Chris Hillman - Pioneer

Of the five original members of The Byrds [Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, Chris Hillman, Michael Clarke], Chris Hillman has had [in my opinion] the most interesting career of them all. McGuinn and Crosby got more notoriety, but Hillman had more impact. He co-founded the folk-rock group The Byrds, he and Gram Parson practically invented country rock when they formed the Flying Burrito Brothers, and he discovered Emmylou Harris. Need I say More? Well, I will anyway.

Chris Hillman is from Southern California, just north of San Diego. It was here that he first fell in love with folk and bluegrass music. His mom bought him his first guitar, but then he discovered the mandolin, which became his stringed instrument of choice. He played in bluegrass bands the Golden State Boys and The Hillmen. The Hillmen disbanded and Chris Hillman entertained thoughts of quitting school and going to school at UCLA. Then he got a call from the guy who managed The Hillmen with an offer to join a new group in Los Angeles. This group was The Byrds. They asked him to play bass. He’d never played bass, but since he could play guitar and mandolin, he could easily adapt.

For the first three Byrds albums Chris Hillman was just the bass player at the back of the stage with the drummer, Michael Clarke. That all changed when Gene Clark left the band in 1966. McGuinn and Crosby promoted him to the “front line” and Hillman started to write songs. On 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday he contributed So You Want To Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star [with Roger McGuinn], Have You Seen Her Face, Time Between, Thoughts and Words, and The Girl With No Name. That’s not bad for a guy who had not written songs before. Time Between and The Girl With No Name marked the beginning of the Byrds’ flirtation with country music as they both feature the playing of flatpicking legend and future Byrd Clarence White. For the 1968 follow-up The Notorious Byrds Brothers he contributed [either by himself or with help from Roger McGuinn and David Crosby] Artificial Energy, Natural Harmony, Draft Morning [a David Crosby tune that McGuinn and Hillman finished after they fired Crosby], Change Is Now [the only Byrds tune to feature both David Crosby and Clarence White on the same track], Old John Robertson, Tribal Gathering, and Dolphin Smile. Hillman had gotten quite prolific in just two albums. Both Younger Than Yesterday and The Notorious Byrds Brothers are widely credited to be the finest the Byrds ever did. A lot of that has to do with the emergence of Chris Hillman as a songwriter.

With David Crosby out of the picture, the Byrds needed a replacement. Chris Hillman found one while in line at his bank. He met a guy named Gram Parsons. Soon enough, Parsons was hired as a piano player. According to Roger McGuinn they “hired a keyboard player and instead got George Jones in a Nudie suit.” Gram Parsons was bitten by the country music bug, but he wanted to synthesize rock, country and R&B/soul into its own kind of music which he called “Cosmic American Music.” Such was the force of his personality that this guy who came into the band on salary pretty much dictated the direction of the next album. That album would be 1968’s Sweethearts of the Rodeo. Of course, Gram Parsons had a willing accomplice in Chris Hillman. Hillman had been a bluegrass musician before picking up a bass to join the Byrds, so he was very enthusiastic about the Byrds’ new direction. Such was Parsons’ influence that the only Byrds originals on Sweetheart of the Rodeo were written by him. Chris Hillman was happy to recede into the background, but he did have a couple of lead vocals – I Am a Pilgrim, which had been sung by Merle Travis in the 1940s, and Blue Canadian Rockies, which has been sung by Gene Autry in 1952 in a film of the same name. Of note, several Nashville musicians played on Sweetheart of the Rodeo, including pedal steel player Jay Dee Maness, but more on him later. But the die was cast – the Byrds went country all the way. Gram Parsons’ previous band, the International Submarine Band, has been credited with inventing what some call “country rock,” but they were not nearly as big as The Byrds. And to be sure, Gram Parsons could not have done it without Chris Hillman.

Gram Parsons lasted just that one album with the Byrds before he moved on to other musical things. The Byrds toured England in support of Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and they met the Rolling Stones. Gram became great friends with Keith Richards immediately. They talked about South Africa, which was then in the throes of apartheid. The Byrds were going to play some shows in South Africa. Once Keith told Gram what South Africa was like, and the segregation that persisted there, Gram told the rest of the Byrds he wouldn’t go with them to South Africa. So Gram was no longer with the Byrds. To this day Chris Hillman thinks the real reason Gram didn’t want to go to South Africa was because he wanted to hang out with Keith Richards, not because of any sensitivity to racial matters.

