Rossjpalmer on Underrated Drum Tracks I Have…įollow songs from so deep on WordPress.Until I read a bit about the history of “My Back Pages”, written by Bob Dylan, I hadn’t realized that it was about abandoning one’s youthful ideals. Zushi tribute | song… on Home at Last – Yo Z… Does any young band rep for the Byrds? Why not? If you’re not familiar or have them pegged as one-trick ponies, go have a listen. They’re all fine albums, and rather underrated at the moment I think. I bought Younger than Yesterday, The Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart of the Rodeo as a three-fer at the start of my last year at university and played all of them to death. But McGuinn was also correct the song fitted the band like a glove, playing to the strengths of Michael Clarke, their rather limited drummer), and he had a knack for editing Dylan’s songs for the pop audience, knowing just how much he could leave out and still get away with it.Ĭrosby, outvoted, sulked, and the song contributed to the deteriorating relationship between him and the rest of the band, but My Back Pages was a masterpiece, on a record that already had in its favour So You Want to be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star (featuring Hugh Makekela’s trumpet), Everybody’s Been Burned and Time Between (to which Vern Gosdin and the great guitarist Clarence White contributed). It was, viewed hard-headedly, a backward step to return to the Bob Dylan songbook adding electric guitars and a 4/4 beat to Dylan’s songs had been done already (not least by Dylan himself), and could never be revolutionary or transformative again. It was a rare occasion when both men were right. Returning to Bob’s songs when he, McGuinn and Chris Hillman had all written a clutch of strong songs for their next album was a step backwards, he argued. David Crosby, though, argued against it the Byrds had already covered Dylan six times on their first two albums, and their previous record, Fifth Dimension, hadn’t featured any Dylan at all. The group’s manager, Jim Dickson, suggested the song, and Roger McGuinn approved of the choice. The decision to cut My Back Pages was contentious within the band. It’s their recording of My Back Pages from 1967’s Younger than Yesterday. The band’s best Dylan interpretation isn’t Tambourine Man, though, nor Chimes of Freedom or You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, nor even the two separate versions of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (though I’m very fond of the 1969 recording – the slow one that’s on The Very Best of the Byrds).

They – even before Hendrix transformed All Along the Watchtower – raised the Dylan cover to an artform. The band’s opening statement, its recording of Mr Tambourine Man, stands not just for their own career, but the entire genre of folk-rock. I do love Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart of the Rodeo too (at least if you programme it so that you use the outtake recordings with Gram Parsons’ vocals, rather than the ones with McGuinn’s impression of him), and I’d perhaps agree that nothing on YtY is quite as breathtaking as Goin’ Back or Hickory Wind, but what Younger than Yesterday has in its favour is My Back Pages.Īmong the very many things they were, the Byrds were the finest interpreters of Bob Dylan’s music, covering more than 20 different Dylan songs, with few clunkers among them. The predominance of Chris Hillman songs (he has four solo writing credits and a co-write on So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star) does make Younger than Yesterday a bit of an outlier in the Byrds’ canon, but those songs are actually pretty strong, Have You Seen Her Face and Time Between especially, and Younger than Yesterday is by a nose my favourite Byrds album. Younger than Yesterday saw the Byrds pulling in every direction they knew how to: Beatle-ised Dylan covers, embryonic country rock with psychedelic touches, lysergic folk-rock, a jazzy torch song, driving rock ‘n’ roll with jazz trumpet, another one of Roger McGuinn’s rather goofy sci-fi songs, a ’65 Beatles pastiche and, in the shape of David Crosby’s much-maligned (rightly maligned) Mind Gardens, Indian raga.

The byrds my back pages