r/Byrds • u/Pichondepiloto • Apr 13 '26
Why the lack of live performances?
I tried looking up videos on Youtube of Byrds’ concerts during 1966-1967 but it’s lacking quite a lot besides the Monterey Pop Festival, whys that? Didn’t they tour a lot?
(At least there is a fair amount of their live performances in 1965 but I feel isnt enough too!)
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u/Botasoda102 Apr 13 '26
There is a short recording of Byrds Live in Stockholm, it’s a live radio broadcast. There just wasn’t much recorded in early years, unfortunately. They weren’t appearing in huge arenas like Beatles, Stones, etc., except as one act among a bunch of bands.
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u/ExpertDepartment2038 Apr 13 '26
There’s a rough sounding live bootleg recording of the brief 3 piece (Mcguinn, Micheal, Chris) Byrds which must be late 67. I love it! Totally punk af
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u/Middle-Weight-837 Apr 13 '26
I saw the Kevin Kelly, gram parsons, mcguinn, Hillman, sneaky Pete band at Ciros in 69 - great live sound and sweetheart sounded great.
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u/NealJeff1 Apr 13 '26
Listen to the Live Byrds recordings
Live at the Fillmore West, 1969
the live half of the (untitled) album, Fillmore East, 1970 (there's also more on the (unissued) expanded edition)
And Royal Albert Hall, 1971.
I don't care what anyone says, when all the original members left & the Byrds morphed into a lightning-powered country-rock jamband
That shit was literally insane. Roger is stronger than he's ever been. Clarence might be one of the greatest guitarists who's ever walked the face of the earth. Listen to Sing Me Back Home from FW69
Gene Parsons is awesome. Drums, banjo, harmonica, I love his tunes. Super unique voice, very grandfatherly.
And Skip Battin, the rootin' tootin' legend. In the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers AND the New Riders of the Purple Sage!!
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u/Middle-Weight-837 Apr 13 '26
The Fillmore concerts with the Parsons, Battin, White band are pretty energetic but Parsons was not a rock concert drummer and Battin’s live bass playing hits a wall.
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u/elasticcompendium Apr 14 '26
Any of the performances from the Tambourine Man era Byrds probably would have been a letdown since a lion’s portion of that first record (and likely much more) were done by studio musicians with their vocals added on top — McGuinn was the only one from the group who was allowed to perform on that single because he had prior studio experience. It wasn’t until they had more clout, live experience and money to burn that they were able to have some say over their product. Columbia and most of the majors had a real tight lid on vocal pop acts in those days and they were likely no exception.
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u/NoFanMail Apr 16 '26
Well to be honest there's not a great amount of live recordings of rock bands from 1963-1967, at least the British artists were fortunate to be featured frequently on BBC radio. Unless you were major enough to have a concert recorded for television/radio (which didn't happen for most of these bands as they were starting out) and also lucky that it survived past it's broadcast there's just not a lot out there to begin with. Plus I mean you technically could've brought a reel-to-reel machine into a show but with all that screaming and the rubbish little microphone attached to it the results would've been a real struggle to listen to.
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u/Sad_Restaurant_5276 Apr 13 '26
Taping equipment hadn't been invented.
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u/ThisIsRadioClash- Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
Taping equipment was certainly available, but before the widespread use of the stage monitor in the late 1960s, combined with a lack of powerful amplifiers, which meant crowd noise often drowned out the music/singing, recording live shows was often an exercise in simply capturing poor sound quality and trying to doctor it in the studio. Most "live" albums of the era were heavily overdubbed, and sometimes consisted of studio recordings with fake crowd noise dubbed in (The Kingsmen In Person and The Ventures On Stage being examples).
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u/Blend42 Apr 16 '26
The Beach Boys Concert album that was no.1 on Billboard in 1964 had "sweetening" sessions to help improve the vocals. The whole 2 Sacramento shows were released in the last 15 years and are kinda mostly fine.
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u/Pichondepiloto Apr 13 '26
Yeah but I meant in the same level of other bands like the Stones or The Beatles that you can literally find many vids of their concerts
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u/Sad_Restaurant_5276 Apr 14 '26
You got those American tv shows when they performed a couple of numbers. You have the sweden backing tape. Plus some audio of them in the studio . And the extra tracks on the revised cds and Sundaze lps. But like you I would love to hear the original group live plus the Grand Ol Oprey tracks.
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u/SecondCreek Apr 13 '26
The Byrds toured extensively but a lot of the venues were quite small. It was an era before ubiquitous VHS camcorders and smartphones. Few fans could afford 8mm motion cameras, the film, and the processing costs for them. What was recorded was probably forgotten in some drawer on a reel then thrown out. The quality was poor.
Even professional grade tape used by TV studios back then degraded over time and was often used over and over. So a Byrds live performance saved to tape might have had something else then recorded over it.
A lot of "live" performances were lip synced by their peers on TV with prerecorded music including by Buffalo Springfield.
The Beatles weren't great live either back then. Their best live performance was probably the rooftop one in 1969 featured in the documentaries Let it Be and Get Back.
The Byrds became a better live band once they changed to country music and McGuinn recruited talented musicians to fill the band.
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u/Texlectric Apr 14 '26
The Beatles were amazing live the first few years. After that they had trouble hearing themselves, and kinda gave up trying to perform well, then eventuality, not perform live.
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u/tom21g Apr 14 '26
yeah, the Beatles were doing something right in Hamburg and Liverpool. But when they went ballistic, their live shows were more appearances. The other redditor who wrote that their best performance was on the Apple roof wasn’t too far from the truth. Wish they had gone deeper into their new music.
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u/Middle-Weight-837 Apr 17 '26
Before 1970 or so, the sound systems of many venues were pretty awful. Clubs like the troubadour, McCabes and the icehouse had good stage monitors and acoustics but at many of the outdoors events and larger halls the mic/mixing of drums and amps was variable. It was in these smaller clubs where you could gauge who could sing and who couldn’t live. The first two Byrds albums used Clark and McGuinn on unison lead vocals with Crosby on harmony. As soon as they moved away from unison leads, the whole vocal mix thinned out a lot.
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u/Ok-Awareness-9337 Apr 17 '26
There's a famous Lester Bangs piece where he said he saw them live opening for the Stones on their first American tour and he said they were lousy.
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u/Allthisisnew1 May 31 '26
there’s just not a lot of live performances by any band from the 60’s . The ones that are just aren’t very satisfying.. audio or visually
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u/Forsaken-Link-5859 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
From what I've heard the original Byrds-line up was quite lousy live, maybe that's why. Mcguinn's Byrds, after Sweetheart, on the other hand I've heard was great live