The Byrds ~ Sanctuary III (2001) (Sundazed LP5066)
The Byrds ~ Sanctuary III
Vinyl Transfer 24/96 & 16/44.1 | 1 LP | Artwork
Sundazed LP5066
It look a while for Roger McGuinn to feel comfortable with the new group of Byrds he'd assembled when bassist Chris Hlllman, the last original member, left the band In 1968. "At first it was a little awkward," says McGuinn about adding new recruits Clarence White on guitar, bass player John York and Gene Parsons on drums. "I was wondering, 'Why am I doing this?' There wasn't quite as much camaraderie on the road as before. It was kinda like going to a new school and you had to make new friends. Fortunately, I did with Clarence White. We were like drinking buddies."
His fretboard genius stamped all over the tracks here, Clarence White sparkled like a precious stone when the Byrds cut their Ballad Of Easy Rider and Untitled LPs. "One of the reasons I kept the name was for Clarence." explains McGuinn. "He'd always wanted to be in the Byrds. He felt like he missed the boat because he'd already been doing Dylan stuff with the Kentucky Colonels." White wasn't about to let this second chance slip through his fingers. "Clarence had an opportunity to go with Chris and Gram [Parsons] to be in the Flying Burrito Brothers." says McGuinn. "And he turned them down because he wanted to be in the Byrds."
SIDE ONE
1. Ballad Of Easy Rider (ALTERNATE MIX) (R.McGinnn)
recorded: June 18,1969 originally unissued matrix HCO 106035
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
John York - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
From the Ballad Of Easy Rider sessions, this version contains Clarence White's electric guitar track and solo which were edited out of the final released mix.
Roger McGuinn: Peter Fonda was our friend. I'd known him since Bobby Darin days. Peter had been involved in these American International, drive-in theatre kind of motorcycle B-movies. Fun, but they weren't serious business. And he was going to do Easy Rider which looked to everybody like another one of these movies, right?
Peter wanted a song that was custom-written for the movie, so he decided to get Dylan to write him a song. He flew to New York with a can of the film and put it in Dylan's screening room. Dylan sat there and I guess he wasn't sure if he wanted to write anything for this American International-style motorcycle movie. So he wrote down some notes on a paper napkin and said, "Here, give this to McGuinn. He'll know what to do with it." Peter flew back to LA and he gave me this little cocktail napkin. And it had the verse: "The river flows/It flows to the sea/Wherever that river goes/That's where I want to be/Flow river flow." I got my guitar out and wrote the tune and finished off the words.
What makes this version really special is having Clarence's guitar playing the melody like that. It was all strings on the original version—I guess because Terry Melcher liked strings. Terry was dating Candice Bergen at the time. I think they were living together at his mom's beach house in Malibu. So I was prepared for this girl to walk into the studio. And she does and she's stunning. She's sitting next to me while this song Is being played back and I ask her, "how'd you like it?" She gets all teary-eyed and goes, "It was beautiful." Wow, that was great: So she liked the strings.
John York: You'll notice there's no bass on this. I remember playing the synthetic cello part on Roger's Moog. Prior to that I couldn't come to terms with the Moog as an instrument, even after having sat on the plane next to Robert Moog and talked to him. It had just been sounds.
Roger McGuinn: I loved the movie and I was proud to have my music in It. I told Peter, "Boy, I sure would have liked to have actually been in the movie." And he said, "You were." Peter and Dennis Hopper were modeling their characters after David Crosby and me. Dennis got David down —the paranoid delusions— and Peter was like, "I trust it'll work out all right. It'll be cool, man."
2. Oil In My Lamp (Traditional)
recorded: June 19. 19S9 originally unissued matrix HCO 106039
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
John York - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
From the Ballad Of Easy Rider sessions, this recording is version one, with a more country feel.
Roger McGuinn: I love this. Gene Parsons was a fan of this kind of music. He brought a lot of these kind of songs around. He brought in "Jesus Is Just Alright" later. He was into gospel. I love Clarence's vocal on it. He had really an earthy voice, that bluegrassy, almost Appalachian sound.
John York: That was an old gospel song that Clarence and Gene knew really well. They knew the most incredible gems. I was a little uncomfortable in the band at one point because they weren't including some of the stuff that Gene and Clarence had, and that Roger knew. There was such a wealth of material from these three guys, traditional stuff. There were two versions of this. The album version has Gene playing bass, not me. He had a particular bass part in mind, almost like a Paul McCartney-ish thing. Gene was showing me the part and I said, "Well, go ahead. Just play it, man. I'm not the only guy who can play bass." I can still see Gene sitting there, sheepishly playing the bass part. But on this, the country version, I'm playing bass.
