Byrds (1973)

An eight-year period is a blink of an eye in the big scheme of things.  Yet a lot can happen in eight years.  It's the time it takes to go from being a pre-med college freshman to graduating from medical school and being ready to begin a hospital residency.  It's the lifespan of a two-term U.S. Presidency.  And in rock and roll, an eight-year period is an eternity.  Times change, the music changes, and those who last eight years are far removed from where they were eight years earlier - sometimes for the worse.  And that's where the reunion album of the original Byrds comes in.

When the Byrds debuted in 1965, their sound was a sprightly Southern California blend of British Invasion rock and roll with the lyrics of Bob Dylan and other folk legends, as well as some inspired original songs.  By 1973, when the Byrds had broken up with Roger McGuinn as the last original member of the band, and with his former original bandmates between projects, the quintet, having had their disagreements, buried the hatchet, reunited, and recorded an album that, quite frankly, showed how eight years had changed the dynamic between them - and not in a positive way.

The original Byrds were no longer the young folkies enthralled by the Beatles' movie A Hard Day's Night and newly converted to rock and roll when McGuinn, David Crosby, and Gene Clark first got together, recruiting Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke soon after.  They were seasoned veterans who had no hope of recapturing the magic that made them so wonderful in the first place.  They had all become more traveled in their experiences, be it McGuinn keeping the Byrds going, Crosby joining forces with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, or Hillman forming the Flying Burrito Brothers with fellow Byrds alumnus Gram Parsons and later joining forces with Stephen Stills in Manassas.  The chemistry that brought them together was gone, and it shows here in the listless playing, the mediocre originals, and the poorly arranged covers.  

To be fair, the Byrds did not try to regain their original sound but instead aimed for a new sound based on their own varied experiences since leaving the band for other endeavors or, in the case of McGuinn, redefining the Byrds after the others had left.  The wealth of diversity in the music from these experiences - especially Hillman's tutelage with Stephen Stills - should have been, on paper at least, the basis for an incredible listen.  Instead, the sound that resulted on Byrds was more diffuse than diverse.

Highlights - I use that word loosely, with some irony -  include the dull and lackluster country ballad "Sweet Mary," which McGuinn wrote with occasional Dylan collaborator Jacques Levy, Crosby's unwieldy "Long Live the King," about the uneasy heads that wear crowns (yet another one of Crosby's political diatribes not good enough for a CSN album), and also Hillman's original song "Things Will Be Better," a lightweight pop ditty apparently about Chris resuming his solo career.  Even Hillman admitted that the song wasn't one of his best, a song he deemed unworthy for a solo album, but McGuinn's "Born to Rock and Roll" makes Hillman's song sound like "Like a Rolling Stone" by comparison.  Only Gene Clark's "Changing Heart" is at the Byrds' high standard.

The covers are even more embarrassing, especially when Crosby sings them, such as a clunky, blues-based remake of Joni Mitchell's "For Free" that sounds like the band was half asleep when they recorded it.  Crosby even had the Byrds remake his own "Laughing," a highly philosophical song that was originally done - and arranged much more imaginatively and intriguingly - on his debut solo album two years earlier.  Here Crosby tries to recast it as a heavy raga-rock number when it had worked so well as a wistful ballad on his solo record - and with Jerry Garcia guesting on guitar.  Alas, Garcia was nowhere to be found as a guest artist on this LP, and he could have been useful in sparking interest in the Byrds' Neil Young covers - for example, they try to re-imagine "Cowgirl In the Sand" as a bluegrass ballad (wrong!) with a false ending.

Still, Byrds has a certain charm about it.  Some of the playing is occasionally inspired, such as most of Hillman's mandolin lines, and McGuinn's guitar still sparkles intermittently.  But the overall sound lacks cohesion, and David Crosby, who produced this album, wasn't able to communicate with his bandmates in order to add substance to their style; he reportedly tried to be what Italian-Americans would call "da bigga da boss."  Crosby isn't even good at getting anything out of himself, never mind the others.  Even his solo work, which had its occasional flaws, offered more heart and depth that what Crosby can produce or compel others to create on this record.

It goes without saying that I'd rather hear a Byrds reunion album a dozen times than hear a Duran Duran reunion album even once, but there's more to musical quality than arranging songs for instruments you don't need a computer science degree to play.  There was far better country rock being produced by other artists in 1973, which is why this album was a flop in the first place.  Byrds exists mainly as an argument against band reunions, though few have heeded its warning. And while there may be those who defend the Byrds for at least striving for a new, fresh sound that was still as seasoned as that hypothetical 26-year-old medical school graduate who began pre-med studies when their cover of "Mr. Tambourine Man" was first released, consider this.  In his 1988 autobiography "Long Time Gone," David Crosby and his editor Carl Gottlieb provided an ostensibly complete account of every record Crosby had ever performed on or produced up to that point, but one record was left unmentioned.  Guess which record.