James Roger McGuinn is an American musician, best known for being the frontman and leader of the Byrds. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with the Byrds. As a solo artist he has released 10 albums and collaborated with, among others, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Chris Hillman. The 12-string Rickenbacker guitar is his signature instrument.
The Byrds were an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1964. The band underwent multiple lineup changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn remaining the sole consistent member. Although their time as one of the most popular groups in the world only lasted for a short period in the mid-1960s, the Byrds are today considered by critics to be among the most influential rock acts of their era. Their signature blend of clear harmony singing and McGuinn's jangly 12-string Rickenbacker guitar was "absorbed into the vocabulary of rock" and has continued to be influential.
The Electric Prunes are an American psychedelic rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1965. Much of the band's music was, as music historian Richie Unterberger described it, possessed of "an eerie and sometimes anguished ambiance." Their most successful material was by songwriters Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz, though the group also penned their own songs. Incorporating psychedelia and elements of embryonic electronic rock, the band's sound was marked by innovative recording techniques with fuzz-toned guitars and oscillating sound effects. In addition, guitarist Ken Williams' and singer James Lowe's concept of "free-form garage music" provided the band with a richer sonic palette and exploratory lyrical structure than many of their contemporaries.
Clarence White was an American bluegrass and country guitarist and singer. He is best known as a member of the bluegrass ensemble the Kentucky Colonels and the rock band the Byrds, as well as for being a pioneer of the musical genre of country rock during the late 1960s. White also worked extensively as a session musician, appearing on recordings by the Everly Brothers, Joe Cocker, Ricky Nelson, Pat Boone, the Monkees, Randy Newman, Gene Clark, Linda Ronstadt, Arlo Guthrie, and Jackson Browne among others.
"A Whiter Shade of Pale" is a song by the English rock band Procol Harum that was issued as their debut record on 12 May 1967. The single reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart on 8 June and stayed there for six weeks. Without much promotion, it reached number 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100. One of the anthems of the 1967 Summer of Love, it is one of the most commercially successful singles in history, having sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. In the years since, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" has become an enduring classic, with more than 1,000 known cover versions by other artists.
Michael Monarch is an American guitarist. He is best known for his work with the band Steppenwolf.
Ballad of Easy Rider is the eighth album by the American rock band the Byrds and was released in November 1969 on Columbia Records. The album was named after the song "Ballad of Easy Rider", which had been written by the Byrds' guitarist and singer, Roger McGuinn, as the theme song for the 1969 film, Easy Rider. The title was also chosen in an attempt to capitalize on the commercial success of the film, although the majority of the music on the album had no connection with it. Nonetheless, the association with Easy Rider heightened the Byrds' public profile and resulted in Ballad of Easy Rider becoming the band's highest charting album for two years in the U.S.
Thomas Joseph Tedesco was an American guitarist and studio musician in Los Angeles and Hollywood. He was part of the loose collective of the area's leading session musicians later popularly known as The Wrecking Crew, who played on thousands of studio recordings in the 1960s and 1970s, including several hundred Top 40 hits.
The Notorious Byrd Brothers is the fifth album by the American rock band the Byrds, and was released in January 1968, on Columbia Records. The album represents the pinnacle of the Byrds' late-‘60s musical experimentation, with the band blending together elements of psychedelia, folk rock, country, electronic music, baroque pop, and jazz. With producer Gary Usher, they made extensive use of a number of studio effects and production techniques, including phasing, flanging, and spatial panning. The Byrds also introduced the sound of the pedal steel guitar and the Moog modular synthesizer into their music, making it one of the first LP releases on which the Moog appears.
Steppenwolf is the debut studio album by Canadian-American rock band Steppenwolf, released on January 29, 1968, on ABC Dunhill Records. It includes songs written by band members and songs written by others such as the Willie Dixon blues classic "Hoochie Coochie Man", retitled "Hootchie Kootchie Man".
Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde is the seventh studio album by the American rock band the Byrds and was released in March 1969 on Columbia Records. The album was produced by Bob Johnston and saw the band juxtaposing country rock material with psychedelic rock, giving the album a stylistic split-personality that was alluded to in its title. It was the first album to feature the new band line-up of Clarence White (guitar), Gene Parsons (drums), John York (bass), and founding member Roger McGuinn (guitar). Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde is unique within the band's discography for being the only album on which McGuinn sings the lead vocal on every track.
