10. Sweetheart Of The Rodeo (The Byrds, 1968)

A rock band … doing a country album? What’s next? Sonny Bono, U.S. congressman?

*****

Whenever I try to explain my immense and seemingly illogical passion for country music, I always make sure to offer a key qualifier: “I love country music that was released before I was born.”

See, country music used to be made by musicians who actually lived in the country. They grew crops, they picked cotton, they raised hogs, they shat in outhouses. As a result, country music used to be the sound of struggle, hardship, rough living, trying to make ends meet, just scraping by ‘til the next bill is due, hangin’ your hand-me-down overalls on the clothesline.

But after a certain point in American history (I want to say … 1980?), hardly anyone in the United States of America genuinely lived in the “country” anymore. So I feel like what “country music” has become instead is music made by individuals who have, essentially, grown up in the suburbs. When I listen to post-‘70s country music, I feel like I’m listening to the problems of the former high school quarterback and the former prom queen. Whatever they’re singing about, I don’t give a shit. In my humble opinion, they should have simply changed the name of the genre after 1979. My suggestions of “Housewife Rock” and “Adult Contemporary with Boots On” have thus far failed to gain traction with radio programmers.

Because what I didn’t know, until the spring of my junior year in high school, when I hesitantly checked out The Essential Johnny Cash (1955-1983) from my local library, is that actual country music is right up my part-time Buddhist alley. Immediately understanding that I was in the presence of special, sacred recordings, I refused to listen to each volume of that three-disc Rosetta Stone all the way through; rather, I rationed myself, only absorbing about three or four new tracks a day, savoring each song like I was Charlie savoring bites of a Wonka Bar.

But Johnny Cash already resides halfway within rock ‘n’ roll anyway; he’s like a gateway drug. I needed to work my way up to the hard stuff. After coming across several comparisons between Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, I found Capitol Collectors Series and His Epic Hits: First Eleven To Be Continued in the CD rack at the same aforementioned library, but they didn’t really hit the spot in quite the same way (‘80s Merle was, as hinted at earlier, probably not the way to go).

Then, after a late night TV viewing of The Last Picture Show (perhaps the only appropriate time of day in which to view The Last Picture Show?), I got my hands on Hank Williams’s 40 Greatest Hits, and man, this had to be the oldest music I’d ever heard – like listening to actual bootleg recordings of Jesus rehearsing with his backing band.

Well, it was a start, but me and “classic country” had a long way to go. And then, into this primordial hillbilly goo, came one Ingram Cecil Connor III – better known as Gram Parsons.

*****

I’ve occasionally entertained my music nerd friends by explaining, via a “family tree” mechanism, the lineage of the amusingly incestuous LA folk-rock/country-rock/singer-songwriter scene, beginning said tree with just two key groups: The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield. “Behold!,” I announce with a magician’s flair, “as I trace, in some way, shape, or form, just about every band or solo artist that followed, back to those two entities!”

To make a long story short: after name-dropping Poco, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, Dillard & Clark, Loggins & Messina, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Longbranch Pennywhistle, Manassas, Michael Nesmith & the First National Band, Rick Nelson & the Stone Canyon Band, and The Eagles, my elaborate family tree of the entire scene finally culminates in the ultimate coup de grace:

The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band.

Yes, it all led up to that.

But if the LA country-rock scene functioned like one big multi-tentacled band, one might consider the Byrds to be the brains of the octopus.

For all you kids out there: the initial, five-man, so-called “classic” line-up of the Byrds consisted of Roger McGuinn on lead guitar/vocals, Gene Clark on tambourine/vocals, David Crosby on rhythm guitar/vocals, Chris Hillman on bass/vocals, and Michael Clarke on drums. Gene Clark left in 1966 because of a supposed “fear of flying” and because, well, I think he just felt like leaving. Crosby either “left” or was “kicked out” because he was an obnoxious jerk, Michael Clarke left because … I forget why exactly, but the point is, by early 1968, McGuinn and Hillman looked around the room and realized, “A foursome? That still worked quite nicely. A threesome? Not ideal, but manageable. A duo? A duo is not a band.” Alas, it was time to find the first-ever “new” Byrds.

They picked up drummer Kevin Kelley, who happened to be Hillman’s cousin, and they also picked up this other fellow who claimed he would be their pianist, but, as McGuinn has often put it, “We were hiring a keyboard player, but we got George Jones in a rhinestone suit.”

Gram Parsons joined the Byrds … and he took them over.

One of the major American rock bands of the ‘60s, and this drunken little pipsqueak from Florida took them over. Who does that? Not only did he take over the Byrds, but just as soon as he took them over, he left. “Eh, the Byrds? Yawn.” I ask you! Who takes over one of the major American rock bands of the ‘60s … and then just leaves?

Gram Parsons, that’s who.

So what does it say about my opinion of the Byrds’ catalog that my favorite Byrds album is essentially their “Gram Parsons” album? Classic lineup, schmassic lineup. I mean, was David Crosby leaving the band supposed to be a bad thing?

In the documentary Fallen Angel, Parsons’s step-sister describes their family background as “a series of tragedies … it’s like the Kennedy curse,” while Chris Hillman calls it “a very classic Tennessee Williams play … Southern, money, alcoholism …” Where does one even begin?

He was born with the spectacularly Southern name of Ingram Cecil Connor III, the grandson of citrus fruit magnate John A. Snively. His father, apparently a World War II flying ace who was present at Pearl Harbor, committed suicide when Gram was 12 years old. His alcoholic mother died of cirrhosis the day Gram graduated high school. He attended Harvard (!) for one semester, until he discovered the unheralded glory of country music while (presumably) smoking joints in his dorm, and swiftly kissed that Ivy League education goodbye.

Here’s the thing: Gram Parsons was the rare ‘60s rock musician who found himself wrestling with intense emotional turmoil while having absolutely no financial concerns whatsoever. The dude was a trust fund hippie. Records not selling? So what? Tour in the red? Big whoop. Feel like quitting the band on a whim? Go for it. Gram Parsons was a man simultaneously driven to pour his guts into his music and a bottle of whiskey down his throat. I feel like he hopped from project to project not so much because he was an artistically restless soul, but because every time his bandmates would tell him to sober up, he’d tell them to fuck off, and then he’d just … join another band.

So here’s the million dollar question then. Most of my favorite country singers – Johnny, Willie, George, Hank (Sr.), Buck, Merle, Patsy, Dolly, Loretta, Tammy (as you can see, I’m on a first name basis with all of them) – were born and raised dirt poor. Then how the hell did this bratty, rich grandson of an orange grove magnate tap into the aching, lonesome essence of honky-tonk?

