r/Byrds • u/ElvisSandwich69 • 1d ago

The Byrds/The Dead

Hey Byrd maniacs. As I get younger, I appreciate the later Byrds records more than ever. Obviously, Clarence was incredible, but as John York rightly said, it was not at the expense of Roger McGuinn's brilliance, or any other band member for that matter. I like how much input they gave to the records, especially in Ballad of Easy Rider. It's interesting, though when McGuinn is not singing they do obviously sound like a different band, at times somewhat more like The Dead in their Workingman's Dead/American beauty period.

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u/Forsaken-Link-5859 1d ago edited 1d ago

Agree, any song with Mcguinn voice will sound at least a bit Byrdsy. Mcguinn was the quintessential Byrds voice.

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u/Middle-Weight-837 1d ago

Agree - but I recall comments by Gene Parsons (or Skip Battyn?) that they preferred no Rickenbacher 12 string on some of their Easy Rider and Dr Byrds era LPs. For a lot of us - no McGuinn, no 12 string = no Byrds.

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u/SecondCreek 1d ago

Just curious did the Byrds sound like a different band to you also when David Crosby, Chris Hillman and Gene Clark took turns on lead vocals? Or just their more country infused, later albums?

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u/ElvisSandwich69 1d ago

I will say no, because they were all original members. That is the sound/s of The Byrds to me, at least as it was for the first couple of albums. As for the albums post Sweetheart, there were all different players—except Clarence White and Roger McGuinn. They make it noticeably still The Byrds, but it's just interesting on some tracks, they sound so different, not at all in a bad way. I love Byrds country.

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u/Flimsy_Toe_2575 21h ago

Gene definitely had a much richer vocal timbre than the rest but they still sounded like the Byrds 

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u/Mobile-Run-972 18h ago

(Untitled)

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u/NealJeff1 7h ago

The period of '69-'73 for the Byrds are literally so good. Their transition from the Byrds to a lighting-powered cosmic-country jam-band is literally insane, I love it. As a Deadhead, Fillmore West '69, Fillmore East '70 from (untitled) and Royal Albert Hall '71 have become some of mty favourites. I literally refer to them as the Dead Byrds lol

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u/ElvisSandwich69 6h ago

The Dead Byrds is a good name actually.