3. Mae Jean Goes To Hollywood (J.Browne)
recorded: July 28,1969 originally unissued matrix HCO 104027
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
John York - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
An outtake from the Ballad Of Easy Rider sessions. The Byrds recorded one song culled from an entire reel of demos submitted to them by Jackson Browne.
Roger McGuinn: I really like the quality of the lead vocal here. I don't remember singing that well. This came off a demo reel of songs by Jackson Browne? I don't remember, sorry. But Jackson used to come around to David Crosby's house with his guitar and show us songs back before he was signed to a record deal. I just remember his attitude. If you got one little chord wrong he'd go, "No, no. That's not the way it goes. It goes like this!" He'd make you stop and do it right.
John York: I'd met Jackson Browne a few years earlier when he was staying with Billy James, the Byrds' publicist. At that time he was just this shy guy who would sit in the corner and not say anything. He hadn't really hatched yet.
Roger McGuinn: Why this never came out was one of those decisions I probably wasn't involved in. Terry was in total control of what went on the albums. I remember trying to change his mind about the order of things on Untitled. And he said, "No, I'm gonna do it the other way." I actually got angry for a minute and said, "I demand that you do it." And he said, "Oh, you're demanding now? Well, I'm still doing it the other way."
4. Fido (ALTERNATE MIX)(J. York)
recorded: Angust 5,1969 unissued matrix HCO 104030
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
John York - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
From Hie Ballad Of Easy Rider sessions, this is an alternate single-tracked vocal version, with vocal harmonies up in the mix.
Roger McGuinn: That's John York doing his little blues thing. Sounds good. I just remember him bringing the song in, and we said, "Yeah, go for it." That's me singing harmony. It was a good vocal blend we made together.
John York: I was trying to get some kind of rhythmic thing going on here to highlight the way Gene played. I also wanted to bring some of my songwriting into the band. I was in Kansas City, a hot summer night after a gig and nobody could sleep. I was sitting in the hotel room with a guitar, sometimes you just get the blues on the road, and a dog shows up on the second story of this hotel. I just took the ice bucket, filled it full of water, and the dog came in and drank. He hung out with me for hours, till the sun came up.
5. Lover Of The Bayou (STUDIO VERSION)(R.McGuinn-J.Levy)
recorded: May 26.1970 originally unissued (matrix HCO 107030)
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
Skip Battin - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
The originally unissued studio recording from the Untitled sessions.
Roger McGuinn: This was a spoof of Dr.John. If you listen to the lyrics they don't make any sense: "Learned to float in the water clock." I used a lot of terms, made up some phrases that sounded like something but weren't. Dr. John probably did the same thing but everybody believed him. This is from a musical based on Peer Gynt called Gene Tryp that Jacques Levy was writing. It's the same story only we westernized it. There's a force field called The Borg where Gene Tryp goes out and can't get back, kind of surrealistic. So, he goes around and it takes him to all these different job descriptions: preacher, politician, cowboy. And lover of the bayou.
6. White's Lightning PT. 1 (R.McGuinn-C.White)
recorded: June 2,1970 originally unissued (matrix HCO 106996)
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
Skip Battin - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
Excerpt one from an Untitled sessions studio track, logged as "15 Minute Jam.'
Roger McGuinn: That's actually the long jam on "Eight Miles High." It's a riff in E-mlnor. Clarence, Gene and Skip would get into this at the end of a session and I'd just play along. It was recreation.
SIDE TWO
1. All The Things (ALTERNATE VERSION)(R.McGumn-J.Levy)
recorded: May 26, 1970 originally unissued (matrix HCO 106946)
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
Skip Battin - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
Early version, from the Untitled sessions.
Roger McGuinn: This is another song from Gene Tryp. He's reflecting on opportunities he's wasted and thinking about the girl he left behind. I've thought about putting it out some day, the entire musical. I don't think we have all the original 26 tracks, probably only ten. But it might be cool to have it in sequence and have a narrator, kind of like Peter And The Wolf, Jacques Levy had a pretty blonde girlfriend and he sent her backstage at the Fillmore to tell me, "My boyfriend's writing a Broadway musical and he wants you to do the score." And I said, "Yeah."
2. Kathleen's Song (ALTERNATE VERSION - TAKE 3)(R.McGuinn-J.Levy)
recorded: June 3,1970 originally unissued (matrix HCO 107633)
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
Skip Battin - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
Sparse, earlier take from the Untitled sessions, with Roger McGuinn & Clarence White on acoustic guitars; no string overdubs as on released version.
