Bob Dylan was a important figure in the American response during the mid 1960's.
But he certainly wasn't the only one that was making a difference in sort of
fending off, if you will, the British acts who were so dominating the charts
during this period. Often together with the story that we've
heard about Bob Dylan, the summer of 65, the Newport Folk Festival, Like a Rolling
Stone and all that went that, with that, we have to talk about the music of The
Byrds because it's sort of intimate, well in many ways it's intimately related with
what was going on with Dylan. The Byrds started by Roger McGuinn
guitarist along with David Crosby, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke.
That group McGuinn and Crosby emerged out of the Greenich Village folk scene as, as
many of the other musicians did. But at this point in time there's kind of
the beginnings of a real migration toward the west coast in the music business.
In fact between the beginning of the 60s and the end of the 60s you can really
see. The music business in this country
really, in large part migrate from New York to Los Angeles.
There was a lot of natural attraction to Los Angeles.
One of them is the television and the movie business were out there.
And so there was a lot of sophisticated people out there who were involved with
production. There were good recording studios.
This kind of thing. And so McGuinn makes his way out to LA.
Starts doing his folk routine his, his folk act doing traditional folk songs and
also playing songs, Beatles songs [LAUGH] in his, in his folk act which I guess was
a little bit a little bit strange for the day but you could already see the
beginnings of, of, of McGuinn wanting to go in the direction of what the Beatles
did. their first, the first collection, the
first version of The Byrds was called The Beefeaters, and they used to have a song
that they did called Mr. Tambourine Man, which was a Dylan song.
But it's a Dylan song that Dylan hadn't yet recorded.
He'd done a recording of it and as the story goes Rambling Jack Elliot had been
on the, the, the, the recording they'd done.
And something about the playing on it was out of tune and they decided not to use
it. But the guy that was producing The Byrds
at the time, Terry Melcher, got a hold of this recording and The Byrds heard it and
so they started working up this version of Dylan's Mr.
Tambourine Man, initially doing it with an acoustic 12 string.
Very much, you know, like a, kind of, folk revival group.
from the first half of the 1960's, New Christie Minstrels or something like
that. but then A Hard Day's Night came out in
the summer of 1965. And so the guys from The Byrds went to
see A Hard Day's Night. First, like everybody else they were
totally enraptured by The Beatles and Beatlemania and always going like this is
fantastic, this is just what we wanted and we want to be just like these guys.
But they noticed that in that guita-, in, in, in that movie, George Harrison is
playing a Rickenbacker 12 string guitar. Now, McGuinn had been playing a 12 string
acoustic guitar, but this Rickenbacker electric 12 string had six pegs if you
looked at it straight on had six pegs just like a normal guitar, but if you
turned it sideways you would see there were six more pegs for the extra six
strings that the added up to 12 and there's George Harrison playing that.
Roger McGuinn thought that's fantastic, that's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to get a guitar just like that. Well it turned out Rickenbacker guitars
were made right there in Southern California.
He was able to go to a music store and as the story goes, traded in like, I don't
know, an acoustic 12 string and a banjo or something like that for a brand new
Rickenbacker guitar. They decided to do their version of Mr.
Tambourine Man with that Rickenbacker electric 12 string guitar and that jingly
jangly sound of folk rock. Which has been you know, emblematic ever
since in...in the popular music business you think about groups like R.E.M., Tom
Petty, all that sort of jingle jangle, it all comes from that moment in 1965 when
Rog McGuinn picks up the Hard Day's Night guitar and, you know, puts it on a Bob
Dylan song, right. And plays a little introduction that he
says is, is influenced by Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring by J.S.
Bach. Puts all these things together.
And creates this hit single Mr. Tambourine Man which goes to number one,
released in April of 1965. So it's just at the same time as Like A
Rolling Stone is on the charts we've also got Mr.
Tambourine Man, two Bob Dylan songs. Interestingly, one song written by Bob
Dylan but not performed by him. And one song written by Bob Dylan and
performed by him. Sort of two sides of what Dylan's career
had been up to that point. An interesting element to that song, Mr.
Tambourine Man is not only that it combines a Beatles guitar, a Dylan song
and this Bach influenced introduction. But also that it uses the same studio
band as had worked with Phil Spector and, and his records.
And in fact it was some of the same guys who'd been on a Beach Boys session called
do, for a song called Don't Worry Baby and when they were putting together Mr.
Tamborine Man, these studio musicians. remember this, and Terry Melcher said can
you do the beat, can you do the feel from the Beach Boys' tune.
So he took the Beach Boys' feel from Don't Worry Baby and put it together with
what McGuinn already had on the tune, and that's what became Mr.
Tambourine Man. You notice I'm talking about a studio
band. The only person actually playing on Mr
Tambourine Man is Roger McGuinn from the Byrds, the rest are all studio musicians.
The other the Byrds members are singing but in a couple years when we talk about
the music of the Monkees. Well when the Monkees music comes along
in a couple of years. We'll talk about how people thought it
was so inauthentic that The Monkees weren't even playing on their own
records, but it turns out that when it comes to Mr.
Tambourine Man, an iconic folk rock hit of unquestioned authenticity, it turns
out that most of the musicians on the recording were studio musicians.
Nevertheless, after that, The Byrds played on, on, on their own records and
had subsequent hits with "All I Really Want To Do," there's a fun story that has
to do with Cher that I'll tell you about in just a minute.
