the Byrds

the Byrds, American band of the 1960s who popularized folk rock, particularly the songs of Bob Dylan, and whose changes in personnel created an extensive family tree of major country rock bands and pop supergroups. The principal members were Roger McGuinn (original name James Joseph McGuinn III; b. July 13, 1942, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.), Gene Clark (in full Harold Eugene Clark; b. November 17, 1941, Tipton, Missouri—d. May 24, 1991, Sherman Oaks, California), David Crosby (original name David Van Cortland; b. August 14, 1941, Los Angeles, California—January 18, 2023), Chris Hillman (b. December 4, 1942, Los Angeles), Michael Clarke (b. June 3, 1944, New York, New York—d. December. 19, 1993, Treasure Island, Florida), Gram Parsons (original name Ingram Cecil Connor III; b. November 5, 1946, Winter Haven, Florida—d. September 19, 1973, Yucca Valley, California), and Clarence White (b. June 6, 1944, Lewiston, Maine—d. July 14, 1973, Palmdale, California).

The Byrds’ debut single, a version of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” went to number one in 1965, breaking the British Invasion’s year-long dominance of Top 40 airplay and record sales in the United States. They introduced Dylan’s songwriting to a new, commercially empowered, teenage pop audience and, in the process, established a new, “mod,” distinctly American style of rock. The Byrds’ trademark sound—a luminous blend of 12-string electric guitar and madrigal-flavoured vocal harmonies—spiked the Appalachian folk music tradition with the rhythmic vitality of the Beatles and the sunny hedonism of southern California. On early albums, the Byrds covered Dylan, Pete Seeger, Porter Wagoner, and Stephen Foster with a jangly clarity that reflected young America’s changing mood and its fantasies of a Pacific Coast utopia.

Former folkies converted by Beatlemania, McGuinn (who was called Jim before changing his name to Roger later in his career), Clark, and Crosby founded the Byrds—initially as the Jet Set and the Beefeaters—in 1964. (McGuinn had been a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio and a sideman for Judy Collins; Clark had been a member of the New Christy Minstrels.) But the Byrds brought new, formidable influences to folk and pop. Crosby’s interest in modern jazz and Indian ragas inspired the Byrds’ forays into modal psychedelia, including the hit “Eight Miles High” (1966). Hillman, a teenage mandolin prodigy, was a prime, underacknowledged force in the Byrds’ fusion of rock and country. In his songs “Mr. Spaceman” and “5D (Fifth Dimension),” McGuinn, an aviation and technology enthusiast, charged the Byrds’ music and image with space-age optimism; he was also one of the first pop musicians to embrace the Moog synthesizer.

Formed more out of common ambition than fraternal bonding, the Byrds were racked by dissent. Clark, a prolific writer of melodically imaginative, bittersweet ballads, left in 1966; Crosby was fired in 1967 during the making of The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968). Parsons, who had attempted a country-rock marriage with his previous group, the International Submarine Band, was a Byrd for only five months in 1968. Nevertheless, Parsons’s Southern background and his passion for rural American music, including gospel and rhythm and blues, deeply informed the country sound of Sweetheart of the Rodeo, a record so controversial it alienated the Byrds’ pop audience at the same time it outraged the Nashville music establishment (although the group did perform on the Grand Ole Opry radio program in 1968).

In the late 1960s and early ’70s the Byrds were as famous for their influence and the activities of their alumni as for their actual recordings. The Byrds’ blending of folk, country, and psychedelia was recast and commercially fine-tuned by bands such as Buffalo Springfield, Poco, and the Eagles. Hillman left the Byrds shortly after Parsons; together they founded the seminal country rock band the Flying Burrito Brothers. Crosby produced Joni Mitchell’s first album, collaborated with members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, and, with Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield and the Hollies’ Graham Nash, formed the “supertrio” Crosby, Stills and Nash (which became a quartet with the occasional addition of Neil Young). The Byrds’ legacy was revived in the 1980s, as an earthy antidote to punk nihilism and synthesizer-driven pop, by the American underground bands R.E.M. and the Long Ryders. In the 1990s the Byrds’ progressive country aspirations inspired the alternative country movement led by Wilco and Son Volt.

With a shifting lineup, the Byrds remained a popular act until 1973, when McGuinn, the sole remaining founding member, went solo. Clarence White, an experienced session musician who played with the bluegrass group the Kentucky Colonels, brought an exhilarating, concise style of roots rock guitar to later Byrds albums. There were periodic reunions by members of the original lineup during the 1970s, including a 1973 album by the full quintet. The 1990 boxed set The Byrds featured four new recordings by McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman, one of which was, appropriately, a Bob Dylan song, “Paths of Victory.” The Byrds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.