The Best of The Byrds: Greatest Hits, Volume II is the third greatest hits album by the American rock band the Byrds, but only the second to be released in the United States, since the earlier The Byrds' Greatest Hits Volume II had only been issued in the UK. The album was released in the U.S. by Columbia Records on November 10, 1972 in lieu of any new Byrds' product during that year. It spent a total of thirteen weeks on the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart and peaked at number 114.
The Electric Flag was an American blues/rock/soul band from Chicago, led by guitarist Mike Bloomfield, keyboardist Barry Goldberg and drummer Buddy Miles, and featuring other musicians such as vocalist Nick Gravenites and bassist Harvey Brooks. Bloomfield formed the Electric Flag in 1967, following his stint with the Butterfield Blues Band. The band reached its peak with the 1968 release, A Long Time Comin', a fusion of rock, jazz, and R&B styles that charted well in the Billboard Pop Albums chart. Their initial recording was a soundtrack for The Trip, a movie about an LSD experience by Peter Fonda, written by Jack Nicholson and directed by Roger Corman.
Matthew Charles Fisher is an English musician, songwriter and record producer. He is best known for his longtime association with the rock band Procol Harum, which included playing the Hammond organ on the 1967 single "A Whiter Shade of Pale", for which he subsequently won a songwriting credit. In his later life he became a computer programmer, having qualified from Cambridge University.
Richard Allen Podolor was an American musician, record producer and songwriter. His career started as a session musician in the 1950s, and he was best known as the producer of Three Dog Night.
"Turn! Turn! Turn!", also known as or subtitled "To Everything There Is a Season", is a song written by Pete Seeger in 1959. The lyrics – except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song, and the final two lines – consist of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes. The song was originally released in 1962 as "To Everything There Is a Season" on the folk group the Limeliters' album Folk Matinee, and then some months later on Seeger's own The Bitter and the Sweet.
"Ballad of Easy Rider" is a song written by Roger McGuinn, with input from Bob Dylan, for the 1969 film, Easy Rider. The song was initially released in August 1969 on the Easy Rider soundtrack album as a Roger McGuinn solo performance. It was later issued in an alternate version as a single by McGuinn's band the Byrds on October 1, 1969. Senior editor for Rolling Stone magazine, David Fricke, has described the song as perfectly capturing the social mood of late 1969 and highlighting "the weary blues and dashed expectations of a decade's worth of social insurrection".
The Byrds' Greatest Hits Volume II is the second greatest hits album by the American rock band the Byrds. It was released in the United Kingdom and Europe on October 29, 1971, by CBS Records as a follow-up to the band's first compilation album, The Byrds' Greatest Hits. The album appeared following the band's successful appearance at the Lincoln Folk Festival in England on July 24, 1971, and according to band biographer Johnny Rogan may have been issued by CBS as a reaction to the band's previous studio album, Byrdmaniax, having failed to chart in the UK.
The Miami Pop Festival was a rock festival that took place from December 28-30, 1968, at Gulfstream Park, a horse racing track in Hallandale, Florida, just north of Miami. It is sometimes confused with a separate event that took place seven months earlier, at the same venue, though the two events were unrelated. The earlier event was officially publicized on promotional materials and in radio ads as the "1968 Pop and Underground Festival," and "The 1968 Pop Festival," but later came to be referred to colloquially as the "Miami" Pop Festival, a practice which has led to confusion between the two events.
"Wasn't Born to Follow", also known as "I Wasn't Born to Follow", is a song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King. Goffin wrote the lyrics and King provided the music. The song was first recorded by the Byrds on their 1968 album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers. King's short-lived band the City also recorded the song for their 1968 album, Now That Everything's Been Said. It has also been covered by many other artists, including the Monkees, the Lemon Pipers, Dusty Springfield, and as a solo recording by King. The Byrds recording was featured in the 1969 film Easy Rider and was released as a single in the UK and Germany in the same year as a result.