Almost immediately Gram hooked up with Chris Etheridge, a bass player with whom he had worked before. They decided to form a band. Shortly thereafter, Chris Hillman came back from South Africa, patched things up with Gram, and told him it was a mistake for the Byrds to go to South Africa. He also told Gram he was going to leave the Byrds, and could he join Gram’s new band? Thus was born the Flying Burrito Brothers. Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman lived in a house in the San Fernando Valley they dubbed “Burrito Manor.” There they together crafted the songs that would become their debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin. One such song was Sin City. It was the tale of an innocent country boy’s descent into the urban jungle. It was partially inspired by the band’s then-manager, Larry Spector, whose office was on the 31st floor who, according to Hillman, “robbed us, and whose office was on the 31st floor. We were taking a tongue-in-cheek, risqué jab at everything – the earthquake, the bad manager, the Vietnam War.” Chris Hillman had the first verse and the chorus [This old earthquake’s gonna leave me in the poorhouse/ It seems like this whole town’s insane/On the 31st floor/A gold-plated door/Won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain], but asked Gram to help him finish the song. The leadoff track on The Gilded Palace of Sin was Christine’s Tune. Another Hillman/Parsons collaboration, it was about David Crosby’s girlfriend, Christine Hinton. She was at one time the head of the Byrds’ fan club. According to Hillman, “we took a light poke at her because she was being mischievous about our ongoing problems with our exes.” She got killed in a car accident shortly after Woodstock so they renamed the song Devil in Disguise. Parsons and Hillman came up with a good road song, Wheels. It’s a companion piece to Sin City, with the theme of escaping from temptation and the turbulence of an evil place (the 31st floor perhaps?). Juanita [also a Hillman/Parsons song] is the true story of a 17-year old girl who tries to pull a guy out of a booze-and-drug-induced descent into Hell before eventually giving up and walking out [for the very last time]. Since it’s release in 1969, The Gilded Palace of Sin still has not been certified gold, but I’ve seen it written that those who did buy the album all formed bands. Bands like Wilco, Whiskeytown, Son Volt,and artists like Dwight Yoakam, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, and Elvis Costello all have recorded music that sounds like The Gilded Palace of Sin – such was its influence.

High Fashion Queen is another Hillman/Parsons song. It appeared on Burrito Deluxe. It was recorded at a manic pace. In 1999 Emmylou Harris put together a Gram Parsons tribute called Return of the Grievous Angel. Chris Hillman got to recut High Fashion Queen with Steve Earle. According to Hillman: “The way Steve and I cut it was the way it should have been cut but never was. I don’t know what we were doing on that album. It was like crazy music, with real fast tempos and spotty rhythm section.” I guess they were in a hurry – it sounds like it. Hillman did another tribute of sorts. This one was with Roger McGuinn. They cut Bob Dylan’s You Ain’t Going Nowhere for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken Volume II. They originally cut it for Sweetheart of the Rodeo. McGuinn sang the lead then. This time he and Hillman recorded it as a duet. But I digress…

After Hillman fired Gram Parsons from the Flying Burrito Brothers and replaced him with Rick Roberts in 1970, they recorded another album, The Flying Burrito Brothers. The band started to splinter, but before they broke up, Chris Hillman found a female folk singer in Baltimore while on tour. Knowing that Gram Parsons was looking for a girl to sings harmonies with, he told Gram about this girl. As it turns out, that girl was Emmylou Harris. It wasn’t Gram Parsons who discovered Emmylou – it was Chris Hillman. Shortly thereafter, Chris Hillman left the Flying Burrito Brothers and joined with Stephen Stills. Hillman helped Stephen Stills create what I think is the best album of Stills’ career, Manassas. Stills’ tour de force covered a lot of musical ground, to include Latin jams, rock, blues, country, folk, and bluegrass. Hillman’s influence on the album can be heard on the album’s second side [it was a double LP], subtitled The Wilderness. That’s the side that has the more country/bluegrass feel. Hillman also contributed my favorite song from the Manassas album, It Doesn’t Matter. I first heard It Doesn’t Matter when I visited Carol in Fort Collins back in 1985. It appeared on an imported Stephen Stills “greatest hits” album that I bought while visiting her. So whenever I hear it today, I am always happily reminded of those carefree days when Carol and I were inseparable. Unfortunately, the band lasted a little less than two years. Atlantic Records was more interested in a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunion, so Manassas was doomed. What a shame – they were a much better band than CSN&Y could ever hope to be.

