Perhaps it’s simply due to the fact that by now I’m used to the idea of someone coming into the band and making them sound entirely different. Yet when Gene takes the lead on Easy Rider, it doesn’t bother me the same way. The country sound there feels more like a costume-“We’re country!”-rather than an influence they absorbed into their own aesthetic, as on the more subtly layered Notorious Byrd Brothers or some of Hillman’s contributions to Younger than Yesterday. Though I love the record, it doesn’t feel like a “Byrds” album to me. When Gram joined up for Sweetheart, the resulting sound rubbed me the wrong way. The Byrdsian harmonies are not there to cushion it you wouldn’t know it was the Byrds if I didn’t tell you. Much the same as when Gram Parsons (no relation) joined for Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Gene's is a voice that does not sound like “the Byrds.” It’s too deep, too smooth, too serene. It’s these two Parsons tracks that really announce that this is a “new” Byrds-not a bunch of charlatans merely trying to cash in on other people's legacy. The album’s second half turns into a straight-up country record highlighted by a string of great tunes: “There Must Be Someone I Can Turn To,” “Gunga Din”-both featuring drummer Gene Parsons’s smooth tenor up front-and McGuinn’s other standout track, a cover of Woody Guthrie's “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).” And while none of the new Byrds were as distinct songwriters as Gene Clark, David Crosby, or Chris Hillman-nor as extraordinary at harmonizing as Crosby or Hillman-they still brought strong material. Though McGuinn took lead vocals on many of the tracks, he only wrote one song (with a little help from Dylan)-the stellar title track. Byrds’ ten songs and was the sole lead singer (unlike every other Byrds album).Įasy Rider is a far superior record, perhaps due to the band’s return to the fundamentals of how the old Byrds functioned: everybody wrote, everybody sang, and Bob Dylan’s name pops up in the songwriting credits a couple times. Hyde, which was hurriedly put together and saw the band aiming in too many musical directions-an especially interesting thing to note considering McGuinn wrote, co-wrote, or arranged seven of Dr. Their first foray was the (self-admitted) uneven Dr.
It's shocking to really grasp how far they’d traveled in just four years! Not only was the band onto its fifth lineup iteration-Roger McGuinn being the sole original member-they had also progressed through nearly as many genres: folk rock, psychedelia, country.Įasy Rider was the second album in the Byrds’ “late” period, in which the band was made up of McGuinn, Clarence White, Gene Parsons, and John York. Ballad of Easy Rider was the Byrds’ eighth album, though released only four years after their first.
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