It's beautiful it's a gorgeous edition.īefore we dig into this era of the band reflected in its pages, can you tell me about your early love of all things related to technology, outer space and sci-fi? To me, that's one of the most captivating facets of the band - that sense of far-out curiosity, that futuristic bent. So, they said, "What are we going to do with these?" They decided to make a coffee-table book - 400 pages, 500 photos, printed with Italian paper. They acquired a number of photographs of the Byrds, and I guess they had so many, they couldn't use them all. I wasn't really on the inside of this, but Chris Hillman did an autobiography a couple of years ago for BMG Publishing. Why did it feel appropriate to tell the story of the band's early history mostly through photographs, with an oral history threaded through them? Tell me how The Byrds: 1964-1967 came to be. Bobby Darin and Judy Collins and became a studio musician and writer at the Brill Building in New York. I tell the story about how I was inspired early on in my teens to get a guitar I played guitar in the Old Town School for Folk Music and got hired by the Limeliters and the Chad Mitchell Trio. I do, like, the life of Will Rogers, except it's not about Will Rogers it's about me. The streaming thing is working out well.įor people who may know the Byrds, since they've been in the ether for so long, but haven't caught you live, what can they expect from you in performance? We've recorded CDs, but CDs are kind of a dying breed, so we've had to find some other way. It's a public service sponsored by UNC Chapel Hill. When I'm home, I record I've got a Folk Den Project that I do every month I record a song and put it on the internet for a free download, in a section called The Folk Den on my website,. I think it's a month-long tour it's going to take us around to Easton. We're going to play a theater in Brattleboro tomorrow night. Well, I've been touring since 1960! I'm still doing it at 80 years old. This interview has been edited for clarity.īefore we time-warp to 55 years ago, I think it's important to lead with a question about your life and work today. Read on for a history-spanning interview with the three-time GRAMMY nominee about the new book, his folkie origins, how he picked up the Rickenbacker, the importance of Gene Clark and Clarence White, and myriad other Byrdsy subjects. These days, he may have little interest in getting the old band back together, but he arguably remains their most active and public custodian - one one-man show at a time. In his post-Byrds life, McGuinn deepened in profound ways - not only in diving deeper into the folk tradition and honing his storytelling acumen, but focusing on his Christian ministry alongside his wife, Camilla. Tambourine Man" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and on-ramp to their eventual plunge into psychedelia. 20.įeaturing 400 pages of more than 500 illuminating photographs and an oral history courtesy of surviving Byrds McGuinn, Chris Hillman and David Crosby, the book is a definitive account of the band's genesis, commercial breakthroughs with "Mr. "I love taking things apart and trying to put them back together."įortunately for all of us, McGuinn isn't all that different from the man we learn about in The Byrds: 1964-1967, a lavish new coffee-table book that hit shelves on Sept. "I take LEDs and put them in a little box with a switch on it and make them blink, just for fun," he tells. From the road, McGuinn explains that his engineer grandfather got him interested in all things that light up and whir. On top of that, he remains a lifelong enthusiast for all things engineering, aviation, gadgets and science fiction. On his website, he releases free-to-download interpretations of songs from the folk, gospel, sea-shanty, and calypso traditions, among others - under the umbrella of his "Folk Den Project." Therein, the 80-year-old former Byrd clarifies, contextualizes and canonizes his life story, perhaps working it out for himself just as much as he is for his audiences.Īnd as far as the folk canon that galvanized and mobilized him in the first place, he's far from finished with his decades-long analysis. This is wholly apparent in his one-man show currently criss-crossing the East Coast. And that maximum-curious mind is still humming. He wrote immortal odes to celestial voyages and alternate dimensions, and threw down incendiary "out" solos that would make John Coltrane proud. He electrified his beloved folk music to make it jangle and chime. A new coffee-table book about the early history of the band, The Byrds: 1964-1967, is available now.ĭecades ago, he helped codify the Rickenbacker 360/12 as a rock 'n' roll armament. This week, spoke with Roger McGuinn, a member of the Byrds and folk-rock pioneer who, at 80, remains active as a solo act. Living Legends is a series that spotlights icons in music still going strong today.
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