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The Byrds’ isolated vocals for ‘Mr. Tamborine Man’ and ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’
06.19.2015
09:17 am
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The great L.A. band the Byrds can be (and are) credited with seminal innovations in folk-rock and country-rock, with singer/guitarist/lone constant member Roger (nee Jim) McGuinn’s unmistakable 12-string Rickenbacker chime sharing the spotlight with the band’s commanding vocal harmonies. The band was comprised of straight up folkies who harbored a fascination with the Beatles’ self-contained band model, and while their original compositions were excellent (if you only know the two songs that concern us here, pick up a best-of, seriously), they remain best known for an early pair of folk covers: Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s Ecclesiastes adaptation “Turn! Turn! Turn!” Both were #1 hits, and were also the band’s only #1s.
 

 
A pair of YouTube videos endeavors to underscore the group’s impressive vocal skills by stripping away their music, and it’s really no surprise that what’s left is quite lovely. In The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, Peter Lavezzoli describes the Byrds’ harmonic process, ultimately boiling it all down to one member, guitarist/singer David Crosby:

For his part, Crosby applied his skills as a harmony singer in unconventional ways. Rather than attempting three-part harmonies like the Beatles (or five-part harmonies like the Beach Boys), the Byrds almost always employed the two-part harmony strategy of the Everly Brothers. But Crosby took the two-part approach a step further, based on his understanding of jazz and Indian modes. While McGuinn and Gene Clark sang the same notes in tandem, Crosby would move freely between a perfect fifth, flatted fifth, third, or seventh, resulting in an unusual sound that ranged from haunting to ethereal.

That kind of floored me, so I sought confirmation, and found it from McGuinn himself, who also credited the band’s harmonic gifts to Crosby in a passage from Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon:

“We sang together well,” offers Roger. “I give the credit to Crosby. He was brilliant at devising these harmony parts that were not strict third, fourth, or fifth improvisational combinations of the three. That’s what makes the Byrds’ harmonies. Most people think it’s a three-part harmony, and it’s a two-part harmony. Very seldom was there a third part on our harmonies.

 

 
Here’s “Mr. Tamborine Man,” helpfully synced to television footage of the original band miming the song. Chris Hillman’s hair kinda steals the show.
 

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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06.19.2015
09:17 am
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David Hemmings sings, with a little help from The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman
01.22.2014
08:11 am
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“You’re an actor, you can sing, now let’s record some tunes.” That’s probably how it went for all those sixties’ film icons like Richard Chamberlain, Albert Finney, Richard Harris, and even Dirk Bogarde (though admittedly he only spoke the words).

“It’s merchandising, baby, this could be another career for you. Today the album, tomorrow Las Vegas!

David Hemmings could sing, well, that is he had sung, and to great acclaim. Okay, as a boy soprano, but it was with the English National Opera, in a production of Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw. Very impressive. And Hemmings had also performed with a handful of folk bands in the early sixties before hitting it big as an actor in Blow Up.

So, it must have seemed like a win-win proposition to have Hemmings record a selection of tracks with his musical pals Roger McGuinn (guitar), Chris Hillman (bass) and Ed Thigpen (drums) for an album David Hemmings Happens. Happens? Well, it was the sixties.

To be fair it’s not bad, and opens with the rather impressive “Back Street Mirror” before going onto Tim Hardin’s “Reason to Believe,” and on side two, Bill Martin’s “After the Rain.”

In between is a selection of songs (some co-written by Hemmings) that vary in quality, ranging form the stream-of-consciousness ramblings of “Good King James,” “War’s Mystery” and “Talkin’ LA,” to “Anathea,” which Jarvis Cocker rates as one of Hemmings’ best recordings.

That said, at times the actor in Hemmings tends to take over proceedings, and the singer’s left behind. Yet, it’s certainly no “dud,” but an interesting collaboration between Hemmings, McGuinn, and Hillman, that brings out another side to this iconic star.

01. “Back Street Mirror”
02. “Reason to Believe”
03. “Good King James”
04. “Bell Birds
05. “Talkin’ L.A.”
06. “Anathea”
07. “After the Rain”
08. “War’s Mystery”
09. “The Soldier Wind”
 

 
Bonus, Dirk Bogarde sings ‘Lyrics for Lovers’ after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.22.2014
08:11 am
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New on ‘My Dad Was in a Band’: My dad was in The Byrds!
06.20.2013
02:53 pm
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Clarence White, far left.

The latest from My Dad Was in a Band, the new blog that we’re co-presenting with Drafthouse Films.

