The Byrds
Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde

You're right, we need to move forward, even learning to accept ourselves for who we are. We must always insist and believe in ourselves: who else will believe in us if we don't? Keep trying, act, act, and act again.

How did you feel when Gene left? He had written "Eight Miles High" with you and David and was always afraid of flying. I admit that being afraid of being eight miles up isn't that unusual, but it still sounded like a joke, didn't it? How many of these bitter surprises have you had in life and career? Yet we must continue to believe in the good things.

David, on the other hand, was profoundly different from you, you always knew it. Come on, admit that you were sure that sooner or later you would part ways. It was difficult to predict when and why, but the ending couldn't be anything else. You were too different, not that you were "square" in your style and way of being, but compared to his personality and his intangible, elusive, incorporeal art, anyone would have seemed like a panzer, even you. When and for what reason, we said. When did it happen? When you embraced the psychedelic, when David was finally artistically valued, when the sounds and themes became more suited to him. Basically: it was better to be the despot than to trust. Basically, be stingy and don't give anything to anyone, because if you give them a finger, they'll take the whole arm. But we want to know, for what reason? The umpteenth joke: artistic differences that emerge when you finally sound the way he likes... And moreover, David falls in love with your rival band, Neil Young’s Buffalo Springfield. Now, you electrified Bob Dylan and inspired him to play rock, you invented folk rock, the sound of your guitar, the famous jingle jangle, has set the standard and reigns undisputed in yesterday's and today's global root rock scene, your electrified Rickenbacker twelve-string is a legend, you've made more than one masterpiece with the Byrds, you've imported the beat into the USA, you've been a pioneer of raga-rock, psychedelic and then country rock, and what does David do? He goes off with Neil Young? And who the heck is this Neil Young!? If you don't call these jokes, what should they be called?

We must be stronger than everyone else, even those people who abandon or even repudiate you. Does the world collapse on you? Keep going and don't look back. The radios censor "Eight Miles High," your albums and singles no longer chart? It doesn't matter. Full steam ahead. In Nashville, you present your work with Gram on a famous local radio show and the on-air speaker cuts off your single, saying it’s mediocre, leaving you, Gram, and the others stunned? By now, the tough skin you've developed is more like a rind. The important thing is to always believe, no matter what.

By the way, this Gram... Maybe you made a mistake there, didn't you? You managed to instill the right self-confidence in Chris and make him a more prolific writer. Together with him, you brought out the immense "The Notorious Byrd Brothers." After a performance of that level, you thought it right to give the final push to an even more ambitious project, finally shaping your dream band of "Cosmic American Music." You were right to trust Gram blindly, you did well to follow Chris's advice by going to see one of his piano performances. Gram was perfect, he was a cosmic pianist but a very American composer, he could do country and avant-garde music. He was the best on the scene, but with someone like that, you have to be ready to bet everything.

You wanted to sustain the Byrds with a higher-level artistic life, and so you did well to enlist an immense artist like Gram, but to properly value him, you had to be ready to accommodate him to the fullest, even if it meant a leadership change. That’s where you got lost, in my opinion: your ego at that time had overtaken your Self, you couldn't swallow your factual inferiority, seen on the field, at least on the fields of experimentation and innovation. You had already made your innovations, with the jingle jangle, with American beat, with folk rock, with psychedelia; now it was someone else's turn to play the role of innovator. The Birds would have continued to fly, only with someone else steering the route towards modernity. If your goal was good music, what harm was there in leaving the helm to Gram?

You knew what would happen to you splitting from Gram, didn't you? Besides, Gram is too big a fish to leave as he came. And if shortly after David’s departure, Michael, your drummer, left too, when Gram said goodbye, you saw Chris and his cousin Kevin, the drummer who replaced Michael, leave as well. I imagine when you had to see Chris go, who coincidentally left you to play with Gram, it must have felt like the world collapsed on you: admit it, Chris wasn’t just your squire, your quiet and hardworking right hand, but a true younger brother, a guy capable of writing immense tracks and unsuspectingly capable of enacting a silent revolution in your band, towards the country that Chris chewed since his first approach to the musical world. And around and around, he succeeded, in bringing you to the music of his roots... Was he the real revolutionary, the true genius of the band?

It's 1969 and you think you're alone, but there’s Clarence White, the guitarist who replaced David, the renegade, as a session man following his departure. He always secretly hoped to be admitted to the lineup one day. You make a great impression in my eyes once again by giving him all the guitar parts, renouncing your legendary neck. You give him the trust an official member deserves, even more so. Your new guitarist had a band playing contemporary country but not rock (you and a few other bands created that), and they also recorded a single in '67, and what do you do? You take the single and drummer from this now-defunct band and turn them into "Byrds." You were commendable, I say this sincerely.

In "Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde," you did everything you could: you wrote with your own hand, rearranged traditionals, had the new members collaborate with you on some tracks, re-used their single, gave them compositional freedom, and they wrote a couple of pieces on their own, you wisely used "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" that you wrote with Gram, a song you were right not to leave locked in the drawer, and the entire Woodstock and Joan Baez, who reused it to musically attack Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, are grateful to you. Then you electrify Bob Dylan's "This Wheel's On Fire," and it becomes a great psych-rock piece; you alternate country rock with early grown-up psychedelia vibes.

You fail, because you're missing Gram in country and David in psychedelia. However, it must be said, you do much better in psychedelia than in country rock. Perhaps, more than anything, it seems to me that Chris's absence is the one you feel most, as he knew well how to create and write psychedelia, but was born with bluegrass and honky tonk. Without hoping to have Gram back in the lineup, Chris would have made your fortune, as he could be half Gram and half David, the halves, if not artistically better, without a doubt better in character, so as always and still letting you hold the helm.

I'm sure with Chris, "Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde" would have become the second "The Notorious Byrd Brothers," the second comeback album after departures, storms, announced endings. It wasn't so, but well-known that those who have friends are never poor, and to you, a friend still remained, and what a friend: his majesty Bob Dylan.