Here’s where my knowledge of Chris Hillman’s music gets a bit fuzzy. I know he recorded albums with J.D Souther and Richie Furay [of Buffalo Springfield fame]. He also reunited with Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark to record a couple of albums. I don’t have any of them. From what I’ve read about them, they’re extremely average, but that’s just what I’ve read. I couldn’t rate their quality first-hand because I’ve never heard them. After these projects Chris Hillman founded the Desert Rose Band, which included the talents of guitarist/banjo player Herb Pedersen, guitarist John Jorgenson, Jay Dee Maness [who played pedal steel on Sweetheart of the Rodeo], drummer Steve Duncan and bassist Bill Bryson, all of them Southern California session musicians. The Desert Rose Band enjoyed much success in country music in their eight-year run [1985-93]. I don’t have any of their records either, but someday I might remedy that oversight.

Now, back to some more Chris Hillman music I do have. After the break-up of the Desert Rose Band, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen continued to work sporadically as a duo. They recorded two country albums. In 1996 they returned to their roots with Bakersfield Sound. Bakersfield Sound includes songs recorded by or associated with Buck Owens, the Everly Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams. The review from Allmusic.com asserts that Hillman and Pedersen are steeped in this material, which they perform with authority and conviction. I have the disc – I have to agree with their assessment. Bakersfield Sound is well worth owning. On their next project, Way Out West [2002], Hillman and Pedersen mix things up a little bit. Not only do they play straight ahead country music, but they also throw in a little gospel, a little bluegrass, a little bit of folk. Twangy guitars abound on this easy-going album. Way Out West is another album well worth owning.

When they weren’t recording as a duo, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen teamed up with Tony and Larry Rice to record three bluegrass albums – Out of the Woodwork [1997], Rice, Rice, Hillman & Pedersen [1999], and Running Wild [2001]. On these discs, Hillman revisits some of his past. He plays bluegrass versions of songs from Manassas [So Begins the Task], Flying Burrito Brothers [Do Right Woman, Do Right Man], Stephen Stills [4+20], the Grateful Dead [Friend of the Devil] (ok, he wasn’t in the Dead, but they were contemporaries), the Beatles [Things We Said Today] (again, he wasn’t a Beatle either, but they were contemporaries of the Byrds], a nicely arranged Dimming of the Day from Richard Thompson, and lots of originals. If you want to hear four musicians playing bluegrass music perfectly, these three albums are good to have. These guys really did check their egos at the door. On a side note, Tony Rice has an all-instrumental compilation of his own [58957:The Bluegrass Guitar Collection] – get it now!

In 1998 Chris Hillman released his Like a Hurricane [not to be confused with the Neil Young song of the same name]. A country-rock record, there is one song in particular that catches the ear. That song is I’m Still Alive. As Hillman describes the song: “I wrote this after having visited one of my oldest friends, who was in the hospital waiting for an organ transplant. When I was with him that day, he was literally days away from dying. He never gave up and showed me what courage in the face of overwhelming diversity truly is.” That friend – David Crosby. In 2005, Chris Hillman released The Other Side [produced by Herb Pedersen]. The opening cut is both an eye-opener and jaw-dropper – a bluegrass version of the Byrds’ classic Eight Miles High. That alone is worth the price of the CD. Also on The Other Side – a bluegrass version of It Doesn’t Matter. The rest of the tunes are Chris Hillman/Steve Hill originals. It’s all good.

2010 saw the release of Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen At Edwards Barn. This is a live album recorded in a barn in Nipono, California during a concert staged as a benefit for a local church. Here Hillman and Pedersen, with a little help from their friends Larry Park, David Mansfield, and Bill Bryson, revisit the past and give it the bluegrass treatment. Gems from the Byrds [Turn! Turn! Turn!, Eight Miles High, Have You Seen Her Face], the Flying Burrito Brothers [Wheels, Sin City], a tune from Buck Owens [Together Again], the Desert Rose Band [Love Reunited, Desert Rose], a couple of Chris Hillman/Steve Hill originals, and a Herb Pedersen original from 1972 [Wait a Minute] grace this live retrospective. This journey through the past is a must have for any fans of the Byrds or the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Fox News reporter James Rosen was asked to write the liner notes for Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen At Edwards Barn. He tried to define Chris Hillman. A young man who came of age during the psychedelic 60s, who took flight as a Byrd, found brotherhood among the Flying Burritos, flourished as a Desert Rose, and emerged as a titan of country and bluegrass around the same time he was being enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. How does one define such a man with one word? Rosen chose “open.” I choose “pioneer.” I think they both fit. If you listen to what I’ve heard the man produce over the last 45 years, I think you’d agree. He's made a lot of beautiful music.


