The Byrds, Live at the Fillmore, February 1969 (2000)

No question  about it, I was a skeptic: the damn band put out a live record in 1970, so what’s the point of this beyond cynical label cash-grab?

And probably that was the point, since what else motivates labels? But that doesn’t stop this from asserting its own identity, independent of (Untitled), and capturing the band precisely at a transitional moment. It had only been four years since they broke big, but it seemed careers ago; they’re clearly eager to move beyond the past, cramming “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and “Eight Miles High” into one oldies-hit-parade medley that they blast through in a ten-minute fury (as opposed to the sprawling side-long “Eight Miles” on the 1970 record). It works—while McGuinn is rarely an impassioned singer (to his frequent detriment), he shouts himself hoarse on a “So You Want To Be a Rock’N’Roll Star” that could nearly pass as a punk band in 1978, all clanging chords and John York swooping through on bass.

But the band wants to play its new material, and while the just-released Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde was hardly a high point, they rock “King Apathy III” as if it were, and almost convince. McGuinn’s vocals on the tracks that Gram Parsons would also claim separately (esp. “Sing Me Back Home” and “Close Up the Honky Tonks”) can’t help suffering in comparison, but he and the rest of the group seethe through a fantastic “This Wheel’s on Fire,” and close things out with more Dylan, a rousing “Chimes of Freedom.” Even the generally lackluster “He Was a Friend of Mine”—always one of my least-favorite Byrds songs, a treacly tread of misplaced nostalgia—comes to life. I still have no idea why both McGuinn and Parsons were so thin-skinned about being dissed by a DJ that they both kept “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man” in their sets, but at least it dies before the 2:30 mark. Even David Fricke’s liner notes deliver—the idea of the first Byrds show at the Fillmore, in 1966, occurring alongside a production of LeRoi Jones’ The Dutchman is just kind of astonishing—as is the fact that they were reduced to opening for some Butterfield Blues Band dudes by the point of this recording. Huh? 

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. 

The Byrds, Ballad of Easy Rider (1969)

As a rule, albums whose second tracks are written by the new bass player about a dog and feature a mid-song drum solo are to be avoided at all costs. Yet somehow Ballad of Easy Rider proves an (most likely the) exception—and the best late-Byrds LP. McGuinn spends his entire songwriting capital on the lovely opening title track, one of his greatest moments, but the rest of the band steps up admirably, from short-term bassist John York and his aforementioned “Fido,” to co-writers Clarence White and Gene Parsons, whose “Oil in My Lamp” provides another high point. One could read the abundance of covers—there are a lot even by Byrds standards—as a sign of creative exhaustion, but they also reflect curatorial sense and wisdom, with “Tulsa County” and Woody Guthrie’s humane, still sadly relevant “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” delivered with feeling. It’s a soft, understated record, all the better for not striving to be iconic.

Okay, McGuinn can’t hold back from ending things on another of his stupid spaceship songs, but even that brings a loopy charm.