The Byrds, Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde (1969)

Clarence White is here, and he ain’t yer Sweetheart: he rings this LP in with some crashing chords that bring “This Wheel’s on Fire” closer to Blue Cheer than Gram Parsons. Later, fellow Byrd-n00b Gene Parsons adds such a cavernous drum sound to “Child of the Universe” that one might mistake it for a guest appearance from John Bonham. This is what happens when you repopulate a rock band in 1969, apparently. 

Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde is an odd, deeply uneven LP, lost in the shadows of 1968’s moment in the sun, and their biggest commercial dud, according to David Fricke’s reissue liner notes (which strive nobly, if futilely, to reclaim it as "the Great Forgotten Byrds Album"--it is one of those things, but not both). I’ve been listening to it every other year or so for a decade, and have only just begun to appreciate it, so I guess it’s what you’d call a grower. Still, it has its moments: “Old Blue” proves you can’t go wrong singing about a favorite dog, and “Bad Night at the Whiskey” is a great title for an anomalous outlier at the rockier end of the Byrds spectrum. There’s some dumb, lazy political commentary in “King Apathy III” and “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man” (a McGuinn/Gram Parsons co-write that the latter would also play, and also fail to bring to life), and I’m not sure why White and the new Parsons imported some of their Nashville West jamming, but all the confusing twists and turns do ultimately make for an unpredictable, if muddled, one-off experiment. Clunky as the title is, it captures the schizoid feel of this one. And that title-font, wow.