Comments on: The Byrds “Younger Than Yesterday”

By: mark

mark — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 03:46:49 +0000

paul jackson–
I always assumed that the difference was not a matter of different studio takes but rather due to re-mixing the original takes… of course I might be wrong.

ps. I trust that you have Byrdmaniax now… and those unreleased tracks from the Untitled session are magical!

By: Paul Jackson

Paul Jackson — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:54:20 +0000

I have a question that maybe someone can answer, please? Inspired by reading of Roger McGuinn’s appearance at The Barbican in London this week…to be televised by the BBC on 13th February…I played my 1987 Edsel vinyl reissue version (ED277) of Younger than Yesterday. Possibly for the first time in over 20 years! And some of the tracks on Side 2 are clearly different studio takes from the original 1967 CBS vinyl album…I got that out too and played it thru’ the scratches! And I was proved right. Has any other Byrds fan noticed this? As`a matter of general interest, I have been a follower of The Byrds…the band and the individuals…since maybe 1965 when I was in school. Thru’ my student years I collected all of the studio albums…apart from Byrdmaniax. I don’t know why I missed that one out now. I was present at the Bardney Folk Festival near Lincoln, UK when the band played there in 1971. And I was in awe of Roger when he presented what amounted to a masterclass (with Sid Griffin) at Ronnie Scott’s in Birmingham, UK in the 1990’s. A few years ago I was within a whisker of buying an ultra-rare vinyl copy of The Byrds set at the Boston Tea Party (1968?) but someone beat me to it. These days, it’s all available on CD or as MP3 downloads, but it ain’t as exciting!

By: Leonor

Leonor — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:21:02 +0000

Mr. Tambourine Man in mp3, Please!!

By: philspector

philspector — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:28:13 +0000

Like sixsevenfive for me the greatest Byrds Lp is “The Notorious Byrd Brother” (just listen to the two great Goffin/King covers).

But the reason i’m writing to ur blog today is to talk about one of the most underrated Lp ever (really), one who has a little connection with the Byrds (Clarence White play on this Lp).
I’m talking about the “LA Getaway” by Joel Scott Hill, Chris Ethridge and John Barbata!!!

It is a fantastic Lp, and Hill is an amazing (and underrated ) singer. It is really a Lp that every RisingStorm reader will love.

Keep up the good work

PS : can you please one day talk about one of those ?

ZERFAS “S/T”
ANONYMOUS “Inside The Shadow”
MICHAELANGELO “S/T”
or DION “Born To Be With You”
etc….

By: sixsevenfive

sixsevenfive — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:43:25 +0000

I never get tired of of C.T.A.-102 or Mind Gardens, but happily skip Everybody’s Been Burned and Renaissance Fair. I prefer my Byrds to be out there! Psychedelia is what they do best: The Notorious Byrd Brothers is their crowning achievement.

By: mark

mark — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:22:52 +0000

Obviously the tensions were running high (no pun intended) during the recording of YTY. Clearly Crosby’s more dominant presence and the increasing strength of his material (Everybody’s Been Burned predated the Byrds!) figured into his departure. And perhaps also his ego… After all, he took Gene Clark’s guitar away and left him a tambourine! I also read that Lady Friend was set aside in favor of any-other-work-except-Crosby’s – this may also be McGuinn’s struggle to maintain his position central stage. If you look at the film footage from that time period (some are included with the last Byrds box set), you will find McGuinn taking a diminutive role off to the side and Crosby becoming the spokesperson for the group.

As for Untitled…
What a stellar work! I am especially fond of the cd re-release as it includes a plethora of remarkable, if not excellent out-takes and alternative versions. I believe it was the live performances that fused them into a unified band – this time, not behind McGuinn (or Crosby) but together! “Whoever the Byrds are is just alright” with me!

By: jason

jason — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:58:25 +0000

Thanks for the comments friends. I had read somewhere, could be mistaken, that Hillman and McGuinn intentionally left Lady Friend (a killer track) off the Younger Than Yesterday album. They had also done this during the Notorious Byrd Brother sessions with Triad. This was supposedly done to either keep Crosby’s ego in check or to push him out of the band.

