The Byrds

The Byrds

FLIGHT TIME
Roger McGuinn Reflects on the Legacy of the Byrds
Founder of the Byrds and sole constant in their long flight, Roger McGuinn looms large in rock 'n' roll history. There Is a Season, a fine four-CD + DVD box set, traces the amazing journey McGuinn and his mates took, from early recordings made as the Jet Set and the Beefeaters to the '60s monuments to the band's natural evolution into a forward-looking country-rock band. In a rare interview, McGuinn, fresh from putting the finishing touches on his liner copy for the box set, reflects on the Byrds' legacy and discusses his ongoing career as a solo artist, label entrepreneur, and designer of the new Roger McGuinn signature guitar.

Barnes & Noble.com: In looking over the history of the Byrds, is there any one era that stands out? Or as new musicians came into the lineup, was it simply a new journey?

Roger McGuinn: I have two favorite spots in the Byrds' career. The first was the excitement of going from zero to 60 in two seconds. We were starving musicians on the streets of L.A., taking buses around, living from the charity of (manager) Jim Dickson, who would buy us cheeseburgers once a day, and that's how we stayed alive, and then we were meeting the Beatles and having No. 1 hits and hanging out with Dylan, and going to a height that few people can imagine. The next good part was the onstage fun I had with [guitarist] Clarence White when he was playing with us. He was like having a loaded machine gun -- we'd go out there and just kill the audience every time. Which was not always the case with the original lineup. We were a good studio band, and we made some good records, but the lack of experience in the business took its toll on the live performances. It was much better with Clarence. He was like a jazz musician, always improvising, and he had this thing about syncopation. He was just a genius at syncopating things. He was really exciting. I have an imaginary line if you're good you'll come up to, and he was always way over it.

B&N.com: He's well represented on this box set.

RM: I think that's probably the definitive mark of this set, that it's got a lot of Clarence on it. It's about time. He's kind of overlooked. Gram Parsons was brought forth on the last set, and it was good he was given some spotlight. But it's really good to see Clarence getting some attention on this one.

B&N.com: One fact this set proves is that the evolution of the Byrds into a country band was a natural progression, given your own roots in folk music and how that was the foundation of so much of the Byrds' material.

RM: Exactly. That's how I always looked at it. I always felt very close to country, that it was a form of folk music. It was the Appalachian ballads basically that were given a more upbeat treatment. We were doing country as early as the Turn, Turn, Turn album, with "Satisfied Mind" and so on. So it wasn't really that Gram invented country-rock or whatever, but he was the leading factor in us going to Nashville and doing a whole album of it. We hadn't thought of that until Gram came along. But, yes, it was a natural evolution because of the folk roots we all had. I was gung-ho for it; I thought it was great.

B&N.com: This box set begins with pre-Byrds recordings, when the band was called the Jet Set and the Beefeaters, and includes the latter group's lone Elektra single. Roger, those are very good records.

RM: You know, we had some really good people in there. David Crosby was a wonderful harmony singer, and Gene Clark a great songwriter, Chris Hillman was an extremely talented musician and learned the bass real quick, and Michael Clarke picked up the drums real fast, for somebody who had never played them before. On some of the early studio stuff we had studio musicians -- I think we had Earl Palmer on the Beefeaters tracks.

B&N.com: Also over the course of the Byrds' history, as this set indicates, you worked with some terrific producers. Who among them really stands out as furthering the group's development?

RM: Terry Melcher would be the star of the show. It was his ear that got "Mr. Tambourine Man" to sound creamy and like a big hit. He had that Beach Boys sensibility; he was friends with Bruce Johnston and some of the Beach Boys. In fact, on the session I was on the only Byrd allowed to play, and the rest were Hal Blaine, Jerry Cole, Larry Knechtel, who later was in Bread.…Terry really made it a hit.

B&N.com: Another person you had a close association with as a songwriter was Jacques Levy, who passed away recently. The liner booklet relates a touching story of his final hours, when you were in the room playing for him all the songs the two of your wrote together.

RM: I did. I played until my fingers hurt. I played for a couple of hours straight, and then he passed away. But he smiled -- his mind was there, he was alert.

B&N.com: And he hadn't been responsive to anyone to that point.

RM: He was asleep when I got there. And then I started playing "I Want to Grow Up to Be a Politician" and a big, wide grin came over his face. He had this respirator in and it was agonizing watching him struggling to breathe, but he was happy to hear that. I thought it was just amazing, the timing of it, that [my wife] Camilla and I happened to be in the area that day.

B&N.com: Now you're recording albums on your own and selling them on your web site and at your shows.

RM: We're just having a ball releasing our own albums. First of all, you don't have to jump through hoops. You don't have Clive Davis dictating what the songs will be --although he was very good doing that on my Arista album, Back from Rio. But you can do anything you want. I question whether if I came to a record label and said, "I want to do a hundred folk songs," they would have said, "Sure, we'll back you on that." … Then of course you're responsible for the quality being up there, but I feel good about that. We had so much fun doing it, and then again there's a financial factor, where in order to stay in business record companies systematically kind of, ah, skim the profits, you know. It's not a secret. If you audit them they'll give you some of it back. It's just the way they need to go to stay in business, and everybody knows it. Being in our own field we can do what we want. I've made more money off these two releases than I have off anything else I ever did.

B&N.com: Are you going to be releasing any albums of new, original material?

RM: That is in the pipeline. Another Back from Rio album lined up with bass, drums, and the whole deal. First we want to do a Christmas album, a gospel album, a folk album -- these would be from The Folk Den, so they'll be like compilations, where you take the 10 or 12 Christmas tracks from The Folk Den and put them out. The rock album would have to be completely recorded, so I'd say it's about a year away. Also, Martin has released a seven-string guitar that has my name on it, a signature model. Two years ago we were going to Europe, as we do every couple of years. And on the previous trip Air France had broken one of my expensive guitars. They make you sign a waiver that says the airline will give you $250 for whatever they break, and that wasn't a good deal. So I thought it would be great if I could carry on a guitar; I needed a guitar that would do the 12-string thing and the 6-string thing. So I went to Martin and designed a guitar that would do both. It's a 7-string, with an extra G string in the middle, so it's got that Rickenbacker jingle-jangle thing like a 12-string, but on the top you can do blues bends and on the bottom you can do bluegrass runs. So it's like a Swiss Army knife of a guitar. I designed it, and Martin made me one in their custom shop. While it was sitting there, before they sent it to me, a couple of guitar players came in and played it and wanted their own. So it's like an unlimited edition, called the Roger McGuinn HD7.

B&N.com: Reading your wife's blog on your web site, it sounds like you're in a very good place now.

RM: It's the best place ever. The thrill of being No. 1 with the Byrds was great, but it had some side effects that were not wonderful, like the pressure. It was kind of a dizzying experience. But this is just wonderful; there's nothing bad about it. I feel great now in my life.

-- David McGee

August 2006