Roger McGuinn
Thunderbyrd

In 1977, for his new album, Roger McGuinn wanted to repeat the collaboration with Mick Ronson from the previous year: that shared intention was musically rejuvenating, and Mick had the right diversity of background to mix waters that had long been muddied. But Ronson is a courted and elusive artist, like the secret ingredient that many want to add to their recipe. An artist no longer on the hit parade like McGuinn can't expect exclusivity.

He consoles himself by creating the Thunderbyrd, his fourth band if we consider the early Byrds and those of Columbia Records as two different collectives. Nine months after "Cardiff Rose," therefore, "Thunderbyrd" is born, the last chapter of McGuinn's solo story in the seventies. Ultimately, because it’s also the last from a qualitative point of view.

It's always unfortunate not to speak well of an album filled with covers, but in the case of "Thunderbyrd," it is necessary. First of all, it is incomprehensible why one insists on producing albums every nine months as if they were Kosovar wives. We don't know if the lack of success should be attributed to the five tracks penned by others or the four pieces written by Levy/McGuinn. Let me explain: the covers are almost all excellent songs, but it is the arrangement or even the interpretation that makes them insufficient: all this valuable music doesn't work because the McGuinnian dressing doesn't suit them at all, which in itself is emblematic, given that Roger is perhaps more famous as a sound inventor and rearranger than for his own compositions. While Peter Frampton's "All Night Long" is always excellent, perhaps Tom Petty's root song "American Girl" is too melodic, where McGuinn's interpretation is undoubtedly the lowest, never before so atonal in his life, whose voice, moreover, cannot even come out of the grooves; and Barry Goldberg's "We Can Do It All Over Again," interpreted in a country-rock style, is pleasant, but the experiment seems more intelligent than beautiful. Lastly, "Why Baby Why," a pleasant and swift country tune that Roger tries to tint a bit black, unlike the previous song. Here the man with the Rickenbacker, who is neither Fats Domino nor Ray Charles, shows more than one limit.

And then what about Bob Dylan's "Golden Loom"? This light half blues rock is certainly not the showpiece or hidden gem of the famous minstrel's discography, and this version, albeit quite faithful and credible, doesn't raise the quality level. But I say, with all of Dylan's songs available, and with someone like Roger who was not ashamed to cover "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," couldn't they have opted for a better track?

As for his own compositions, while "It's Gone" seems to anticipate the taste of the Dire Straits of "Sultans Of Swing" with its gallop, the blues and roll "Dixie Highway" and the half ballad "I'm Not Lonely Anymore" are truly unlistenable. The final, almost guessed, kaleidoscopic "Russian Hill" is off-topic, too slow and even a bit Floydian, unexpected in Roger's production that had long seemed to abandon cosmic ambitions.

"Thunderbyrd" is a poorly conceived and even more poorly executed work by an artist lacking balance, who, since he couldn't restrain himself from producing in his own name, wouldn't release a solo album for fourteen years due to the law of compensation.

The remedy is often worse than the disease.