Showing posts with label The Byrds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Byrds. Show all posts

Sunday, December 27, 2020

The Byrds - Phoenix (1970)

For most of 1969 Roger McGuinn was busy writing songs for a country-rock stage production of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, but after writing twenty-six songs the project was eventually abandoned. Of those songs, just four turned up on The Byrds 1970 album '(Untitled)', with a few more being held over for 'Byrdmaniax', and the rest being locked away in the vaults. When the time came to start recording their next album proper, the band thought that it was about time they released a live album, and so two New York concerts in February and March 1970 were recorded, including a sixteen minute version of 'Eight Miles High', which would eventually take up one complete side of the double album. It was to be titled 'Phoenix', to signify the artistic rebirth that the band felt this album represented, but because they still hadn't made up their mind about a title when producer Terry Melcher had to submit paperwork to the record company, he put the placeholder '(Untitled)' on it, and due to a misunderstanding at the pressing plant that became the album's official title. For this reconstruction I've replaced the live 'Lover Of The Bayou' with the studio version, added in some of those songs from the aborted Gene Tryp stage show, and completed it with some alternate versions and out-takes recorded at the same sessions. I've also included a live recording of 'It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)', as this was recorded in the studio sessions, but has yet to appears on record. It's a shortish double album, but it does indicate that 'Phoenix' would have been an apt title.



Track listing

01 Lover Of The Bayou
02 Chestnut Mare
03 Truck Stop Girl
04 All The Things
05 Yesterday's Train
06 Hungry Planet
07 Just A Season
08 Take A Whiff On Me
09 Willin'
10 You All Look Alike
11 Kathleen's Song
12 Just Like A Woman
13 White's Lighting #1
14 Welcome Back Home
15 It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
16 White's Lightning #2
17 Amazing Grace

Gram Parsons & The Byrds - Sweetheart Of The Rodeo (1968)

I saw a suggestion recently for a reconstructed album that piqued my interest, and that was what 'Sweetheart Of The Rodeo' would have sounded like if Gram Parsons hadn't left the band before it was released, resulting in nearly all his vocals being wiped and replaced by other members of The Byrds. 
In the end we only heard him on three of the songs on the album, but as the original idea of the album was his, he did actually sing nearly all the songs as they were recorded, with the exception of the two Dylan covers, Woody Guthrie's 'Pretty Boy Floyd', and the traditional 'I Am A Pilgrim'. Luckily these tapes still exist, and so this version of the classic album that started the whole Country/Rock sound can now be heard pretty much as Parsons intended.



Track Listing

01 You Ain't Going Nowhere
02 I Am A Pilgrim
03 The Christian Life
04 You Don't Miss Your Water
05 You're Still On My Mind
06 Pretty Boy Floyd
07 Hickory Wind
08 One Hundred Years From Now
09 Blue Canadian Rockies
10 Life In Prison
11 Nothing Was Delivered

Bonus tracks

12 All I Have Are Memories
13 Reputation
14 Pretty Polly
15 Lazy Days

Although Parsons sang his own composition 'Hickory Wind' on the original album, this is a stripped back version without the harmony vocals, but it's still a fine take. 'Lazy Days' is a Parsons original that didn't make the cut, while he'd been performing Tim Hardin's 'You Got A Reputation' for a couple of years before bringing it to the sessions.