Not sure, and at the end of the day, I don’t really care. It’s like he got the “poor” part wrong, and yet he got the “aching, lonesome” part precisely right.

*****

But to return to the other Byrds and their vast, pre-Parsons catalogue for a moment.

During my freshman year in college, in the days when CD boxed sets were not exactly cheap to come by (or *cough* free to download), I got my hands on the 1990 Byrds boxed set (simply titled The Byrds), once again courtesy of my highly cooperative local library. I figured, with a band of that stature, a simple “Greatest Hits” wasn’t going to cut it, but was I seriously prepared to acquire, like, six Byrds albums all at once? The boxed set seemed the Goldilocks way to go.

Sometimes I wonder if Roger McGuinn’s true talent isn’t so much as a musician but as a storyteller. Whenever I hear him give an interview, I feel like I’m listening to one of those college professors whose classes his students absolutely adore. I mention this because, a few years before I snagged that boxed set, I’d been watching several episodes of a PBS documentary titled Rock & Roll, and the makers of this documentary had clearly found their dream interview subject in McGuinn.

Sitting in a chair (an easy chair?), 12-string guitar in hand, he described all the various influences that had gone into the Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” with the casual air of a dentist describing the results of an X-ray: “So I was the arranger in the group, and I decided to put the Beatle beat to it, and that was a 4/4 time instead of 2/4 time, and I’d been messing around with a little Bach on the guitar, so I put some Bach-like overtones on the beginning part of it, and it came out like …”

And then, coaxed by his nimble fingers, the notes suddenly chimed out of the TV speakers and directly into my heart. He made it all sound so easy. (Bless the YouTube gods, as it turns out someone actually put the decades-old clip online, although I’ve decided against embedding it since the audio is full of glitches.)

He went on: “… Despite it being sort of a hip, folkie thing, the basic beat was the Beach Boys beat of ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ … which is sort of a CHUNK-CHUNK, CHUNK-CHUNK …” The documentary naturally cut to an obligatory photo of the Beach Boys, in their corny striped shirt phase, as a snippet of “Don’t Worry Baby” proceeded to play. “So if you superimpose that over the …” And then he whipped out the “Mr. Tambourine Man” riff all over again, like he was Bob Ross explaining how to add just the lightest brush strokes to a half-completed tree. “That’s how we got the feel for it.”

Who was this guy? Some kind of wise old folk-rock grand wizard?

At any rate, three years later, I finally had my hefty four-disc boxed set in hand, and by God, I was going to enjoy it. “Come on Byrds, show me what ya got.”

But the first 30 or 40 tracks? Kind of hit-or-miss, I felt: some nice Gene Clark-penned songs (“I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better,” “The World Turns All Around Her”), some overly-familiar radio staples (“Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Eight Miles High”), some hidden Chris Hillman gems (“Have You Seen Her Face?,” “Time Between”), some “experimental” David Crosby tracks of dubious quality (“Triad,” “Everybody’s Been Burned”), a giant pile of Dylan covers I felt I was supposed to be awed by the sheer majesty of, yet wasn’t quite (“All I Really Want To Do,” “Chimes of Freedom,” “Lay Down Your Weary Tune”), and some psychedelic goodies previously unknown to me (“Mr. Spaceman,” “Goin’ Back,” “Wasn’t Born to Follow”). I will not deny it, I was having a good time, but the material wasn’t uniformly blowing me away here.

Only when I got to the Parsons-era Byrds tracks, toward the end of Disc 2, did I suddenly think, “All right. Now this band’s finally getting down to business.”

Preferring the “country” Byrds to the “actual” Byrds? Was I doing this right?

Thanks to a later episode of that same Rock & Roll documentary I’d seen earlier, I did know that the Byrds had gone country, as there’d been a clip of McGuinn explaining, in his riveting, grandfatherly, way how (I’m paraphrasing from memory) “country and rock weren’t really such strangers after all, I mean, the B-side of ‘Yesterday’ was actually a Buck Owens song, so, you know, we always thought that was pretty cool.”

So yes, I knew that Sweetheart was a “thing” and that it was allegedly “influential” and stuff, but by golly, I’d never been exposed to a single song off it. Also, courtesy of my recently-purchased copy of the All Music Guide, I’d heard of this “Gram Parsons” fellow, as it also gave its coveted five-star recommendation to his and Hillman’s follow-up project the Flying Burrito Brothers’ Gilded Palace of Sin and Parsons’s solo album two-fer GP/Grievous Angel. But at this point he was still just one of those “rock nerd” names to me; I wouldn’t have been able to tell you the difference between Gram Parsons and Graham Parker.

Soaking in the boxed set, my research continued. In his All Music Guide Byrds bio, I noticed how Richie Unterberger sounded notably excited as he described the band’s first five albums, and a little less excited while describing the sixth album:

As McGuinn and Hillman rebuilt the group one more time in early 1968, McGuinn mused upon the exciting possibility of a double album that would play as nothing less than a history of contemporary music, evolving from traditional folk and country to jazz and electronic music. Toward this end, he hired Gram Parsons, he has since said, to play keyboards. Under Parsons’ influence, however, the Byrds were soon going full blast into country music, with Parsons taking a large share of the guitar and vocal chores. In 1968, McGuinn, Hillman, Parsons, and drummer Kevin Kelly recorded Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which was probably the first album to be widely labeled as country-rock.

Opinions as to the merits of Rodeo remain sharply divided among Byrds fans. Some see it as a natural continuation of the group’s innovations; others bewail the loss of the band’s trademark crystalline guitar jangle, and the short-circuited potential of McGuinn’s most ambitious experiments. However one feels, there’s no doubt that it marked the end, or at least a drastic revamping, of the “classic” Byrds sound of the 1965-1968 period (bookended by the Tambourine Man and Notorious albums).

Well, here’s what I’ve learned since. “Opinions as to the merits of Rodeo” aren’t actually all that “sharply divided among Byrds fans” at all; they’re mostly “sharply divided” among Richie Unterberger, who, for whatever reason, apparently prefers the Byrds’ prior output and sounds a bit irked by the narrative surrounding Sweetheart. Years later, while reading his book Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock’s Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock, I also noticed the following comments: “Although critically acclaimed, the record was not as much of an innovative accomplishment as any of the Byrds’ previous albums. The idea was certainly fresh, but the execution was more competent than exciting, lacking the risk and variety that had typified the group’s previous realizations of McGuinn’s concepts of albums as electronic magazines.”

