If you’ve ever followed a professional sports franchise, you’re already familiar with the progression. Built-up through the farm system or draft, the young team is loaded with talent, and though they lack experience, they play with such spirit and enthusiasm that you’re more than willing to overlook their minor lapses. Eventually, after a string of successes, the team begins to feel the sting of free agency, but through prudent management and well-timed acquisitions, their performance actually improves. Unfortunately, such deft juggling merely masks the franchise’s more debilitating structural problems. The team’s core is well past its prime, the players’ “spirit and enthusiasm” a distant memory, and soon a once-fabled franchise is just another wannabe.
The third and final installment in Columbia/Legacy’s justly lauded Byrds reissue program documents the sad final stages of this scenario. Mainstay Roger McGuinn struggles on mightily, but his playing and songwriting have fallen off; he’s lost his inspiration, the sense of invention that made the Byrds something special. Gone are Gene Clark, David Crosby, Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons as well as their keening harmonies, chiming guitars and sharp songwriting.
Guitar phenom Clarence White, always good for a spirited faux-country instrumental, is nonetheless rarely better than his material. Perhaps most telling, new bassist Skip Battin bears an inordinate share of the songwriting load, his froglike croak and unimaginative fixation on Americana all but guaranteed to halt an album’s flow in its tracks.
Still, the period produced one glimmering gem: “Chestnut Mare”, a Byrds classic that stands firmly among their pantheon. Rescued from a (thankfully) scrapped country-rock opera based upon playwright Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, the song moves from wistful intro through soaring choruses and an ethereal bridge to a rousing finale. McGuinn’s vocals recall the peaks of his youth leavened by a hard-fought maturity, while White’s accompaniment is thoughtful, apt and spirited. The song presents the epic tale of a proud man’s quest to break a spirited horse (representing a woman, untamed nature, or some such hokum) and climaxes as horse and rider leap from the edge of a ridge.
The listener may be forgiven for wishing that the pair’s descent had reached its inevitable conclusion, as “Chestnut Mare” is the sole highlight of the otherwise uninspired live/studio outing Untitled. The low point is a leaden, 16-minute instrumental jam titled “Eight Miles High” but bearing little resemblance to the original version of that song beyond a few recognizable guitar riffs.
Untitled, a double-album in its original vinyl configuration, is now joined by a second, similarly structured disc of outtakes titled, appropriately, Unissued. Surprisingly, the unearthed material lends some credence to the long-held suspicion that the session’s best live offerings were inexplicably left in the can.
The follow-up, Byrdmaniax, may be the best of the lot — damning by faint praise, sure, but hints of the old magic are readily discernible. The album features two well-chosen gospel numbers, several passable originals and another charming White-penned barndance.
Unfortunately, an otherwise pleasant listening experience is marred by Terry Melcher’s overweening production — syrupy strings, distracting backing choruses and a cluttered mix dripping with too-ripe sentiment. After eleven Melcherized tracks, the simple, unadorned outtakes that are included as bonus cuts come as something of a relief. All in all, a competent, listenable country-rock album by early-’70s standards (compared to the wan output of such genre luminaries as Poco and the Eagles), but certainly unnecessary if you haven’t already committed the band’s earlier catalog to memory.
The Byrds’ final regular release, Farther Along, plays like the dispiriting product of a band too tired even to bother with going through the motions. Three bonus tracks from an aborted follow-up signal the faltering franchise’s overdue death knell.
Reissue producer Bob Irwin also has fashioned a free-standing live set from a series of shows recorded circa Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde. Unlike the Untitled album, Live At The Fillmore February 1969 abjures a career-spanning approach to focus upon Sweethearts-era material, thus giving the set a more-coherent, organic feel. And when the band finally dips into its hallowed catalog for the home stretch, McGuinn sings with a degree of emotion and earnestness rarely evident in his later studio work (though the callow JFK remembrance “He Was A Friend Of Mine” does sound willfully nostalgic). Rounded out by three Bakersfield classics, Live At The Fillmore may actually provide a better late-period Byrds overview than 1972’s wildly uneven Greatest Hits Volume II.
