The musician who changed Roger McGuinn’s entire personality: “Disappointed a lot of rock fans”
Roger McGuinn was always one of the most innovative musicians on the planet.
Were it not for him, chances are we might have never wound up with folk rock. It was McGuinn and The Byrds who decided to take Bob Dylan’s song ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and turn it into something brand new. He changed the time signature, adding different themes and tones, and essentially bringing a brand new genre to the forefront of music.
People weren’t sure this new style of music was going to work at first, but that’s why you needed someone like McGuinn at the helm to help things along. It was musical history, without a doubt, and set the tone for what would be the rest of his career, as he was always looking for new styles of music that he could tap into.
“Kudos to Roger McGuinn for taking on ‘Tambourine Man’, which didn’t knock us out when we first heard it,” said The Byrds bassist Chris Hillman. “Bob Dylan had written it in a very countrified groove, a straight 2/4 time signature, and Roger takes the song home and works with it, puts it in 4/4 time, so you could dance to it. Bob heard us do it and said, ‘Man, you could dance to this!’ It really knocked him over and he loved it.”
So, The Byrds had made a name for themselves within the world of folk rock, but McGuinn wasn’t the kind of artist to stay on the sound for too long. His next musical venture came in the form of country, and this was all because of one person: Gram Parsons. He introduced McGuinn to the sound of country, and he became such a big fan that it didn’t just influence his sound, it changed his whole personality.
“Gram was really a strong musical force,” said McGuinn. “I just let him go and went along with it because it was fun. I was having a good time with it. We went to Nudie’s [a Hollywood tailor] and got some country clothes and cowboy hats. I got a Cadillac and got into the whole country thing. I started listening to country radio and talking with a southern accent. It was like Halloween or something for a long, extended period.”
One of the albums that came out during this period was Sweetheart of the Rodeo, a record which celebrated country music rather than the folk rock that The Byrds had previously become known for. It received mixed reviews from fans, as while a lot of them enjoyed what they were listening to, there were plenty of others who didn’t like how much of a disconnect there was compared to previous albums.
The album will have no doubt had an impact on a lot of the country rock artists who were steadily starting to make a name for themselves, and while McGuinn was proud of that, he also felt that a lot of fans were let down by the music because of a political disconnect between folk and country. His personality had completely shifted, but in the process, it could well have impacted the way he was perceived as a musician.
“I’m sure we did influence a lot of people in that direction, but we also disappointed a lot of rock fans,” said McGuinn.
Concluding, “They said, ‘What is this?’ You know, because there was a sort of, country music was tainted with a political right-wing spin, and they thought, ‘Wow, you’ve gone over to the enemy side, man, like you’re letting us down here.’ But it wasn’t anything political, it was a love of the music. To me, country music was just another form of folk music.”