Then later, in the “Discography” section at the back of the book, he even employs the dreaded “O” word to describe the album: “Overrated, perhaps, but this was an early country rock milestone, and the only album that Gram Parsons recorded with the Byrds.”

Yeah, maybe, kinda, sorta … screw that. I disagree. Apparently Unterberger is the one rock critic who is disappointed that Gram Parsons, with his smooth Southern charm, coaxed McGuinn away from what surely would have been a more rewarding project, “nothing less than a history of contemporary music, evolving from traditional folk and country to jazz and electronic music,” and instead we got stuck with some mildly decent country album that everybody seems to think is really important but isn’t actually all that great.

Sure.

Perhaps sensing that Unterberger’s view deviated a bit too much from the consensus, the editors of my old print edition of the All Music Guide gave its Sweetheart-reviewing honors to writer Rick Clark instead, who called the album a “groundbreaking country-rock classic.” Then, at a later date, Mark Deming composed an expanded review for the AMG website, in which he clearly does not straddle any fence, stating, “If the Byrds didn’t do country-rock first, they did it brilliantly, and few albums in the style are as beautiful and emotionally affecting as this.” Not only that, but on acclaimedmusic.net, Sweetheart is currently the highest-ranked Byrds album, coming in 109 spots ahead of the next highest-ranked Byrds album (Mr. Tambourine Man).

So there.

But Unterberger does have company from a surprising source: Chris Hillman of the Byrds, who appears to have viewed his participation in the book Hot Burritos: The True Story of the Flying Burrito Brothers as a golden opportunity to puncture the Gram Parsons balloon and gripe about how, while his erstwhile collaborator was certainly talented, he wasn’t really all that and a bag of chips, you know, and the only reason this whole “legend” has built up around him – a legend which, in Hillman’s view, has spiraled absurdly out of hand – is because he died young.

Fair enough. Unlike every other Gram Parsons fan on the planet, Hillman actually had to deal with the guy’s flaky, manipulative bullshit face-to-face. And then to sit around and watch some fawning cult grow around the unprofessional asshole who could barely be bothered with the hard, time-intensive work of record-making, while everyone else has conveniently forgotten about your own significant and yet far less glamorous role in the proceedings? Yeah, I’d probably be a little ticked off too:

When I think back on all the things you can understand why I get incensed that Gram has become this cult hero to people … I loved Gram’s stuff but you know in hindsight, the man is gone but death creates myth beyond our understanding sometimes. Yes, Gram was influential, he had great impact, but not to the extent of becoming a cult figure leading us all through the wilderness. It just wasn’t that way. There are a few things that Gram got on record that are magnificent … but there’s a lot of stuff he just couldn’t get. He had the talent but he didn’t have the discipline. He was seduced by all the trappings of the music business without the work ethic. When you’ve got that in the back of your mind – that you’ll never have to suffer because you’ve got a $50,000 a year trust fund – it takes that edge off. That was a lot of money back then. Gram wrote five or six great songs and a lot of pretty good ones. And if I was to measure his body of work with that of another ex-Byrds bandmate of mine, Gene Clark, Gene wrote far better songs than Gram and was much more prolific. Tortured? Yes. Self-destructive? You bet. Same with Gram. But he outlasted Gram and he wrote better songs. And I think deep down Gene really tried to put on a show. He had that sense of it but all this other stuff would consume him. But Gram sober, drunk, or stoned would always take this laissez-faire attitude about everything. That’s the shame of it all.

Gene Clark wrote “far better songs”? Look, I know the man has his fans, and I’ve got my copies of White Light, Roadmaster, and No Other like any self-respecting country-rock aficionado would, but … I don’t know about that. Personally, I think those albums could’ve used a good dose of Gram’s deliciously warped sense of humor. When did Gene Clark ever decide to add fake applause to a pair of L.A. studio tracks and proclaim that the recordings were “live from Northern Quebec”? On a similar note, Hillman doesn’t think Sweetheart itself is all that hot either:

I think of Sweetheart of the Rodeo as a step backward … because here we were fumbling through traditional country material without putting our own brand on it. ‘Time Between,’ as crude as it is to me … is a classic song. It’s where country meets rock … On Sweetheart we were emulating country music. There are a couple of great tunes on it, but it’s never been my favorite Byrds album. It certainly wasn’t commercially successful but it’s gone down as one of the great Byrds albums in hindsight. The bad songs were the songs like ‘Life In Prison,’ which doesn’t work as a piece of material for prep-schoolboy Gram to sing. It’s ludicrous. But in hindsight it wasn’t a great album. I’ve always regarded it as a noble experiment. We weren’t quite there yet but we had been closer on ‘Time Between’ because we were infusing what we’d already been doing, country and rock … but there were some good tracks.

“Time Between” superior to the material on Sweetheart of the Rodeo? Hey, it’s a free country, Unterberger and Hillman can prefer whichever era of the Byrds they want to. But I don’t think their take really jibes with the views of me and most of my peers, who’ve come to the Byrds decades after their heyday.

I feel like the early Byrds were often heavy on ideas but light on craft. Too many “peak era” Byrds songs strike me as a bunch of sounds being thrown at the wall without necessarily having been sculpted into proper records. Yes, I get it, McGuinn’s 12-string jangle influenced Big Star, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, the Pretenders, R.E.M., and, like, every folk-rock and power pop band ever, but … there’s something about those early Byrds recordings that I find a bit … rickety? Sloppy?

Off the top of my head, I could name you about 200 mid-‘60s singles by the Byrds’ less artistically ambitious American peers – the Mamas and the Papas, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Turtles, the Monkees, the Association, Paul Revere & the Raiders, the Grass Roots, etc. – where I wouldn’t change a single vocal harmony, keyboard wheeze, or tambourine tap. We’re talkin’ the era of the “perfect pop song” here. But I listen to so many Byrds songs and my brain starts going, “Hmm, I’d change that, I’d fix that, I’d get rid of that …”

With apologies to all you Michael Clarke fans out there, I’ve often felt like his “OK guys, I think I’ve got the hang of this!” drumming style drags the tracks down rather than gives them the kick in the pants they seem to need. Where was the Byrds’ “Ringo,” you know? (“Well what about the terrific drumming on ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’?” you point out. We can thank studio pro Hal Blaine for that one.)

Take, for instance, “So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star.” Sure, I’m into the sardonic lyrics, and the unexpected cameo from trumpeter Hugh Masekela, but I feel like the finished recording just sort of wobbles along, without the grace I’m looking for. Or right after the last chorus on “Goin’ Back,” the vibe is dreamy and hazy and suddenly the drummer (apparently not Michael Clarke, but future Derek & the Domino/matricide practitioner Jim Gordon) starts tripping down the steps of the Taj Mahal, and, maybe it’s just me, but the entire momentum of the song seems to take several seconds to recover.

