued him. A judge refused their injunction, and Clarke kept the name until his death. Hillman still wrote of him with love, saying they always forgave him.[1] [2] [3]

Gram Parsons and Keith Richards. Parsons met Mick Jagger and Keith Richards around the time he quit the Byrds in 1968 and went to stay at Richards' house. He reintroduced Richards to country music, and later lived at his French villa while the Stones made Exile on Main Street, until he was asked to leave over drugs and quarrels.[1] [2]

Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman. The two last original Byrds kept the band going through 1968 as equal partners, until Hillman walked out after a backstage fight with their business manager. They reunited in the late seventies, had a country top ten duet in 1989, and in 2018 toured together for the fiftieth anniversary of Sweetheart of the Rodeo.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rare facts about The Byrds

• Before they were the Byrds, the band released a single under a fake British name, the Beefeaters. In October 1964 Elektra Records issued Please Let Me Love You credited to the Beefeaters, hoping to cash in on the British Invasion. Session players covered bass and drums, and it failed to chart.[1] [2]
• Michael Clarke learned to drum on cardboard boxes with a tambourine taped on top. When he joined he did not own a drum kit, though he did have real drumsticks. He was hired largely for looking like Rolling Stone Brian Jones.[1] [2]
• Michael Clarke was born Michael Dick and added an e to his new surname to avoid confusion with Gene Clark. He reportedly thought his real surname was unpalatable. He chose Clarke because he loved The Dick Clark Show, then added the extra letter.[1]
• The jazz trumpeter Miles Davis helped the Byrds get their Columbia Records contract. Jim Dickson's connections got them a hearing, and a recommendation from Miles Davis helped seal the deal on the tenth of November 1964. Davis later recorded a Crosby song, Guinnevere.[1] [2] [3]
• Manager Jim Dickson reportedly rationed the young band to one cheeseburger a day. While the Jet Set rehearsed endlessly at World Pacific Studios, Dickson ran them like a strict taskmaster, according to the Guardian's obituary of him.[1]
• Chris Hillman had never played bass before he joined the Byrds. He was a bluegrass mandolin player. Thanks to that background he quickly developed his own melodic style on bass.[1] [2]
• As an underage musician, Chris Hillman used a fake ID in the name Chris Hardin to get into country bars. He was playing regular gigs with the Hillmen in venues he was too young to enter, so he borrowed a fictitious identity.[1]
• Roger McGuinn picked his name from a list that also included Rocket and Ramjet. In 1967 the founder of Subud asked him for ten names starting with R. The gadget loving McGuinn sent names like Rocket and Ramjet, and Roger, the radio word for okay, was chosen.[1] [2]
• Pete Seeger wrote only a handful of words of Turn! Turn! Turn! The rest comes from the Book of Ecclesiastes. Seeger joked that he wrote six words plus one more repeated three times. The Byrds' version is often called the number one hit with the oldest lyrics.[1]
• The Byrds reportedly needed seventy eight takes over five days to finish Turn! Turn! Turn! The painstaking effort paid off when the single reached number one on the fourth of December 1965 and stayed there for three weeks.[1] [2]
• The screaming fans on So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star were recorded at a Byrds show in Bournemouth. Publicist Derek Taylor taped them on the fifteenth of August 1965 at McGuinn's request. The song also marked the first use of brass on a Byrds record, with Hugh Masekela on trumpet.[1] [2]
• To promote Mr. Spaceman, their manager announced insurance against the band being kidnapped by aliens. Eddie Tickner claimed a million dollar policy with Lloyd's of London. It was a publicity stunt, though McGuinn and Crosby were genuinely curious about contacting alien life by radio.[1]
• NASA used Mr. Spaceman as a wake up call for astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery's first mission. It was played to the crew of mission STS 41 D on the second of September 1984.[1]
• The Byrds' song Two Four Two Fox Trot was named after the registration number of a friend's Lear jet. The friend was John Lear, son of the jet maker Bill Lear. The track is full of aviation sounds, including a pilot's pre takeoff checklist.[1]
• The term raga rock first appeared in print in a review of Eight Miles High, borrowed from the Byrds' own press release. Journalist Sally Kempton used it in The Village Voice. Crosby later dismissed all such labels, and McGuinn denied it was raga rock at all.[1]