Chris Hillman & Steve Earle - High Fashion Queen


Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen - Turn! Turn! Turn!


Stephen Stills/Manassas - It Doesn't Matter


Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen - Eight Miles High


Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen - So Begins The Task


The Flying Burrito Brothers - Devil in Disguise

Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Good-Looking Corpse…

If anybody in music personifies this phrase, it would be Gram Parsons. Not many people know who Gram Parsons was, his work, or his impact on music. He’s credited by many as having invented “country rock.” He always hated that phrase. He preferred to use the term “Cosmic American Music.” He was very adept at taking musical forms like country, soul, and rock, throwing them all in a musical blender, and come up with a synthesis of all three. But I don’t think that was his biggest contribution to music. In my feeble mind, his big thing was introducing the world to Emmylou Harris. After his time with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, he finally decided he wanted to do his own thing, but his own thing included having a female singing partner like George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Chris Hillman [the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers] discovered Emmylou Harris while on tour and told Gram Parsons about her. The rest, as they say, is history.

If anybody knows about Gram Parsons, it’s because of his death and the way he went out of this world. His passing is the stuff of legend. The legend even generated a movie called “Grand Theft Parsons.” While at the funeral of Byrds guitarist Clarence White, he made a pact with his road manager [Phil Kaufman]. He didn’t want a normal funeral – he just wanted to be taken out to Joshua Tree, California and cremated. Why Joshua Tree? Whenever he wanted to get away from all the hassles of the music business, Gram Parsons always liked to go to his favorite place, which was Joshua Tree. Joshua Tree was a spiritual place for him. He’d go there, commune with nature, take trips on LSD or magic mushrooms, and look for UFOs, usually all at the same time.

Gram Parsons did lots of drugs – you name it, he probably did them. His drug use caught up with him in September 1973. He had just finished recording his Grievous Angel album and was going to go on tour to support it. Before the tour he and several friends went to Joshua Tree for a vacation. They consumed lots of drugs and lots of alcohol. Gram Parsons died on this trip, having ingested too much morphine and alcohol. But before his step-father could claim his remains to fly them to New Orleans for burial, his road manager honored the pact they made at Clarence White’s funeral. He stole Gram Parsons’ body, drove out to Joshua Tree, poured gasoline on it, and set it on fire.

Bernie Leadon: “He was very alive – a lovely guy. He just had this dark side and really sort of a death wish.”

Keith Richards: “He could touch a core in people. We call it ‘high lonesome,’ and it’s a certain melancholy, and it’s sort of ‘beautiful pain.’ But he had that to the max.”

Pamela Des Barres: “Gram was rock and country. He bridged those two worlds. To see him standing in the middle of these two worlds, you know, bringing them together, uniting them, and that was his purpose.”

Chris Hillman: “We’re talking about a very classic Tennessee Williams play here. Southern money and alcoholism, just a tragedy.”

Gram’s mom [Avis Snively] came from a wealthy family in Florida. They got all their money from citrus. Gram’s father was a World War II veteran. Both had drinking problems. His father was affected greatly by the war. If he was alive today, he would be diagnosed as suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. This condition was recognized as a kind of disability until after the Vietnam War, so when Gram’s father went through it, the only way he coped was to drink a lot. When Gram was twelve his father committed suicide right before Christmas. He became the “man of the family” until his mother married Bob Parsons.

He went to prep school in Jacksonville. While he was in prep school, Gram’s mother had to be hospitalized for her alcoholism. Coincidentally [or maybe not], right after Bob Parsons paid here a visit in the hospital she died. Her death happened the same day Gram graduated from prep school. Avis Snively’s family didn’t like Bob Parsons – they thought he married her for her money, so when she died right after he visited her in the hospital, that just added to the suspicion that he was after her money. Shortly after Avis’ death, Bob married the family’s teenage baby sitter.