Today’s entry comes from Michelle White, daughter of Clarence White, guitarist for second iteration of The Byrds:

I was in diapers so I have lots of glitched memories of walking in rooms with overwhelming loud playing, some were parties (of course I was led quickly right back to bed). I do remember coming to an age where I was pointed out certain licks my father did on the guitar that no one else could replicate…. and at times (I am 47) I am STILL blown away…

Clarence White was cut down in the prime of his life after he was struck by a drunk driver in 1973 at the age of 29. The final song that Gram Parsons wrote before his own death, “In My Hour of Darkness,” was in part a tribute to White.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.20.2013
02:53 pm
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‘Hotel California: L.A. from The Byrds to The Eagles,’ an essential rock doc

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If you would have told me back when I was a defiant teenage post-punk fanboy—clad in Doc Martens and a black trench coat festooned with badges of PiL, The Residents, Kraftwerk, Nina Hagen and Throbbing Gristle—that one day I’d go through quite a long “phase” (as my wife calls my penchant for perhaps slightly over-exuberant musical enthusiasms) for the type of music that I HATED MOST when I was a kid, the laid-back, singer-songwriter sounds of the Southern California folk-rock, I would not have believed you.

I’d have (truly) been horrified. To me, there was nothing worse than The Eagles (maybe just “Southern rockers” like Lynyrd Skynyrd or Molly Hatchet) and anything that even vaguely smacked of the So Cal sound was shit to my ears.

Part of it was really getting into Neil Young (which for me happened in 2002, only after I first read Jimmy McDonough’s masterpiece of biography, Shakey, a book I’ve re-read twice in the past year alone), The Flying Burrito Brothers and Joni Mitchell, and then it sort of spread out slowly from there. A lot of it also had to do with our own Paul Gallagher sending me a copy of Barney Hoskyns’ excellent 2006 overview of the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter/folkrock sound, Hotel California.

Hotel California‘s subtitle is “The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends” and aside from some of the aforementioned artists, the book also turned me on to the music of both Judee Sill and the Byrd who could not fly, the great Gene Clark. It’s a great place to dive in, a perfect roadmap through the Canyon sound.

I even found, to my surprise, that there were some Eagles songs I really liked. A lot.

It just goes to show. In any case, Hoskyn’s excellent book was made into an equally essential BBC produced documentary, Hotel California: L.A. from the Byrds to the Eagles, a highly entertaining account of the rise and fall of Laurel Canyon rock. It’s a must see and worthy of multiple viewings.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.04.2013
04:20 pm
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Groovy medley, Hullabaloo 1965:  The Byrds, Jackie DeShannon, Michael Landon


 

 
Go-go time. Spike Priggen unearthed this poppy medley from Hullabaloo, 1965.  Michael Landon singing “You Were On My Mind’  is a smooth groove.

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.06.2010
12:33 pm
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Sharon Tate’s Don’t Make Waves

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Yes, Woodstock, but last week also saw the 40th anniversary of LA’s darkest campfire tale.  You probably know the story by now (and if you don’t, you can read about it here, or here), but the shorthand goes like this…

On the night of August 8, 1969, Charles Manson disciples Susan Atkins, Charles “Tex” Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian stormed the rented home of Roman Polanski on 10050 Cielo Drive.  Once behind its gates, they brutally and systematically took the lives of 5 people—including the life of Polanski’s eight-and-a-half months pregnant girlfriend, actress Sharon Tate.  Tate was the last to die, knived by Watson while she was pinned down by Atkins, who then took some of Tate’s blood and used it to scrawl “PIG” on the porch wall.  Manson had ordered her to leave behind a sign, “something witchy.”

The tragic events of that night, spilled into the following night and continued to ripple out through the decade(s) to come.  Even today, the events of August ‘69 provided Pynchon with the darkly seismic backdrop to his new novel, Inherent Vice.  The fallout was felt everywhere—even I had nightmares.  Not about the events themselves (I was too young to remember those), but about Manson someday going free, and moving down the block

After losing his wife and unborn child, Polanski was understandably devastated, and his life, eight years later, would go on to take another troubled turn.  And Sharon Tate’s legacy?  Beyond a still-loyal fanbase, all she left behind is a smattering of films and the promise of what might have been.  And that promise, in my eyes, is at its most tangible in Tate’s American debut, Don’t Make Waves
 
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What’s it all about?  Not much beyond The Byrds’ winning title track and Tony Curtis’ “Carlo Cofield” moving to Malibu and mixing it up with the town’s free-lovin’ oddballs.  It was directed by Brit Alexander Mackendrick, a decade past his Sweet Smell of Success, and features one of my all-time favorite character actors, the criminally underappreciated Robert Webber.  Curtis and Webber aside, though, it’s Tate who steals the show as the always-bikinied skydiver, “Malibu.”  In fact, Tate made such a strong impression, she served as the inspiration for Mattel’s “Malibu Barbie.”
 
A physical copy of Waves is hard to come by.  But you can still catch it for yourself, in its 10-part entirety, on YouTube.  Part 1 starts right here.  The trailer follows below.

 
In The LA Times: Restoring Sharon Tate

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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08.13.2009
04:03 pm
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