The artist Roger McGuinn thought kept The Byrds alive: “I don’t think people would even remember”
Although the band is retrospectively eclipsed by titans such as Bob Dyan, The Beatles and Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds were one of the most important bands of the 1960s. The first stable line-up consisted of the legendary singer-songwriter David Crosby, bandleader Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Michael Clarke and Chris Hillman. Though the band existed for many years and had many iterations, the initial spell from 1964 to 1973 was by far the most important.
Like many bands of their time, The Byrds formed in response to the emergence of British Invasion artists like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. As these bands swept the US, young musicians saw an opportunity to become part of rock ‘n’ roll’s second movement following the work of Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry in the 1950s. The Byrds were also interested in contemporary folk music, especially that by Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan.
Just as The Byrds got going, Dylan began to pioneer the folk-rock genre after going electric at the Newport Folk Festival of 1965. This pivotal year also bore the arrival of Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, two of Dylan’s most seminal records in the medium. Inspired by this work, The Beatles released a folk-rock-tinged album of their own: Rubber Soul.
One month after Dylan released Bringing It All Back Home, The Byrds released their debut single, a cover of ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’. The single introduced the sound of McGuinn’s 12-string Rickenbacker which would ultimately typify the band’s sound and became the first folk-rock phenomenon, reaching number one in the UK and the US. The Byrds consolidated this success with their debut album, Mr. Tambourine Man in June 1965.
Maintaining their early form, The Byrds released their second album, Turn! Turn! Turn!, just before the year’s close. Again, the album received much attention, mostly thanks to its titular single, a cover of Seeger’s 1959 song ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’. Despite this early chart success, The Byrds failed to build a legacy equal to some of their contemporaries because very few of their popular hits were original compositions.
Compounding The Byrds’ lack of staying power was their tendency to reshuffle the line-up. With Crosby’s expulsion in 1967, the band inducted Gram Parsons. Though the Parsons era was exceedingly popular, he inspired the band to embrace country rock, a change of direction that somewhat blunted the band’s stylistic legacy.
Today, The Byrds remain famous for their early hits and as a crucial milestone on the road to Crosby, Stills & Nash and Gram Parsons’ Flying Burrito Brothers, who, in turn, inspired the rise of country rock in the careers of Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. Despite The Byrds’ vast influence on several huge soft rock artists of the 1970s, McGuinn always felt Tom Petty had the biggest hand in keeping the band’s legacy alive through the late 20th century.
Speaking to David Fricke in 2014, Petty discussed his career as a celebration of the classic rock artists whom he adored throughout the 1960s. “I can’t help but be a traditionalist, growing up the way I did in an era of classic songs,” he mused. “It seemed in the ’60s like an icon appeared a week. The songs I’ve written are what I have the ability to do.”
Petty appeared extremely grateful to have been able to turn his passion for classic rock into a career and was pleased to be endorsed by the likes of George Harrison and McGuinn. “Roger McGuinn told me one day, ‘If it weren’t for you, I don’t think people would even remember the Byrds.’ I said, ‘I don’t think that’s necessarily me, Roger.’ But I reinforced his idea of how great what he had done was.”
As well as celebrating The Byrds’ embrace of country and folk in a rock guise, Petty was always vocal about his appreciation for McGuinn and The Byrds. “I talked to Carl Perkins a lot about how great [McGuinn] was,” Petty said. “He had The Beatles tell him that in the ’60s, but it didn’t stick. He didn’t believe it. I really tried to make him believe it.”
Throughout his four decades as a leading figure in rock music, Petty collaborated with McGuinn on several occasions. When the former passed away in 2017, the Byrds leader recalled the time he first met Petty, and the Heartbreakers frontman let him record a cover of ‘American Girl’ on his Thunderbird album in 1977. “There is nobody like Tom Petty,” McGuinn said.
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