I think the first thing I bought of Gram Parsons’ music was the anthology Sacred Hearts & Fallen Angels. It is the place to be introduced to his music as it has the best from his solo work, his first band [the International Submarine Band], his work with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. His body of recorded work wasn’t large so it’s easy to summarize in a couple of CDs what he left behind. That anthology collection was the hook, so I just had to get the sources. The first source I decided to get was Sweetheart of the Rodeo from The Byrds. I read awhile ago that many of Gram Parsons’ vocals were wiped from the final release due to a contract dispute with another record label, but I also read those mixes still existed. So being the compulsive music buyer that I am, naturally I had to get the “special edition.” Having heard the Byrds come up with the likes of Eight Miles High, So You Want to Be a Rock N Roll Star, and other rock classics, it was quite a shock to hear them do an all-country album [or as close to country as the Byrds could play it]. Such were Gram Parsons’ powers of persuasion. According to Roger McGuinn, they “hired a keyboard player and instead got George Jones in a Nudie suit.” Most of the songs on the album were country covers. There were songs from Bob Dylan, the Louvin Brothers, Merle Haggard, there were traditional songs. Gram Parsons had the only original songs – Hickory Wind and One Hundred Years From Now, both of which Chris Hillman said were two of the best songs Gram had ever written. But the sleeper track [for me, anyway] was You Don't Miss Your Water, a soul/R&B song from Stax Records recorded written and recorded by William Bell. This was the embodiment of Gram’s “Cosmic American Music,” a blend of a soul song with a country feel.

Gram Parsons lasted only one album with the Byrds before he moved on to other musical things. The Byrds toured England in support of Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and they met the Rolling Stones. Gram became great friends with Keith Richards immediately. They talked about South Africa, which was then in the throes of apartheid. The Byrds were going to play some shows in South Africa. Once Keith told Gram what South Africa was like, and the segregation that persisted there [which made Gram think “oh, like in Mississippi” – he was a son of the South after all…], Gram told the rest of the Byrds he wouldn’t go with them to South Africa. So Gram was no longer with the Byrds. To this day Chris Hillman thinks the real reason Gram didn’t want to go to South Africa was because he wanted to hang out with Keith Richards, not because of any sensitivity to racial matters.

Almost immediately Gram hooked up with Chris Etheridge, a bass player with whom he had worked before. They decided to form a band. Shortly thereafter, Chris Hillman came back from South Africa, patched things up with Gram, and told him it was a mistake for the Byrds to go to South Africa. He also told Gram he was going to leave the Byrds, and could he join Gram’s new band? Thus was born the Flying Burrito Brothers. At first they didn’t have a permanent drummer [they eventually got Michael Clarke, another ex-Byrd]. They had a steel guitar player named Sneaky Pete Kleinow who had a very distorted, fuzzy sound. The Burrito Brothers didn’t have a proper lead guitar player. Their first album was Gilded Palace of Sin. It’s very good. It didn’t sell a lot. In fact it still hasn’t been certified gold, and it’s been out for forty years. But I’ve read that most of the people who bought the record started bands themselves. If that isn’t influence I don’t know what is.

The very first song from the record was called Christine’s Tune, the story of a girl who caused trouble for everyone in the Byrds. As it turns out, she was Christine Hinton, David Crosby’s girlfriend. They later changed the name of the song to Devil in Disguise because Christine was killed in a car wreck and they wanted to keep her identity secret – they didn’t want to explicitly speak ill of the dead. It’s a very catchy song with Gram and Chris Hillman sharing lead vocals, as they did with the next song, Sin City. Chris Hillman was going through a horrible divorce at the time, the Byrds manager was ripping them off, so he thought Los Angeles was a whole town “filled with sin.” Another song that really grabbed me was The Dark End of the Street. Like the song You Don’t Miss Your Water, The Dark End of the Street was a soul standard that Gram Parsons turned into a country song. I thought that was Gram Parsons’ finest vocal performance. Chris Hillman said he thought Hot Burrito #1 was best song he had ever written, the best vocal on record, on any recording. Both it and Hot Burrito #2 were songs about love gone sad [I like #2 better].

Chris Etheridge described Gram’s voice as a “soulful, almost a ‘help me’ voice, like he had a voice that when he would sing it was almost like he was asking for help or something – it’s kinda hard to explain. I don’t know what it was, but it seemed like everyone almost felt sorry for him. But the women really loved him, loved the way he sang.” Keith Richards – “Gram Parsons is the only guy I know that could make every chick in the audience weep, which is a rare quality. I remember being in the Palomino Club in California and hardened old peroxide waitresses who have been there for yonks [sic], tears streaming down their eyes while they were listening to Gram play.” Yes, he was that good of a singer. He was very convincing.