Roger McGuinn: Still another song from Gene Tryp. This is more the rock-band version. I don't know if Candice Bergen would like this as much. She's a string person. Gene Tryp was staged once at Colgate University where Jacques Levy was head of the Drama department. I was actually in it, played banjo, sang some and had some lines. It was a school production with one of the school kids as Gene Tryp.
3. Way Behind The Sun (T. Cox,B.Jansch,J.McShee,J.Renbourn,D.Thompson)
recorded: June 23, 1969 originally unissued (matrix HCO 106042)
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
John York - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
An outtake from the Ballad Of Easy Rider sessions.
Roger McGuinn: That's a John York vocal. If they double-tracked it and put on a little more reverb he'd sound like Ricky Nelson. It could have been a hit in '57. It's good. Should have been a single. Rockabilly: I was a definite Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, early-Elvis person. It was my first influence. I was 13, living in Chicago, riding my bicycle and had a transistor radio when I heard "Heartbreak Hotel." I got into "Blue Suede Shoes", all that early stuff from Sun. I went nuts over that and learned how to play it on the guitar. In high school I used to do "Be-Bop-A-Lula" and Everly Brothers songs.
John York: The concept behind Easy Rider was that we'd all bring in a bunch of songs and chose from them. There was a group called Pentangle with Bert Jansch and John Renbourn that I listened to a lot. I really liked their "Way Behind The Sun." But the way Clarence was playing, it had a total "Mystery Train" vibe to it. It's funny, one of the reasons I started playing the guitar was because I kept hearing in junior high that I looked a lot like Ricky Nelson.
4. Build It Up (INSTRUMENTAL) (C.White,G.Parsons)
recorded: June 23, 1969 (matrix HCO 106041)
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
John York - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
A Clarence White showcase recorded during the Ballad Of Easy Rider sessions.
Roger McGuinn: It sounds great. It's Clarence's improvisation. I remember Clarence and Gene talking about Buck Owens: the Bakersfield sound. I know Clarence and Gene had been hanging out there. It's probably in the water.
John York: This was a Clarence idea. I don't know what we were going to do with it. We all knew Clarence should be doing a solo album and I think Gene tried to make that happen. There was such a rich vein of experience in the Byrds. These guys were not pop musicians trying to come up with a hit record. They were just playing what they thought was cool music. The band was absolutely so simpatico. There was no weak link.
5. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (ALTERNATE MIX) (B. Dylan)
recorded: July 22,1969 unissued (matrix HCO 106139)
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
John York - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
From the Ballad Of Easy Rider sessions, this alternate mix features a different Clarence White electric guitar track.
John York: The coolest thing about this song is that Clarence wanted to play it through a Leslie. So we got a stereo Leslie, and put a mike on either side. I remember thinking, "God, his guitar sounds so incredible." At the time I thought it was pretty nervy, the way we stretched out and repeated the line "It's all over now, Baby Blue", different from the way Dylan does it. That was Terry Melcher's idea. And that's Terry singing the fourth line, the harmony. Deep down inside, I think Terry wanted to be in the band. That was the song we were doing when I decided to leave. They knew I was unhappy. I remember going to another studio and playing the piano while they were doing vocals. I don't remember if they asked me, "We're going to let Terry sing on this." but I doubt I would have suggested it because I loved to sing.
Roger McGuinn: I think that was Terry Melcher's idea: "Let's slow it down and do it real kinda relaxed." It's not country, just laid back. When Dylan came to the studio before we recorded "Mr. Tambourine Man" we also played him "All I Really Want To Do" and "Chimes Of Freedom." And his comment was, "Wow, you can dance to it, man." He didn't even recognize "All I Really Want To Do." I changed it up, put chords that weren't in there. And he said, "What was that?" We told him, "That's your song, man." And he said, "Wow."
6. White's Lightning PT. 2 (R. McGuinn,C. White)
recorded: June 2.1970 originally unissued (matrix HCO 106996)
Roger McGuinn - guitar/vocals
Clarence White - guitar/vocals
Skip Battin - bass/vocals
Gene Parsons - drums/vocals
Excerpt two from an Untitled sessions studio track, logged as "15 Minute Jam."
Roger McGuinn: Clarence had impeccable timing, beautiful syncopation. The first year Clarence was in the band we did a lot of duets on guitar, but after a while, he was such a monster, I Just listened. "Wow, what's he gonna do now?"
Original recordings produced by Terry Melcher. Compilation produced by Bob Irwin and Roger McGuinn.
Mastered By Bob Irwin at Sundazed Studios. Coxsackie, NY.