IN THE STUDIO WITH THE BYRDS
Having worked in film and produced records that included jazz, comedy, folk and bluegrass, it seemed very important to me that a clear identity and concept must be established if we were to create a group that would garner significant attention. The Byrds’ background was primarily in folk music, and though they seemed to be prepared to abandon this background to follow the Beatles, it was to me their strength and, as their manager, I felt it should be retained as an element in their music.
It was David Crosby (we had been doing some rock experiments) who brought me together with the others who were to make up the Byrds. I had the key to World Pacific Studios, a few blocks away from L.A.’s leading folk club at the time, The Troubadour. Late at night I would make tapes of the folk singers who were on the scene. I was primarily looking for talent for Jac Holzman of Elektra Records, then essentially a folk label, and Crosby was one of the many people ai recorded.
I had heard David Crosby at a coffee-house and was very impressed with his clear, pure sound. We had made a number of recordings but had not received much attention with them. I had also wanted to create a vocal group and became very interested when David came to me one day and told me how Gene Clark and Roger (then Jim) McGuinn were writing songs together and that he wanted to work with them and sing harmony. He said that if I got involved he could probably get into the group. I didn’t know if McGuinn and Clark had ever heard of me, but I did have a studio available, and we started making tapes together.
We rehearsed all summer at World Pacific, adding first Michael Clarke (a Crosby discovery) and then Chris Hillman, who had been a mandolin player in a bluegrass group I had been working with. One day we took a home tape machine and a rehearsal tape to Benny Shapiro’s house, and McGuinn, Clark and Crosby sang “live” with the tape in his cathedral-like living room. this made a strong impression on Benny’s daughter Michelle, who came running to the living room greatly excited by the Beatles-like sounds she heard. The following morning, Benny related the incident to Miles Davis, who then called Irving Townsend at Columbia Records. Townsend arranged a meeting for me with Allen Stanton, who set up an option contract and audition. He wanted to find a young in-house producer for the audition and chose Terry Melcher.
When we went into the Columbia studios, in January, 1965, we had already released a single on Elektra – unsuccessfully – in October, 1964. Jac Holzman chose to release this recording of two Byrds original under the name “Beefeaters” since he was prevented from identifying the group. The first Columbia recording yielded the Byrd’s first hit, their version of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” I have to confess that I had pretty much pressured them to do this song over some strong objections from the group. The rock-and-roll songs that McGuinn and Clark were writing at the same time didn’t seem (to me) to have enough substance to launch the group, “Mr. Tambourine Man” seemed to be perfect: the right words and the sort of structure they could bring their particular talents to.
The song was cut largely with studio musicians. When we formed the group, we contemplated that bassist Chris Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke would perform live, and the three singing members – McGuinn, Clark and Crosby – would record augmented by studio musicians. Columbia only signed these three to the original contract. After the first session, the five Byrds felt they should play on their own album, and did. That first Columbia single (“Mr. Tambourine Man”) was cut with Hal Blaine on drums, Larry Knectal on bass, Jerry Cole on rhythm guitar, and Leon Russell on electric piano. Roger McGuinn, on lead guitar twelve-string, was the only Byrd who played on this original session: Crosby, McGuinn and Clark sang.
“Mr. Tambourine Man” contained all the elements that were to become the signature of The Byrds’ sound. Perhaps most important was McGuinn’s electric twelve-string guitar style; he had recorded a twelve-string acoustic album for Horizon Records earlier, and I’d had success with an album of twelve-string guitar I produced featuring Glen Campbell and Douglas Dillard. One of the few things that McGuinn and I saw eye-to-eye on was the exceptional recording qualities of the twelve-string. You can make a very big sound with the harmonics of the octave strings. As for the choice of the Rickenbacker, which became synonymous with McGuinn and The Byrds. Roger had seen and heard the Beatles using one and had to have one. McGuinn was very taken with the Beatles and was certainly one of the first people in the folk scene to be aware of the significance of what they were doing.
McGuinn worked a lot with CBS producer Terry Melcher to perfect his guitar sound, experimenting with overdubs and high-end boosters. The rest was just the way he played. Within the first year he became very artful with his own style, combining finger-picking with flat-picking. He did some magnificent things on the twelve-string that just overwhelmed me; his intro riff for “Mr. Tambourine Man” was just the beginning.
One thing I particularly wanted to get into the Byrds’ sound was countermelodic bass patterns instead of the usual rock-and-roll rhythm bass. We began that on “Mr. Tambourine Man” with Larry Knectal, and Chris Hillman later became exceptional in his ability to do this well. Instead of just following the bass drum and chord progression, the bass became a melodic instrument. Although we didn’t pull it off all the time, it made the Byrds’ music sound more complex and the twelve-string made it sound bigger than it really was. Somehow in the end, you had more music than you would have expected.
The Byrds’ vocal sound was another distinctive element of their style. Vocals have always been a big concern for me. Having produced a lot of folk music, where you don’t usually get the strongest or most technically proficient singers. I had to learn to use harmonies and develop recording techniques to compensate.
The basis of this is doubling the vocals to give them more texture and firmness.
Often we would double the twelve-strings as well. Tape delay and echo are also important factors, both for the vocals and for the twelve-string.
But when all is said and done, there never was and never was and never will be anything more important than getting the right song and the right performer together and achieving the best possible performance. Musicians are naturally eager to place their own songs on a record to receive writer’s royalties, but I always thought it was better to do somebody else’s marvelous song than to do something of your own that might not be as strong.
The success of “Mr. Tambourine Man” proves the point. The Byrds’ treatment of Dylan’s song was a classic example of an ‘overnight hit.’ A San Francisco DJ played it on a Sunday afternoon; by Tuesday, hundreds of new fans began arriving from San Francisco to see the Byrds at Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip; KRLA picked up the record; and by the end of the week, it was being played throughout the West. The following Monday, I flew to New York, and Columbia told me we had a regional hit. By Friday, it was on the top New York radio station and was breaking simultaneously in England. It was to become a top-five record in twenty-six countries.
The group was adopted by the creative community of the Fifties that had joined the establishment in the Sixties, they helped us without our asking. Jim Goode at Time magazine wrote stories about them; writers like Paul Robbins and Billy James picked up on the group. I’m not sure that they Byrds ever saw themselves in the way these people saw them, or in the way I envisioned the group…it’s hard to see things in perspective when you’re on square one, and each member of the group had his own idea of what it should be. Disagreements over image and material were among the things that led to my eventual departure as manager from the group. The tensions that ultimately broke up the band were always there, and at times, they actually worked for them. On tracks like “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Eight Miles High,” when everyone was contributing equally, and they played with one mind and feeling, the Byrds were unbeatable.
- Jim Dickson