I totally agree with you DK, I love Untitled, it’s a great record, solid all the way thru – their masterpiece from the Byrds “late” era. I really like Easy Rider as well, there are some great lost tracks on that album like Gunga Din and Fido that deserve greater recognition. Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart of the Rodeo were so good, later in the band’s career that they overshadow great records like Untitled, Easy Rider and Farther Along.

By: dk

dk — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:48:05 +0000

I can’t pass up the opportunity to put in another pitch for The Byrds’ Untitled album. It isn’t widely held up as one of their masterpieces, but to my ears it’s every bit as good as their more heralded work.

That said, I don’t give Younger Than Yesterday the spins it probably deserves, so thanks for yet another solid recco…

By: mark

mark — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:54:40 +0000

First of all, I would like to thank you, Jason, for the review. Indeed, this is one of the finest albums to emerge from the blue smoke and haze of the 1960’s! If there is a defect to this album (more on the virtues of Mind Gardens and C.T.A. 102 later), I would point to Why. Not only is it about a year old at this time – a product of the 5D period, long since past with the rapid acceleration in the Byrds music experimentation – but, alas! it is one of the more mediocre recordings of what is a remarkable piece. I will not fault it for its lack of the “raga rock” sound of sitar-esque Rickenbacker guitar (as fills out some of the out-takes); however, note its lack of further exploration. On this album, it is a filler – in part, an attempt to mask the obvious and remaining absence of Gene’s material. That said, its inclusion is not only telling, it is necessary when you take into consideration the tensions and musical explorations of the period. The fact that there is no “definitive” version of the song is a break through – the song is open, like the world around the artist, to continual interpretation and re-interpretation.

Crosby, along with Hillman, produced some of the most remarkable songs here (as noted in Jason’s review). But something else to mention about their contributions is the critical influence and intellectual force that they brought to what had been McGuinn’s band. The album is a technical playground but also a laboratory. Crosby became a “spiritual” leader of sorts here: his interest in divers musical genres from jazz to traditional Indian musical forms had been “feeding” McGuinn and company for a couple of years. There was a great deal of cross-pollination – much of it intentional. The results are evidenced throughout this album. I believe that the eclectic nature of their search was balanced by expert craftsmanship and control (at least before the darker side of their “medications” was fully felt). This opened many doors beyond those of traditional folk that had always been an important part of their music. Essentially, any “method” or “sound” as a static work was abandoned! (Of course, the presence of a Dylan song in their midst may seem to contradict this statement).

What emerges here is a taut album that not only demonstrates their diverging and multiplying interests, but also is the laboratory for their creative searches. Making an album becomes, itself, a creative process rather than just a documentation of songs that have been individually fashioned by live performances and practice only. C.T.A. 102 and Mind Gardens (to name the two most often criticized pieces) are critical pieces in the Byrds’ larger canon for they are active studies of technology (C.T.A. 102 is far beyond 2-4-2 Foxtrot of 5D) and language or song-writing itself. With Mind Gardens, we find Crosby looking intently at the fabric of a song and delving deeply into the history, politics, and nature of popular artistic forms: is a song possible sans rhyming? What is the role of the voice? The musical accompaniment? In a way, he is assuming the role of a mystic and a leader in the trajectory of music at the time. The pop song and the stardom that they sought throughout their formative years, has now been set aside (mostly) in favor of finding ways to speak directly to their audience, to question, and to have their search for some mystical “garden” made public.

Regarding the Byrds “sound” (seemingly so very present on this album), I would argue that such a “sound” does not exist. By claiming that a substitution of this song for that, or the weakness of this song and the needed inclusion of what is deemed a stronger song, or the presence of this guitar or that bass or those drums or these voices, we fall victim to the mind-set of our time. We continuously “shuffle” the music that we listen to (and why not?). But this album, like their music in general, is non-objective. We are made privy to their process of creating on YTY like none of their previous albums. Their can be no Byrds “sound” now, because there never was one. They were always in flux, always cross-contaminating their music, drawing from a divers range of interests and sources, searching for new sounds, technology (“McGuinn and his toys”), new landscapes afforded by drugs, and ways to tap into the spi8rit of their times – both politically and socially.

There, I said my piece! This is one great album! Period! Thanks!

By: reddove108

reddove108 — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:33:14 +0000

Subtract Mind Gardens and C.T.A. 102, add Lady Friend and you would have had an album that would rank with Rubber Soul, Pet Sounds and Forever Changes.