"Turn, Turn, Turn," a Pete Seger song which again went to number one in the
fall of '65, and "Eight Miles High." which is a song that McGuinn said is
about a cross country airline flight which would be seven miles high.
But eight, that, that didn't scan so well as a lyric, so it became eight miles
high. But of course, eight miles high,
everybody thought they were drug lyrics and so in fact, the song only got as high
as number 14 in the spring of 1966 and got pushed off the charts.
because word went round to radio stations that it was a drug song.
It's also very much influenced by the music of John Coltrane.
There's a guitar lick on the 12 string at the very beginning which is a quote
directly from a John Coltrane track. India, I think it is.
So that's, the story with The Byrds is this, is taking this folk thing as Dylan
was doing and really sort of turning it into that jingly jangly sound.
Speaking of the jingle jangle and I mentioned before, previous video that
producer Tom Wilson will become an important member, important of part of
this discussion. let's talk a little bit about Simon and
Garfunkel, how, how all of that, how all that works out for them.
Another important group here, coming out of New York City and actually staying in
New York City. What it turns out that that Simon and
Garfunkel had actually been a kind of Everly Brothers kind of group back in the
late 50s called Tom and Jerry. They had a, hm, mild hit with a song
called Hey Schoolgirl. they even appeared on American Bandstand,
right, as a kind of young teenage version of of the Everly Brothers.
But then they, you know, finished school and, and did other kinds of things and
they came back. As part of folk revival as Simon and
Garfunkel, doing totally acoustic music, released an album in 1964 called
Wednesday Morning, 3 am. It kind of flopped.
It had a song on it called The Sounds of Silence.
But it's not the version that you're used to hearing.
Anyway, the album flops, Paul Simon goes off to England, to, to sing.
I think, Art Garfunkel goes to graduate school, whatever, and so they're really
not really doing Simon and Garfunkel at the time.
But, when Mr. Tambourine Man hits, and when the Dylan
tune hits in the summer of 65, Tom Wilson, the producer, remembers this,
this album, this Wednesday Morning, 3 AM which was on the same label as, as Dylan,
Columbia. And he, so without the knowledge of Paul
Simon or Art Garfunkel, he brings studio musicians into the studio.
They take the Sounds of Silence and they add to it electric guitar, bass and
drums. Now how do you add something to a song
that's already recorded? Well, you can tell if you listen to the
recording that the first couple measures of it are the acoustic guitar all by
itself, that's how the musicians are able to pick up where the tempo is.
And then, after a couple of measures, the electric guitar comes in, the bass comes
in, the drums come in. And so, without their knowledge, this
song was rereleased, in this country, and actually became, a big hit, a number one
hit in 1965. Imagine being Paul Simon, and getting
that phone call, well, listen Paul, it's your record company calling.
Guess what? You've got a hit in America.
What do you mean I've got a hit in America?
I don't have any records out in America. Well.
And so that's the whole story. And so what Tom Wilson essentially did
was took what was an acoustic folk song, added the electric guitars, bass, and
drums to it, and really. That's the definition of what Folk rock
is. Well Simon and Garfunkel went on to
record an album, The Sounds of Silence and, and that's that's the when you're
probably familiar within that version other songs like Homeward Bound from 1966
and I am a Rock really kind of made them one of the most important acts of that
that era. also coming out of LA we've got The Mamas
and the Papas. Now they also formed in New York, but
again like, like we talked about with The Byrds, moved to LA.
And they, they're, they're a little bit late comers to this folk rock thing.
The group lead by John Phillips but having two men in the group and two
females so those are the The Papas and the Mamas there including Cass Mama Cass
Elliott who was sort of the, in many ways the sort of star of the group.
While, although, all of the, a lot of the song writing and harmonies vocal
harmonies and arrangements were done by John Phillips.
one of the guys in the group, their big hit, their first, first big hit,
California Dreamin went to number four in 1966, and their big number one hit from
60, from 66 was a track called Monday Monday.
In, another thing that began to happen among these these folk rock groups is
because The Byrds had, had so much success covering Dylan songs.
Other groups either covered Dylan songs, or tried to imitate in their songwriting
what a Dylan song sounded like. So.
there was, a fellow by the name of Barry McGuire who had a number one hit in the
fall of 1965. So this is kind of, just, just, in months
after the emergence of folk rock and Mr. Tambourine Man, this track is called Eve
Of Destruction and the guy who wrote the song, P.F.
Sloan was essentially given the assignment, I think it was by Lou Addler
at the record company, to basically write a song that sounded like a Dylan song
that wasn't a Dylan song, so he wrote Eve of Destruction.
Barry McGuire had a number one hit with that one.
The Turtles, another group from L.A. covered the Dylan song It Ain't Me Babe
and had a number eight hit with that in 1965.
The Turtles made up of dual singers Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan.
would later be known as Floury, Fluorescent Leech and Eddie, or Flo and
Eddie when they appeared on Frank Zappa albums, and then had their own solo
career in the 70s. But early on, they were The Turtles.
It Ain't Me Babe was a fantastic tune, but Happy Together, their number one hit
from slightly later 1967 is one of the classic American pop hits
From the 1960s. So this, in many ways, wraps up our
discussion of folk rock. But there were other elements of the
American response that we can talk about in the 1960's.
And in the next video, we'll turn to the legacy of Phil Spector.