“Risk and variety”? Acknowledged. I would not deny the pre-Sweetheart Byrds’ influence, not only on the musicians who followed in their wake, but even on the Byrds’ superstar contemporaries. I mean, when you’re influencing the Beatles? That’s when you know you’ve got something going on. But sitting in a room in the year 2022 and listening to the early Byrds, with all the riches of the ‘60s rock catalog at one’s disposal? That’s a different proposition.

I cannot tell a lie: on paper, McGuinn’s vision of a mythical double album that would have taken us on a diorama-style journey through the past, present, and future of American music sounds intriguing, but frankly … I don’t think he was the right guy to pull that off. Brian Wilson? Lennon/McCartney? Go for it. But … Roger McGuinn? Despite being, more or less, their lead singer, he wasn’t even the “classic” line-up’s main songwriter!

And ultimately … how can I put this? The pre-Sweetheart Byrds have always come off to me as “insiders,” “hipsters,” part of the “cool” clique of L.A. rock stars. Like I’m supposed to relate to that? But Gram Parsons, man. Give me the outsider, the outcast, the misfit, the loner. His music – country music – isn’t “cool,” but it has soul and guts and heartache in it. And I’d rather have more of that in my music. I’ve never quite gotten the sense that Roger McGuinn or David Crosby were particularly “deep” guys. The 5^th Dimension/Younger Than Yesterday/Notorious Byrd Brothers-era Byrds give me the same vibe I get from, honestly, the Revolver-era Beatles or Blonde on Blonde-era Dylan: innovative and experimental, but also a bit hedonistic, narcissistic, and emotionally … distant? McGuinn and Crosby, for all their harmonic gifts and musical ideas, didn’t seem to be the kind of guys who were really “going through something.”

But Gram Parsons? Now here was a guy who seemed to be going through something.

*****

If there is debate around whether or not Sweetheart is the Byrds’ “best album,” I suspect there is little debate around whether or not the Sweetheart album cover is the Byrds’ best album cover.

While I don’t believe a great sleeve can elevate its accompanying album to greatness if the album isn’t there already (just as a bad sleeve cannot, naturally, sink a great album), it can, however, set the tone, establish the mood, complement the spirit of the inner contents. Here is an album cover from 1968 that is beguilingly detailed and yet pointedly un-psychedelic. Reproduced from a 1933 magazine advertisement (thus ensuring that, unlike other Byrds album covers so arguably tied to their time, it would age quite tastefully), perhaps it served to remind skeptical LSD-dropping college students, like the sounds inside the sleeve did, that the square, corny America of their parents’ time was goofier and quirkier than they would have assumed it to be.

I’ve always wondered what the difference was between the couture of the “early Spanish vaquero” and the “Mexican vaquero,” but, thanks to the Sweetheart album cover, I now know it’s a wide brim, low crown sombrero vs. a very large sombrero, short pants and jacket vs. buck and leather tight buttoned chaps, and big spurs vs. large heeled spurs. Gracias, Byrds. And check out the “long haired type of the old cattle trails,” chillin’ over there on the right-hand side with his “buckskin shirt, breed leggings, moccasins, and spurs.” I’m about 86% certain that the inclusion of this illustration was a sly dig at David Crosby.

*****

It’s funny how the acquisition of that Byrds boxed set coincided with my move from the California coastal town I’d previously called home for my entire (and not terribly glamorous) existence to a college town that sat complacently within the horizontal frying pan known as the Central Valley. Funny, but fitting, because an album like Sweetheart of the Rodeo kind of made a lot more sense out there.

Non-Californians simply staring at a map might not know what the hell I’m talking about. “It’s all California, right? So what?” No, no, no. Sure, in concrete travel time, the Central Valley is perhaps an hour’s drive from the coast (depending on which highway one takes and how liberally one chooses to treat the speed limit). But in environmental time, it’s like suddenly going from San Francisco to Oklahoma. The temperate is forty degrees hotter and the rows of crops stretch on and on and the roads are all laid out in this creepily monotonous grid and there are all these weird levees and canals and ditches and you might as well be on the moon.

So for 18-year-old me, at least, it was a bit like landing on the moon – like stepping out of my tired coastal bubble and getting a tiny, initial taste of that daunting stretch of land looming to the east. And my concurrent exploration of pre-‘80s country music felt like a parallel stepping out of that very same bubble, the paradox being that listening to it took me to a “strange, new” place and yet simultaneously conjured up a long-ago era that struck me as warm, inviting, and uncannily familiar.

Maybe you’re from Texas and you grew up with all this Nashville crap and your parents played it to death and every time you hear it, the songs merely serve as a traumatizing reminder of the backwater hellhole you ultimately found the courage to flee, but to me, older country music has always represented escape. And for a band nursing an ugly psychedelic hangover, I’ll bet it represented a kind of escape for them as well. Even today, Sweetheart of the Rodeo whisks me away from the bland, “shopping mall and multiplex” world that permeated so much of my youth and immediately transports me out into the arid expansiveness of the American West.

And I mean immediately. Not every cut on Sweetheart does it for me, but the album satisfies Part-Time Buddhist Rule #135: “You can get away with a few less-than-stellar tracks … as long as your opening track is a doozy.”

Whenever I drop the needle and hear the sound of that initial steel guitar lick from “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” followed by those crisp, forcefully strummed acoustic guitars, the clippety-cloppety drums, and that eerily distant organ, I swear, it’s like I’ve just hopped on my Harley and I’ve hit the road on a blistering August afternoon, ex-wife receding further and further in the distance. The experience of listening to “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” ironically, always makes me feel like I am going somewhere. It’s the sound of a budding genre taking flight and spreading its wings. By the time those two minutes and thirty-three seconds are up, I feel as though I’ve dipped my head in a cool mountain stream, yanked it out, tossed my hair around with reckless verve, and shouted “Whoo!” to the surrounding snow-capped peaks. Talk about an opening track killing several birds (Byrds?) with one stone.

So who’s the talented new songwriter behind this arresting, twangy little gem? Wait, B. Dylan?

That B. Dylan? What do you mean, he hasn’t released his own version yet? Recorded in a basement, you say?