The next album, Burrito Deluxe, was ok, but it wasn’t so tightly focused as Gilded Palace of Sin. Some of the songs were good, many of them felt like they were rushed. They lost the magic they had on Gilded Palace of Sin. Burrito Deluxe is notable in that the Burrito Brothers cut and released the Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses [from Sticky Fingers]. This was a big deal because the Rolling Stones didn’t give songs to anybody. In listening to Burrito Deluxe it appeared Gram Parsons had lost interest, like all he wanted to do was be a star, get high, be high, and stay high. He started to miss rehearsals, and he was spending more time with the Stones than he would with his own band. One time Chris Hillman tracked him down at a Rolling Stones studio session for Let It Bleed and dragged him out to do a show. Chris Hillman had enough of Gram’s shit and fired him.

Free of his Burrito Brothers commitments, Gram went to France to hang out with the Stones while they made Exile on Main Street. Gram wasn’t on Exile on Main Street, but Keith Richards claims Gram was still very involved in the making of the album. There’s a lot of country-ish music on Exile, so perhaps Keith was right. But one side effect of this association with the Stones was drug abuse. Gram Parsons discovered heroin. In Chris Hillman’s words, he had gone from this thin good-looking kid with nice brown eyes into this overweight, loud stupid person. Gram’s dissipation kept him out of the game until 1973. He finally recorded his first solo album, GP, with Elvis Presley’s TCB Band. Unlike his work with the Burrito Brothers, GP was [to these ears anyway] a straight-up country record, complete with banjos, dobros, fiddles, steel guitars, and female harmonies. There was nothing rock and roll on this album, but this wasn’t a bad thing. Unlike Burrito Deluxe, there isn’t a bad song on the album. There are some Gram Parsons originals mixed in with songs written by others, like Harlan Howard’s Streets of Baltimore. The whole album is a joy to listen to.

Gram Parson’s final album was recorded in the summer of 1973. Grievous Angel is a continuation of what was on GP, only the songs are mostly Gram Parsons originals. Of all the originals, the very last song on the album, In My Hour of Darkness, caught my ear. It sounds like a spiritual [“O Lord grant me vision, O Lord grant me speed”] There were three main verses to the song, each telling a story of someone who Gram Parsons knew. The first verse was about a young man who died in a car accident. Upon further review I found the young man in question was the actor Brandon De Wilde. He was a friend of Gram’s who was killed in Colorado – “who’d have ever thought there’d be such a deadly Denver bend” as the song goes. I had to think long and hard who Brandon De Wilde was and then it hit one night as I was watching the John Wayne movie “In Harm’s Way.” Brandon De Wilde played the part of the young ensign who happened to be the son of John Wayne’s character. I couldn’t think of anything else he’d been in, but I was finally able to put a face with thee name. The second verse dealt with a country singer whom Gram Parsons had known. In this case it was Clarence White. As the song goes: “Another young man safely sung his silver-string guitar/and he played to people everywhere some say he was a star/But he was just a country boy his simple songs confessed/ And the music he had in him so very few possessed.” “Then there was an old man, kind and wise with age/And he read me just like a book and he never missed a page/And I loved him like my father, and I loved him like my friend/And I knew his time would shortly come, but I did not know just when.” The song is the last a very good album. The album has other very good songs, including $1000 Wedding, Ooh Las Vegas, and Love Hurts just to name a few. Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris harmonized perfectly together. The work she did with Gram Parsons is what got me interested in Emmylou Harris’ work.

Gram Parsons did not leave a large recorded legacy. He never had a hit record. He’s one of those legendary cult-like figures that you really don’t know much about. What would have happened if Gram Parsons could control his demons and overcome his addictions? He’s been lauded by many as this great singer and songwriter. I agree with half that assessment. He was a great singer, but I think he was a good songwriter, not a great one. Be that as it may, that doesn’t keep me from listening to and enjoying his music. It’s just a shame there isn’t more of it to enjoy.

The Byrds

I have a hobby that drives my wife Carol absolutely nuts. I like to make mix CDs. I’m a sucker for Greatest Hits albums, but they almost invariably leave out a favorite song or two. So with the power of technology, I can make my own “greatest hit” CDs for my car or at work, especially work since I can’t take my iPod there.

One such mix CD is of The Byrds. Their first hit was in 1965 with a Bob Dylan song called Mr. Tambourine Man. The group had great three-part harmonies with Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark. The only Byrd to play an instrument on it was Roger McGuinn with his 12-string Rickenbacker. The rest of the players were Hollywood studio musicians known by industry pros as “The Wrecking Crew.” They played on a lot of Beach Boys songs too. One would be tempted to put Mr. Tambourine Man on a mixed CD. It’s a good song – better than the Dylan original but there are other Byrds songs I like better. So without further adieu, here are my Byrds songs in the order they appear on my mix.

