The Byrds
(Untitled)

THE REVIEW

I can't bring myself to completely dismiss this album, which many reject and just as many, perhaps because more from the heart and less from the brain, praise. I will nevertheless give Roger what is Roger's and allow myself to point out that the live album, despite being contradictory in some of its peculiarities, showcases a line-up of a decidedly high level.

Regarding the live performance, then, between warhorses, covers not released in official works, absolute unreleased tracks, there's a feeling of being taken aback. Apart from "Eight Miles High", there is not a single track in the setlist attributable to other former members of the Byrds, except for Chris Hillman, co-author along with McGuinn of "So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star". It's as if McGuinn wanted to erase the past (or were there already initial lawsuits and bans underway?). So I listen to this disc-one all live and I feel that the warhorse is accelerated by such a rhythmic section that it seems like pure bluegrass. In "Mr. Tambourine Man" there are decidedly invigorating but unfortunate guitar inserts. In "Mr. Spaceman," then, the rhythmic section seems more like rockabilly than bluegrass. The feeling is that the band is split in two: on one side, the melody, McGuinn, his voice, and his twelve-string always faithful to itself; on the other side, the driving country rock, bluegrass rock, rockabilly rhythm. In the middle, there is Clarence White on lead guitar, who almost doesn't know what to do. Emblematic "So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star", in which White alternates hard strumming with country rock phrases between one verse and another, all over a beat shot to a thousand, thus making the song a beat over an Appalachian quadrille.

Live, the folk rock is more acoustic, the country rock is more rock, the early successes, that sort of "beatfolkrock," have become jagged chimeras, while the psychedelia of "Eight Miles High" has even become progressive rock, and with splendid results, with a suite of a quarter hour and more.

I listen to disc-one and thus don't know what style the Byrds will follow after the live. Prog? Hard rock like in "Lover Of The Bayou"? Crossover of everything with everything? I do know, however, that this "(Untitled)" was meant to be emblematic called "Phoenix," or even more daringly "The Byrds' First Album." So the change is there, it must be there.

And instead, as was for "Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde," which in itself is not a compliment, this studio disc is unoriginal and almost split in half. On one side the folk rock, even in studio rendered acoustic, I would say almost semiplugged, result of McGuinn's compositions - together with theater director Jacques Levy - for the improbable "Gene Tryp," a never completed musical version, in American root rock sauce, of Ibsen and Grieg's Peer Gynt. The other half of the tracks is represented by the country rock of Skip Battin, the band's new bassist, who avails himself of the strong friendship and collaboration of the crazy Kim Fowley, who in those days - which must have been eight or ten at most - was tripped up on country rock.

Roger's songs travel under the banner of the purest Byrdsian tradition, amidst a thousand chimes, this time accompanied by much acoustic guitar and sometimes by some piano notes. The matrix, however, remains undeniably the same as always. Very enjoyable "Chestnut Mare," classic McGuinn, and "All The Things," while the pattern of "Just A Season", to Byrdmanaic ears like mine, sounds a bit hackneyed.

On the inevitable cover front, "Truck Stop Girl" by the rock&roll (and country) band Little Feat is simply autumnal, semi-nostalgic, an absolute pleasure, while "Take A Whiff On Me," a success of the folk&blues super-crooner of color Lead Belly, is nothing special in the end.

On the country front, Battin collaborates with drummer Gene Parsons for "Yesterday's Train" and relies on Fowley in the perfectly country "You All Look Alike". The result is almost dignified yet a bit cold, perhaps too academic, holistic. Together with Fowley and McGuinn at the same time, he presents the super-crazy mid-tempo rock "Hungry Planet", really a successful episode, then closing in solitude with an accomplished, shouted and lashing folk, titled "Welcome Back Home."

The almost totality of expectations generated by listening to the live album is thus unfulfilled in the studio product. There's no prog, no hard and pure rock, the beat-folk of bygone times does not contaminate with anything and is limited to becoming more acoustic, more folk and that's it. The country pieces are a bit too aligned and covered, though very good.

A good but timid album, for a band that has almost always had the courage to dare, to renew, up to presenting live setlists so heterogeneous as to leave one puzzled as I am left with that offered in this "(Untitled)".

An untitled album: always better than one too pretentious.