David Crosby on the producer who wrecked The Byrds: “A total idiot”
Every artist always has to hone their craft before they even hope to make it. As much as people might like to believe every biopic and think that someone was destined to become a rockstar from the first moment they walk out onstage, there are often thousands of failed songs that show up before they start showing some sort of potential behind their instrument. And while David Crosby had lived enough lifetimes for three of four songwriters during his prime, he knew that he was working with magic when he found this tune out in the wild.
When The Byrds were first forming, though, not everyone was coming to the band for their original songs. Roger McGuinn already had a lot to work with on tunes like ‘The Bells of Rhymney’ and ‘I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better’, but there would always be thousands of people shouting at them to redo Bob Dylan songs that made them famous back in the day.
There was a lot more they had to give than jangly guitar pop, but since this was still their salad days, all of their problems had to be dictated by the suits who were working with them. And while Terry Melcher did have a fine track record in the industry and had family in high places with his mother, Doris Day, there were a few moments where his touch behind the console didn’t quite work.
He certainly knew how to make the guitars shine whenever those chiming sounds came from McGuinn’s fingers, but Crosby knew that his ear was geared more towards pop than anything having to do with rock and roll. And for a song that was as pertinent to the times as ‘He Was A Friend of Mine’, Crosby was horrified to hear what Melcher had done with the mix when he heard the final version.
The whole tune is already a bit heavy for the times, being about the death of President Kennedy, so if they were going to use it, they would need to be extremely delicate. So when something that heavy ends up having a massive organ in the middle of it, Crosby thinks that the song was getting deliberately butchered.
He may not have written the song, but Crosby’s response to Melcher’s work behind the scenes made him never want to work with the producer ever again, saying, “Terry Melcher was even worse- a total idiot. They were all idiots and the Columbia union engineers that used to take breaks in the middle of a song and stuff? They were idiots. What a dick! He’s the one who put that idiot organ part on ‘He Was A Friend of Mine’”.
At the same time, it wasn’t like Melcher would have a spotless track record afterwards, either. He had some time working with other rock legends like The Beach Boys, but there aren’t many people standing up and proclaiming that songs like ‘Kokomo’ or ‘Summer of Love’ are on the same level as ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘God Only Knows’.
After all, Crosby was never the kind of person who wanted to be put into a specific box. The only kind of music he knew were the songs that he felt in his heart, and looking at where he would eventually go with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, he was more than happy to follow his muse rather than relying on the person behind the desk telling him to play the track again.