• Eight Miles High was first recorded at a rival company's studio, and Columbia refused to release it. The band sneaked off to RCA to record with engineer Al Schmitt. McGuinn and Crosby both preferred that version, which finally came out in 1987.[1] [2]
• McGuinn's jingle jangle sound came partly from an engineer protecting his equipment. Columbia engineer Ray Gerhardt compressed everything heavily. On the Rickenbacker it created long sustain, so they ran two compressors in series straight into the desk.[1] [2]
• Clarence White was asked to record an electric Mr. Tambourine Man before the Byrds. In summer 1964 Jim Dickson approached him, but White could not convince his Kentucky Colonels bandmates, so the song went to the Byrds instead.[1]
• McGuinn says John Lennon was fascinated by his little rectangular glasses when they met in 1965. According to McGuinn's Byrds history, Lennon, who was nearsighted, later began wearing a round version himself.[1]
• McGuinn first discovered the Moog synthesiser at Robert Moog's own booth at the Monterey Pop Festival. He brought it into the sessions for The Notorious Byrd Brothers, one of the first rock albums to use the instrument.[1] [2]
• The Byrds cut their hair shorter for the Grand Ole Opry, and were still booed. On the fifteenth of March 1968, introduced by Tompall Glaser, they became the first hippie band to play the Opry. The crowd heckled them with mocking calls of tweet tweet.[1]
• A Byrds song mocking a Nashville DJ was later sung by Joan Baez at Woodstock. Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man was aimed at Ralph Emery after he mocked the band on air. Baez dedicated her Woodstock performance to Ronald Reagan, then governor of California.[1]
• Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde is the only Byrds album on which McGuinn sings lead on every song. He felt fans would be confused by the unfamiliar voices of the new members, so White, Parsons and York sang backing only.[1] [2]
• Chestnut Mare was written for a country rock musical based on Ibsen's Peer Gynt. McGuinn and Jacques Levy called it Gene Tryp, an anagram of the play's title. The musical was never staged, but students at Colgate University performed a version in 1992.[1] [2]
• Part of the music of Chestnut Mare dated back to McGuinn's early sixties tour of South America. He wrote the middle section while touring there with the Chad Mitchell Trio, years before the rest of the song.[1]
• Byrdmaniax had the working title Expensive and a cover of silver death masks. Plaster masks of each member were made by artist Mary Leonard. Some critics felt they summed up the lifeless sound of the album.[1]
• Skip Battin once promoted his hit single with a stand in partner. When It Was I started getting airplay as by Skip and Flip, Battin had lost touch with Gary Paxton, so he toured it with a different Flip until Paxton returned.[1]
• David Crosby bought his famous schooner the Mayan with his Byrds severance money. He later said Peter Tork of the Monkees lent him money for it. He wrote songs aboard including Wooden Ships.[1] [2]
• Graham Nash persuaded Crosby to allow the release of the Byrds' 1964 demos by calling them charming baby pictures. The demos came out in 1969 as Preflyte, a deliberate misspelling of pre flight, and outsold the band's latest studio album.[1]
• The Turtles' 1969 hit You Showed Me was an unreleased song by McGuinn and Gene Clark from 1964. It reached number six in America. Elements of the Turtles' version were later used in Kanye West's 2010 track Gorgeous.[1] [2]
• Gene Clark died on Bob Dylan's fiftieth birthday. He died at home in Sherman Oaks on the twenty fourth of May 1991. His gravestone in Tipton, Missouri, reads No Other, the title of his most acclaimed solo album.[1] [2]
• The Byrds' biggest selling album is a compilation, The Byrds' Greatest Hits. Released on the seventh of August 1967, it reached number six, went gold within a year and was certified platinum in 1986.[1]
• In 2000 McGuinn told the US Senate the Byrds never earned royalties for their two number one hits. He said they received only advances, split five ways, worth a few thousand dollars each.[1]
• Rolling Stone dismissed Byrdmaniax in 1971 with the phrase increments of pus. The same review called the Byrds a boring dead group. Band members themselves called the album Melcher's folly.[1] [2]
• Chris Hillman sings in a Greek Orthodox church choir. His wife Connie Pappas drew him to the church. He has called himself the only hillbilly tenor in the Orthodox Church.[1]
• Marty Stuart owns and plays Clarence White's 1954 Telecaster with the prototype StringBender. White and Gene Parsons built the device so White could bend his B string and imitate a pedal steel guitar.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.