1. Eight Miles High – from 1966’s Fifth Dimension LP. The Byrds recorded this song, about The Byrds’ trip to England in 1965, twice. The first song was done in late 1965 in RCA’s studios in Hollywood. Since The Byrds recorded on Columbia Records, the record execs made them cut it again in a Columbia studio. That’s the version that gets all the radio airplay. My CD has the first version from RCA. It’s a better take. It sounds more “alive.”

2. Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season) – from 1965’s Turn! Turn! Turn! LP. This is an old Pete Seeger folk tune adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

3. 5D [Fifth Dimension] - from 1966’s Fifth Dimension LP. Roger McGuinn, who wrote the song, was a science fiction geek. He thought the universe was “height, width, depth, time, and something else.” His point is that the universe is infinite, that the Fifth Dimension is the threshold of scientific knowledge. Whatever. Too much to think about in a 2 ½ minute song. I just think it’s a good tune.

4. Mr. Spaceman - from 1966’s Fifth Dimension LP. Roger McGuinn’s expression of hope to communicate with friendly aliens. Sometimes NASA uses this song to wake up the Shuttle astronauts.

5. So You Want To Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star – from 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday LP. Co-written with Roger McGuinn, this is one of five songs from the pen of bassist Chris Hillman. Some rock critics think this is a song about the Byrds’ cynicism about manufactured pop groups like The Monkees. What these same critics failed to realize was The Byrds were the same kind of group when they came together in 1964. Trumpeter Hugh Masekela males a guest appearance. Later covered by Patti Smith and by Tom Petty on his Pack Up the Plantation live LP.

6. Have You Seen Her Face - from 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday LP. Another Chris Hillman song.

7. Time Between - from 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday LP. From Chris Hillman, this country-sounding song features the guitar playing of Clarence White, who would become a full member of The Byrds in later years.

8. Everybody's Been Burned - from 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday LP. This song was written by David Crosby. It sounds a lot like his song Guinnevere from the Crosby, Stills & Nash debut album from 1969. Crosby likes to use strange guitar tunings for some of his songs rather than the standard EADGBE. This is one of them. This song is also proof that David Crosby, who fancies himself more as a harmony singer, has an excellent voice to sing lead.

9. My Back Pages - from 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday LP. Another song from the Bob Dylan catalog. This song has been seen by many as Bob Dylan’s kiss-off the the folk “protest song” community with which he was becoming disillusioned. This was the last Byrds song to reach Billboard’s Top 40. A great tune.

10. Lady Friend - from 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday LP. Originally a single, but later included as a bonus track on the remastered Younger Than Yesterday. Another song from David Crosby. Chiming guitars, complex vocal harmonies, and brass. It didn’t chart very well as a single, but I like it anyway.

11. Goin’ Back – from 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers LP. This song is from Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Crosby hated this song. In fact he refused to participate in its recording. This song was the source of one of the many arguments the band members were having at the time. Crosby wanted his own song Triad on the album. McGuinn and Hillman liked this one better.

12. Natural Harmony - from 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers LP. Chris Hillman once said he wrote this while taking an LSD trip. I believe it. It’s sufficiently trippy.

13. Draft Morning - from 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers LP. A song started by Crosby and finished by Hillman and McGuinn. This one’s a song about the horrors of Vietnam and was a protest against the draft. Complete with bugles and machine-gun sound effects.

14. Wasn’t Born to Follow - from 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers LP. Another King/Goffin tune. This one has more of a country influence, given there is a pedal steel guitar trading lead with Clarence White’s Telecaster.

15. Change Is Now - from 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers LP. A McGuinn-Hillman song that Roger McGuinn describes as “another one of those guru-spiritual-mystic songs that nobody understood.” Significant for being the only Byrds song to feature both David Crosby and Clarence White.

16. Old John Robertson - from 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers LP. Written by McGuinn and Hillman, this was the flip side to the Lady Friend single. Another country-type song, it’s about a retired movie director who lived in Chris Hillman’s native San Diego. He wore a white Stetson hat and had a white handlebar moustache. He was kind of a Wild West kind of character.

17. Tribal Gathering – from 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers LP. This is a jazzy song played in 5/4 time by David Crosby. The song was inspired by a hippie gathering in Los Angeles in 1966.