If in-depth, socio-historical analysis of Dylan’s Basement Tapes material is what you’re looking for, try Greil Marcus or somebody. I would just like to paste these lyrics here so that one can admire the delightfully bizarre mishmash of Appalachian life as filtered through a thick curtain of reefer smoke:

Clouds so swift, rain won’t lift
Gate won’t close, railings froze
Get your mind off wintertime
You ain’t goin’ nowhere

Ooh-wee, ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day my bride’s gonna come
Oh-ho, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair

I don’t care how many letters they sent
The morning came, the morning went
Pack up your money and pick up your tent
You ain’t goin’ nowhere

Buy me a flute and a gun that shoots
Tailgates, substitutes
Strap yourself to a tree with roots
You ain’t goin’ nowhere

Now Genghis Khan, he could not keep
All his kings supplied with sleep
We’ll climb that hill, no matter how steep
When we get up to it

Say what? Now, a casual listener might hear the chorus and assume that this is a song about a man waiting for his bride to come. That listener … would be wrong.

Rather, it’s more like Dylan traveled back in time to some Kentucky village circa 1883, jotted down random snippets of phrases and conversations he overheard in the local tavern, stuck them all in a blender, and switched a few words around to make it all rhyme. Like much of the Basement Tapes material, I suspect it’s mainly a playful hodge-podge of rural images and half-sketched scenarios that don’t cohere into a particular story (Genghis Khan?), but to me, the chief virtue of these lyrics is how there’s essentially nothing about them that screams “1968” in the least. “Clouds,” “railing,” “easy chair,” “tent,” “gun,” “hill” … I know this place. “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” is like the rustic, pastoral American id, playing checkers with itself on the front porch of the general store.

Oh, and I’m sure there’s some hardcore Dylan nut who prefers the Basement Tapes version, and yes, while I enjoy it enough, and recognize that it was in no way intended for a large audience, it comes off to me as more of a smarmy offhand joke. But in the Byrds’ hands … hot mama. The surreal humor gains an unexpected air of autumnal wistfulness, does it not? What I am trying to say is, McGuinn scraped a song off the floor of Dylan’s basement and allowed it to soar like a bald eagle.

Now, ten more tracks on the level of “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and I might be ranking this album a little higher than #10, but a couple of issues knock it down a few pegs. One is that they followed up this sublimely vigorous and yet majestically graceful opening cut with … a snail-paced banjo ditty? To me, “I Am a Pilgrim” more or less takes the freight train momentum generated by “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” and brings it to something resembling a screeching halt, but at least they put it second, not first. Here’s what’s always bugged me: my ears are always tricked by the velocity of the opening fiddle riff, which makes me think the track is going to be much more up-tempo than it ultimately is. I can’t stand that slowdown!

Nor does Hillman give what I would consider the most compelling vocal performance (although I wouldn’t de-value the strength of his harmony singing, and I do find his lead singing effective at other times). And the banjo and acoustic guitar playing strikes me as too precise, too sedate, too neat, too clean – essentially, a little boring, giving credence to Unterberger’s complaint that much of the album is “more competent than exciting.”

But here’s the thing about Sweetheart: “I Am a Pilgrim” isn’t a carbon copy of any of the other tracks. This is the kind of album where my least favorite track could easily be someone else’s favorite, because they all seem offer their own distinct glimpse into a separate corner of the agrarian American experience, and they each manage to pull their own weight somehow.

The second issue is the whole “McGuinn Re-recording Gram’s Vocals” controversy. This one gets wacky folks.

You see, some new members of established bands, like, say, David Gilmour or Phil Collins, quietly pay their dues, respect the unspoken hierarchy, and work their way up into a more prominent role over the course of several releases. Gram Parsons, on the other hand, upon joining the Byrds, immediately anointed himself their lead singer.

Meanwhile, McGuinn and Hillman sat quietly in the corner, smiled politely, and thought to themselves, “All right, let the kid have his fun, but at some point, we’re gonna nip this thing in the bud.” Well, at sessions’ conclusion, eleven tracks were in the can, and Gram assumed his lead vocals were going to be featured on a whopping six of them.

Now some say that Gram’s former record label claimed he was still under contract to them and not Columbia, and therefore, under threat of legal action, demanded that his lead vocals be wiped from the album. Others say that McGuinn was (understandably, in my view) apprehensive about releasing a Byrds album in which six out of the eleven songs would be sung by a brand new member.

And the fact that Gram’s lead vocals still ended up appearing on three tracks anyway only gives more credence to the latter theory than the former theory. Said producer Gary Usher, “You just don’t take a hit group and interject a new singer for no reason … There were legal problems but they were resolved and the album had just the exact amount of Gram Parsons that McGuinn, Hillman and I wanted.” Whatever the true reason, the end result was the same: “The Christian Life,” “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” and “One Hundred Years From Now” received what one might call the “de-Gramming” treatment.

Part of what made that 1990 Byrds boxed set – which, keep in mind, served as my personal introduction to the group’s catalog – such a big deal was that it featured, “For the First Time Ever!,” versions of those three tracks containing the original Parsons vocals. Sure, I read the liner notes and I generally understood that I was not hearing precisely what 1968 record buyers would have been hearing, but whatever, it was all new to me anyway, I didn’t give a crap.

And so, by the time I acquired a record player in my fourth year of higher education, stumbled upon a copy of Sweetheart at Rasputin in fairly decent condition (and for $1.95 – talk about a deal), got home, threw my new purchase onto the turntable, plopped my collegiate ass onto the wrinkly, grimy sofa, and listened to the original album in full, I’d forgotten all about the whole “vocal swap” thing. Suddenly “The Christian Life” comes on, replete with McGuinn’s faux-redneck vocals and, I mean, it took me a couple of seconds to even figure out what was happening. It was like ordering a burrito without sour cream in it, and then taking a big bite, and having all that mushy, unwanted gloop unexpectedly filling my mouth. Hang on a minute, they’ve mixed up the orders. I heard the McGuinn vocals, looked around the room in puzzlement, finally sorted out what was going on, turned to the invisible person sitting next to me and said, “Wait, the original sounded like this?”

