All subsequent Byrds recordings, however, were played and sung by the full group, which at the time also included bassist Chris Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke. All other parts were played by members of the Wrecking Crew, L.A.’s famed coterie of session musicians.īut McGuinn’s fellow Byrds David Crosby and Gene Clark were allowed into the studio to sing the track’s majestic, three-part vocal harmonies. McGuinn had sufficient traction on the folk scene to be included on the 1963 compilation album Anthology of the 12-String Guitar, along with legendary players like Joe Maphis, Glen Campbell, Mason Williams and Howard Roberts.īecause he was a fairly seasoned pro, and able to read music, McGuinn was the only member of the Byrds allowed to play on Mr. Gradually, I got all these picking styles Roger McGuinn I’d go home and work on it, and we’d get another one the next day. Gradually, I got all these picking styles.”įrom there, McGuinn went on to work with several prominent acts in the early-'60s folk music boom - the Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Judy Collins and even pop crooner Bobby Darin during his brief attempt to get down with the folk thing. He’d give you a picking assignment every day. "There would be about twelve people in a class, and it was really fast learning. “They started around 1957,” McGuinn recalled, “and that’s when I enrolled.
(Image credit: Jeff Hochberg/Getty Images) What McGuinn brought to electric 12-string rock guitar was a solid grounding in folk picking - something that Harrison and other Rick-playing Brits, such as Pete Townshend, didn’t have.Īs a teenager in Chicago, McGuinn had studied guitar and five-string banjo at the Old Town School of Folk Music, a pioneering institution at a time when formal instruction in vernacular musical styles like folk was unheard of. While McGuinn and his bandmates had the same gear as the Beatles, they used it to produce a distinctly different sound and overall aesthetic. I liked his sound better, so I went out and got a Rickenbacker 360 12-string.” “We saw A Hard Day’s Night and realized the Beatles were playing a Gretsch electric six-string, Ludwig drums and a Hofner bass.Īnd George Harrison switched between the Gretsch and this Rickenbacker 12-string that didn’t look like a 12-string at first, because the peghead concealed six of the tuners.īut when he turned sideways, I went, ‘Oh that’s a 12-string!’ I was playing a Gibson acoustic 12 with a pickup in it, but it didn’t have the kind of sound George was getting.
“We were already a band and we were rehearsing and working with acoustic instruments,” McGuinn told me. George Harrison proclaimed the Byrds “The American Beatles.” Like Bob Dylan himself, the Byrds were, for the most part, seasoned folk musicians who’d become fascinated by the new style of electric guitar rock and roll that the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Yardbirds, Animals and other British groups had brought to the fore.
They’re the pied pipers who transported us from “yeah yeah yeah” to Purple Haze, basically. At the vanguard of the folk rock phenomenon, the Byrds were the bridge that led from the British invasion into the psychedelic era.
0 kommentar(er)