18. Triad – the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. Among other things, this is the song that got David Crosby fired from The Byrds. This is a song about a ménage à trois. Another very fine lead vocal from Crosby, it’s a good song, but one definitely of it’s time. Crosby wanted this song on The Notorious Byrd Brothers, but McGuinn and Hillman didn’t think the song worked as well as Goin’ Back. I think The Notorious Byrd Brothers would have been a stronger LP if it included Triad.

19. You Ain’t Going Nowhere – from 1968’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo LP. Enter Gram Parsons. With Crosby out of the band, McGuinn and Hillman wanted another musician to take his place. Hillman met Gram Parsons in, of all places, a bank teller line. They got together and discovered they had a shared love of country music. The Byrds hired Gram Parsons. Roger McGuinn once remarked about Gram “we thought we hired a piano player, but instead we got George Jones in a Nudie suit.” When it came time to record Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Roger McGuinn had originally envisioned it as a tribute to all kinds of American music. But Gram Parsons, along with his willing accomplice Chris Hillman, convinced McGuinn to go “all in” and make a straight country record. It wasn’t well-received at the time, but Sweetheart of the Rodeo has since been recognized as a certified country-rock classic way ahead of its time. This song from Bob Dylan kicks off Sweetheart of the Rodeo and sets the mood for the rest of the record very effectively.

20. This Wheel’s On Fire – from 1969’s Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde LP. Exit Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, enter Clarence White. As the title suggests, the record has a split personality between country rock material and hard-edged psychedelia. This Bob Dylan/Rick Danko song falls in the latter category. This song sounds like the apocalypse is coming, and the ending is complete with an atomic bomb explosion and searing feedback. Cool stuff this one.

21. Nashville West - from 1969’s Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde LP. This is a Clarence White instrumental from his previous band, which was also named Nashville West. The song demonstrates great interplay between Roger McGuinn’s 12-string Rickenbacker and Clarence White’s Fender Telecaster. Short and to the point. Great stuff.

22. Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man - from 1969’s Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde LP. Before Gram Parsons left The Byrds, he wrote this song with Roger McGuinn. Played in country 3/4 time, the subject of their ire is Ralph Emery, who didn’t treat The Byrds very well on his radio show when The Byrds were trying to plug their Sweetheart of the Rodeo album in Nashville. The song has a litany of Redneck stereotypes, and starts off with the line “He’s a drug store truck drivin’ man/He’s the head of the Ku Klux Klan”, with a pointed “this one’s for you, Ralph” at the end of the song. Ralph Emery wasn’t a KKK member, but you can tell that McGuinn and Parsons were pretty bent about their short experience with Mr. Emery.

23. Lover of the Bayou [Live] – from 1970’s [Untitled] LP. Roger McGuinn and Broadway impresario Jacques Levy had an idea to take Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt story and transpose it from Norway to the 19^th century American Southwest. The concept was called Gene Tryp. The production of Gene Tryp never got off the ground, but McGuinn and Levy wrote many songs for the production. This song is one of them. This song, recorded live in New York, is set during the American Civil War and portrays the hero of Gene Tryp as a smuggler, bootlegger, and gun runner. With the addition of Clarence White on guitar, Gene Parsons on drums, and Skip Battin on bass, The Byrds were a much better live band than in previous incarnations, and it shows on the live cuts from [Untitled].

24. Positively 4th Street [Live] - from 1970’s [Untitled] LP. One of two Bob Dylan songs to appear on [Untitled].

25. It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) – the other Dylan song from 1970’s [Untitled] LP. The Dylan songs and Lover of the Bayou ably demonstrate The Byrds’ newfound prowess as a live band.

26. Hickory Wind – a Gram Parson classic from 1968’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo LP. This song describes Gram Parsons’ bittersweet nostalgia for his native South. During The Byrds’ one and only appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, Gram Parsons pissed of the country music establishment by playing this song instead of Merle Haggard’s Life in Prison. He wanted to play this song instead and dedicated it to his grandmother. It was Gram Parsons’ signature song.

27. Farther Along – from 1971’s Farther Along LP. One of the few Byrds songs sung by Clarence White. Two years after the release of Farther Along, Clarence White was killed by a drunk driver in Palmdale, California while he was loading his equipment into his vehicle after a show he just finished playing. During his funeral service, Gram Parsons and Bearnie Leadon spontaneously broke out in an a capella version of this country standard in tribute to their departed friend. I thought this would be the perfect song to end a mix CD of The Byrds.

These are all the songs I could cram into a single 80 minute CD. If I could put one more song on it, it would be Gene Clark’s I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better from The Byrds’ 1965 Mr. Tambourine Man LP.