While few would have described Gram as a clean-cut, bible-thumping, law-abiding young American male, I feel like his performance of the Louvin Brothers’ “The Christian Life” still comes across as sincere and heartfelt, given by a singer who at least appears capable of putting himself in the shoes of the narrator. McGuinn’s version, on the other hand, comes across like that of an L.A. folk rocker who’s decided to re-record his own vocals over a song that, two months prior, he wasn’t even familiar with, and probably couldn’t relate to in the least, and, not knowing quite how to tackle it, decides to go full-on caricature. In short, Gram’s version sounds respectful, while Roger’s version sounds more like a piss-take – like something the Blues Brothers would have played during their unexpected set at the roadside country bar in between versions of “Rawhide” and “Stand By Your Man.” Chris Hillman comments in Hot Burritos:

Roger never understood what country music was … His lead vocal on ‘Christian Life’ is way over the top. He’s trying to act it out as a southerner and it’s not convincing. He overdid the character. I think he approached it like an acting job, but not a good acting job. He didn’t have the background in country music that I had. Roger never did like country music and I don’t think he likes it to this day. He’s in a different place musically, and country music wasn’t one of his great loves …

While I doubt McGuinn would wholeheartedly agree with that statement, I have to say, if the Byrds had been hoping to be embraced by the Nashville establishment, I suspect his interpretation of “The Christian Life” didn’t help matters much. (I suppose I’ll need to save the amusing details of the Byrds’ legendarily controversial appearance at the Grand Old Opry for another day.)

The thing is, in hindsight, on the vocal issue, I think McGuinn and Parsons were both right. Gram singing lead on more than half the album’s songs? That’s just too much Gram. There has to be a balance, people. On the other hand, I must note with amusement that the Parsons versions of these tracks have essentially become the “official” versions, now tending to be featured on post-’90s Byrds compilations instead of the McGuinn versions. The consensus is in, and it looks like the Cult of Gram has won.

Naturally, true to the tenor of his other comments, Hillman could give two figs about the consensus and doesn’t consider the Gram versions anything special:

I wasn’t a good enough singer on that record. If it was now I could go back in and tackle all those Parsons vocals real good. But I couldn’t then because I didn’t have the chops yet as a singer. But here’s the funny part. We get the original vocals back of Gram’s for the boxed set and the deluxe edition of the Sweetheart album that we had to remove back in 1968 and they aren’t that good. Gram rarely sang in tune. He was so out of tune sometimes that you’re cringing. But there is a certain appeal to that voice that touched nerves with people.

Geez. Who slipped vinegar into Hillman’s corn flakes that morning? Country music isn’t about singing in tune, man, country music is all about feel. I just hear this “crackle” in Gram’s voice that money couldn’t buy. I mean, if his vocals on those three tracks are “out of tune,” then call me a fan of out-of-tune singing. Contrast Hillman’s views with those of Keith Richards, who, whenever he talks about Parsons, seems to express nothing but love for the guy – and Keith’s not exactly the overly-sentimental type. Sorry Chris, I think you’ve been outvoted on this one. Look, just find a good therapist, at a reasonable price, who will be happy to listen to you rant about how inflated you think Gram’s reputation is to your heart’s content.

Where was I? Oh, right, the fact that the versions of three of the album’s tracks that I am most familiar with, and which I prefer (with one arguable exception – see below) aren’t even on the original album! Thus, although I respect the decision that was made back in 1968, I’ll still have to dock the album at least a half a point for this.

But if listening to the full, original record brought me one unpleasant surprise, it brought me one equally pleasant surprise. See, given that the boxed set featured eight out of the album’s eleven songs, I spent a couple of years figuring that the three songs not included on the boxed set probably all stank. Well, the first excluded cut was a George Jones cover, “You’re Still On My Mind,” sung by Gram, and whatever the opposite of “stink” was, I mean, this had to be it. Like about 100,000 other country songs (and about 2,000 other George Jones songs), it’s a tragi-comic tale of a man attempting, and failing, to improve his psychological state via substance abuse:

The jukebox is playing a honky tonk song
One more I keep saying, and then I’ll go home
What good will it do me, I know what I’ll find
An empty bottle, a broken heart, and you’re still on my mind

The people are dancing and having their fun
And I sit here thinking about what you have done
To try and forget you, I’ve turned to the wine
An empty bottle, a broken heart, and you’re still on my mind

Oh yeah. This is the kind of hardcore honky-tonk that’s right in my wheelhouse. If, as Hillman suggests, Sweetheart is merely the Byrds “fumbling through traditional country material without putting our own brand on it,” then maybe I’m just a sucker for Bakersfield-style country done with energy and brio. A track like “You’re Still On My Mind” immediately transports me, Star Trek holodeck-style, into a humid, dingy establishment, where I’m glaring at the one solitary light bulb dangling from the ceiling and listening to the sound of the eight ball rolling lazily into the pocket behind me. This one could eat “I Am a Pilgrim” for breakfast.

Second excluded cut: “Blue Canadian Rockies,” a waltz-time Gene Autry cover sung by Hillman (and sung perfectly well, I’d say), and … you know, I was also digging this one more than a few of the tracks that had actually made the boxed set. Some of these sleeper cuts were really getting the job done. I love the idea of a country song that takes place in Canada, as if to say “See, Canada has their backwoods rednecks too.”

Finally, there was “Life In Prison,” a touching Merle Haggard number, sung by Gram:

The jury found the verdict, first degree
They swore I planned her death to be
I prayed they’d sentence me to die
But they wanted me to live, and I know why

So I do life in prison for the wrongs I’ve done
And I pray every night for death to come
My life will be a burden every day
If I could die, my pain might go away

With trembling hands, I killed my darling wife
Because I loved her more than life
My love for her will last a long, long time
But I’d rather die than live to lose my mind

Charming fellow, no? My main question is, if you loved her that much, then why did you, you know, kill her?

But here’s why I’ll again have to part ways with Hillman and his comment that “prep-schoolboy Gram” had no business singing this sort of Man in Black-style material. To me, including a track like “Life in Prison” on an album presumably intended for the “youth audience” demonstrated Gram’s own willingness to grapple with the heavier, thornier, less sexy aspects of life, and, by the same token, his willingness to confront his pie-in-the-sky hippie listeners with those precise aspects. He understood the appeal of tapping into mutual commiseration with the haunted loners of the world.

Some dewey-eyed, tie-dyed peacenik in the back of the auditorium might have heard a song like this and thought, “Hey, man, why’d you have to bring us all down with this whole ‘murder ballad’ thing?” But Gram might have replied, “Look buddy, the human experience encompasses this too, and if you can see the beauty in all sides of the human experience, even the less savory sides, then you know what that is? That’s a lasting high, not a cheap high. Now pass me that joint.”

McGuinn and Hillman’s complaints about Gram taking over the band also ring a little hollow considering that Gram was the only Byrd who managed to bring any fresh material of his own to the table, contributing “Hickory Wind” (co-written by Bob Buchanan, Gram’s former colleague from the magnificently-named International Submarine Band) and “One Hundred Years From Now” (written solely by Gram, as far as I know).

Now, everybody goes on and on about “Hickory Wind” and how it’s arguably the classic Gram Parsons song, but, I dunno. I’ve always listened to it while wondering, “I think I love this song? Rock critics have always told me I’m supposed to love this song?” I certainly don’t dislike it. Maybe it’s the backing vocals, which I always assumed were performed by a group of female studio singers but which I just discovered, per Wikipedia, were apparently performed by Hillman (?!); the song might hit me harder if Gram were singing unaccompanied.

Mostly, I’m puzzled by the love dished out for “Hickory Wind” because “One Hundred Years from Now” has always been the real mindblower to me.

Perhaps not wanting to find himself at odds with his main interview subject, and perhaps to make the Flying Burrito Brothers’ subsequent achievements sound more impressive, Hot Burritos author John Einarson seems to concur with Hillman and Unterberger that Sweetheart is essentially a “normal” country album simply boasting the gimmick of having been recorded by long-haired hippie kids:

While Younger Than Yesterday and The Notorious Byrd Brothers had taken a more innovative approach in integrating country music with rock, Sweetheart of the Rodeo was much more traditional, suggesting that the original music was sacrosanct, and should not be tampered with. It’s a pure country album, not country-rock … In terms of country-rock, Sweetheart of the Rodeo falls short. It’s rock only because of the pedigree and previous experience of the players. Several out-takes from the sessions, such as McGuinn’s Rickenbacker-led “Pretty Polly,” “Reputation,” and the Submarine Band holdover “Lazy Days,” lean far closer toward what would be regarded as country-rock – which is perhaps why they were omitted from the album. Where the album succeeds is as a bold step by a daring, innovative group to bring rock back to its true roots.

Glad he likes it at least, but in terms of the notion that the Byrds felt hesitant to “tamper with” the country formulas of the day, I think “One Hundred Years From Now” would beg to differ. Please show me the Charlie Walker or Connie Smith single that kicks off with lyrics like these: “One hundred years from this day/Will the people still feel this way/Still say the things that they’re saying right now?”

Where is this song … going? The opening lines give the impression that the narrator is addressing the teething masses, but then Gram performs an intriguing about-face and follows these up with lyrics that seem addressed to one specific woman in particular: “Everyone said I’d hurt you/They said that I’d desert you/If I go away, you know I’m gonna get back somehow.”

So was the opening statement also addressed to a woman? Is this just an awkwardly assembled, narratively incoherent Frankensong? It’s one of those riddles I can’t answer and have never much felt like answering, simply being content to sit back and admire the lyrics’ unusual dose of “What’s the fate of the human race?” mixed with a touch of “You can count on me during the rough times, baby.” And then there’s the chorus: “Nobody knows what kind of trouble we’re in/Nobody seems to think it all might happen again.”

Here Gram comes across like some exalted Laurel Canyon Prophet of Doom, as if he’s the only one in the room who understands “what kind of trouble we’re in” and the only one willing to warn us that “it all might happen again,” whatever “it” may be (perhaps this was his prescient statement on our current inflation woes?).

And to anyone who doesn’t think these sentiments reek more of late ‘60s rock than late ‘60s country, how about the sprightly musical attack? Get a load of the little instrumental tag after the chorus that features a whole new set of chords (instead of merely recycling the chord progression from the intro), over which Nashville “A” team legend Lloyd Green slithers and slides, which then barrels directly into the second verse, accompanied by some tasty licks from future Byrd Clarence White, and then to top it all off, Kevin Kelley kicks the drumming up a notch or two during the fade-out with a stream of giddily propulsive fills, and the whole enterprise basically makes me feel like I’m cruising down Interstate 5 at about 90 miles an hour with the window open and little black bugs landing on my forehead. This is what Einarson calls “pure country,” eh? (Hillman, at least, seems to agree with me on the quality of his relative’s drumming: “I must say my cousin Kevin actually played really good on that record …”)

And while I shouldn’t neglect to mention that “One Hundred Years From Now” was another track to fall victim to McGuinn’s sinister “de-Grammication” process, this time McGuinn changed up the formula a bit by not simply re-recording a solo vocal over Gram’s vocal, but rather by singing in multi-tracked harmony with Hillman, and as a result, I think this is the one “originally released version” that I enjoy just as much as, if not more so, than Gram’s harmony-less version, with its layers of ethereal voices harkening back to pre-Sweetheart tracks like “Goin’ Back” and “My Back Pages” and other classic Byrds songs featuring the word “back” in the title. Thus, unlike the other two tampered tracks, I have always been pleased to know that the version of “One Hundred Years” the world first encountered was, if not the version I first encountered, then at least a version that sports its own distinct virtues. (Now that I think about it, the “perfect” version would probably feature Gram singing the verses solo, and then McGuinn and Hillman singing the choruses. Make it happen, internet.)

Let’s see, what else is there? “Pretty Boy Floyd” strikes me as McGuinn’s attempt at passing off Woody Guthrie as a country songwriter. I’ve always imagined the in-studio argument between Roger and Gram regarding its inclusion to be amusingly heated:

“OK, well, we’re doing a ‘country’ album, and I don’t know anything about country music, but … how about Woody Guthrie? He’s old-timey, so … that counts, right?”

“Woody Guthrie? Nobody drinks a beer to Woody fucking Guthrie!”

While it does add diversity to the album, here’s my hot take: needs more drums, needs less banjo. And I’m sure all my economically progressive friends would cream their underwear at Woody’s pro-outlaw, anti-capitalist rhetoric: “Yes, through this life you’ll travel, you’ll meet some funny men/Some will rob you with a six gun, and some with a fountain pen/Yes, through this life you’ll ramble, and through this life you’ll roam/You’ll never see an outlaw take a family from their home.” So petty crime is OK because white-collar crime is worse? I dunno Woody, this metaphor is your metaphor.

Roughly 83% of what I wrote about “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” would apply to “Nothing Was Delivered,” the album’s other Dylan Basement Tapes interpretation and, in a tidy if slightly blatant bit of symmetry, the album’s closing track. As it plays, I can feel the cool mountain air brushing past my face while the sunlight bakes the pavement beneath my wheels, yadda yadda yadda. It’s sort of like David Lean doing Oliver Twist right after Great Expectations, or Disney doing Sleeping Beauty after doing Snow White, or Scorsese doing Casino after doing Goodfellas: hey, it came out good the first time, so let’s just utilize the same formula, diminishing returns be damned. Honestly, if the Byrds had recorded an “all-Basement Tapes” country album, I probably would’ve purchased that (which is not to suggest it would have been superior to the album they did make). I could arguably do without the imitation “stereotypical Indian pow-wow” drumming pattern that Kelley employs under the chorus, not so much because I find it offensive but because I find it a bit cliché. Otherwise, this one does a nice job of tilting the album further into the “rock” territory that those I’ve been quoting claim it avoids.

And yet, as superb of a closing track as “Nothing Was Delivered” is, sometimes I feel like, in an alternate universe, the album’s “true” closing track (I believe it closed Disc 2 of the 1990 boxed set, perhaps giving me the idea), and most supremely part-time Buddhist moment, would have to be the Gram Parsons-sung version of “You Don’t Miss Your Water.”

As originally recorded in 1962 by soul singer William Bell, I doubt “You Don’t Miss Your Water” was anyone’s idea of a proper “country” song to begin with; I’ve heard Bell be described, along with Solomon Burke and Arthur Alexander, as “country-soul,” always dutifully nodding my head whenever hearing that term without truly understanding what it means. But I’ll tell you one thing: after Gram Parsons had his way with it, “You Don’t Miss Your Water” sure as hell became a country song, the lyrics’ central metaphor, “You don’t miss your water till the well runs dry,” being the sort of gloriously rural aphorism that I suspect Garth Brooks or Trisha Yearwood couldn’t have ever fully wrapped their designer cowboy boots around.

But alas, for twenty-two years, the Parsons version sat in the can. To be fair, I think McGuinn did a stronger job of overdubbing his vocals onto “You Don’t Miss Your Water” than he did onto “The Christian Life”; he at least comes across as sweet and earnest, perhaps feeling more at home with Stax soul than with hellfire and brimstone, and if I’d never heard the other version, I might not even have had any complaints.

But come on. Gram simply had that proper Southern grit in his belly, that quiver in his voice, that seemingly contradictory mixture of vulnerability and tenacity. The man knew that country music was music you drunkenly sloshed around in, not held between your pinkies in delicate reverence.

Mainly, a song like this, coming from a band like this, in August of 1968, gives me a renewed awe for the unfathomable and rapidly-maturing trajectory of ‘60s rock. I’m always a sucker for “What the fuhh …?” moments, and the release of Sweetheart of the Rodeo has to be one of rock’s ultimate “What the fuhh …?” moments. It was the Byrds album that no Byrds fan was expecting – or probably even wanted. “Country music? Why not just urinate on my face?”

The Byrds doing country music made about as much sense as, say, Ray Charles doing country music (like that would’ve ever worked). Unterberger writes that Sweetheart lacked “risk and variety.” I can literally not think of a bigger risk that the Byrds could have possibly taken at that moment in their career than to release this album. And you want variety? Who else but Gram Parsons would’ve thought of including a “soul” song on what was blatantly being advertised as a “country” album?

Hell, I think one could almost make the case that the record isn’t too far off from embodying McGuinn’s original vision of being “nothing less than a history of contemporary music, evolving from traditional folk and country to jazz and electronic music,” because it sneakily pulls little bits and pieces from so many disparate American musical threads (honky-tonk, gospel, bluegrass, Stax R&B, confessional late ‘60s singer-songwriter-style rock), and yet because it doesn’t have the veneer of “psychedelic experimentation” to it, that description only fits upon closer inspection.

Where’s the “jazz,” you ask? Let’s not forget that honky-tonk originally evolved from western swing, which evolved from jazz, so … BOOM, there you go. “Electronic music”? Need I remind you that Sweetheart was recorded with state-of-the-art electrical equipment in a state-of-the-art Nashville studio, which gives the album the crisp atmosphere and sonic character of late ‘60s American pop? So there’s your electronic music too. Good job, McGuinn – your project was hijacked, and yet you still kind of pulled it off.

But to reduce Sweetheart to merely a musicological pie chart would be to miss what I suspect made the album so powerful then, and, for this part-time Buddhist at least, makes it so powerful today: the shock of its quotidian emotional bleakness. The sound of Gram giving it everything he’s got on “You Don’t Miss Your Water” makes me think of the scene in Ray where the crowd is shouting for “Hit the Road, Jack” and “Unchain My Heart,” but instead, Ray Charles launches into “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” all but declaring to the dance-hungry audience, “You’re going to listen to my poignant, heartbreaking country ballad, whether you want to or not, and you’re going to fucking like it.” I mean, one moment the Byrds were singing kaleidoscopic, abstract, lysergic, dreamy-eyed sentiments such as these:

Though I’d rather go and journey where the diamond crescent’s glowing
And run across the valley beneath the sacred mountain
And wander through the forest
Where the trees have leaves of prisms and break the light in colors
That no one knows the names of

And when it’s time I’ll go and wait beside a legendary fountain
Till I see your form reflected in its clear and jeweled waters
And if you think I’m ready
You may lead me to the chasm where the rivers of our vision
Flow into one another

Sounds like a blast, right? But merely six months later, out of nowhere, suddenly the Byrds were hitting their free-loving, handholding, “Kumbaya”-singing audience smack in the face with direct, plain-spoken, uncomfortably melancholy, patently unglamorous sentiments such as these:

In the beginning, you really loved me
But I was blind, and I could not see
But when you left me, oh how I cried
You don’t miss your water till your well runs dry

I was a playboy, I could not be true
I couldn’t believe that I really loved you
But when you left me, oh how I cried
You don’t miss your water till your well runs dry

Look, trees with leaves of prisms are nice and all, but at some point, the drugs wear off and shit gets real and one morning you wake up and, guess what, she’s out the door. Question: is there any subject for a song less “cool” but more beautiful than regret? Sub-question: name me one David Crosby song that is about regret. You know why David Crosby never sang about regret? Because facing up to regret is hard. But in my experience, it’s often the hardest things in life that turn out to be the most worthwhile.

So to me, the Gram-sung version of “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” this “soul” song on a “country” album by a “rock” band, is the pure, undiluted sound of one final conjuring, one last aggregation of all the mistakes in hippie culture’s past – the sound of those spoiled trust fund drop-outs, with one mighty exhale, casting off their misery into the blistering desert wind, leaving them free to start anew, and yet grounded in a hard-won wisdom that, despite all the grief that earning it may have caused them, they can nevertheless embrace.

Whenever I hear Gram’s crackling whine circle back to give the title metaphor one last go-round, this time slipping in a suitable pause after “till your well rhh-huns …” before letting it rip on the final “draaaaah-hah,” McGuinn wailing away behind him with surprising authority, and the rest of the Nashville session pros wrapping the bow around this liquor-soaked package with that gloriously clichéd four-chord country walk-down, I always feel a lifetime’s supply of inner peace washing over me.

Or maybe that’s just the tequila. Either way, it’s a hell of a feeling.