Showing 1 - 25 of 65
Artist: Roger McGuinn
As the frontman of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn and his trademark 12-string Rickenbacker guitar pioneered folk-rock and, by extension, country-rock, influencing everyone from contemporaries like the Beatles to acolytes like Tom Petty and R.E.M. in the process. James Joseph McGuinn was born on July 13, 1942, in Chicago, where by his teenage years he... [+] Read More
Artist: Mark McGuinn
Though singer/songwriter Mark McGuinn's background lies in jazz, McGuinn found his way into the country format with his first single, "Mrs. Steven Rudy." It was only after a devastating knee injury kept McGuinn from pursuing a career as a professional soccer player that the North Carolina native moved to Nashville to cultivate his songwriting... [+] Read More
Artist: McGuinn, Clark & Hillman
McGuinn, Clark & Hillman (later McGuinn-Hillman) came about in 1979, after three former members of the original Byrds -- Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, and Chris Hillman -- decided to do a joint tour of Europe, each fronting his own band. The tour itself didn't go off as planned, but the experience of singing together on-stage for the first time in... [+] Read More
Artist: City Surfers
A studio group that recorded two surf singles for Capitol Records in 1963, the City Surfers featured a young, pre-Byrds Roger McGuinn (he was still known as Jim McGuinn at this point) on guitar, Bobby Darin on drums, and songwriter Frank Gari on vocals. Darin had hired McGuinn a year earlier to play guitar and add some folk flair to his live... [+] Read More
Artist: Bob Hippard
Bob Hippard was one of several non-Byrds that wrote songs with Roger McGuinn which appeared on Byrds records. Hippard and McGuinn met in the early 1960s at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, where the musicians that would soon form the Byrds would gather; Hippard at the time was road manager for Hoyt Axton and the folk duo Art & Paul. Hippard is... [+] Read More
Artist: Harvey Gerst
Harvey Gerst had a peripheral role in the Byrds' career as a co-writer of two of their early songs. In 1964 the band, still known as the Jet Set, recorded a song he wrote with Jim (later Roger) McGuinn and Gene Clark, "Please Let Me Love You," and one he wrote with McGuinn only, "Don't Be Long." These early but likable folk-rock tunes were... [+] Read More
Artist: Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan's influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notions that in order to perform, a singer had to have a conventionally good voice,... [+] Read More
Artist: The Byrds
Although they only attained the huge success of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys for a short time in the mid-'60s, time has judged the Byrds to be nearly as influential as those groups in the long run. They were not solely responsible for devising folk-rock, but they were certainly more responsible than any other single act (Dylan... [+] Read More
Artist: Jerry Cole
Throughout the '60s and , guitarist/songwriter Jerry Cole worked with some of the most prominent talents in rock'n'roll, including Them, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, and as a session man in Phil Spector's "Wrecking Crew." With his own group the Spacemen, Cole released four albums of space-age surf music in just over two years, beginning with... [+] Read More
Artist: The Jet Set
When Roger (then Jim) McGuinn, Gene Clark, and David Crosby met in Los Angeles in 1964 and decided to form a group, they originally called themselves the Jet Set. As the Jet Set they barely if ever performed in public, but they did record quite prolifically, as manager Jim Dickson could give them access to plenty of studio time. One early such... [+] Read More
Artist: The Beefeaters
Not much is known about this Dallas, TX, outfit except that they were remarkably similar in certain respects to their earlier namesakes, the short-lived proto-Byrds outfit formed by Jim McGuinn, Gene Clark, and David Crosby. The Texas group sang good, Beatlesque harmonies (circa Rubber Soul) and used a 12-string Rickenbacker prominently and in... [+] Read More
Artist: David Hemmings
David Hemmings is mostly known as a screen actor, his most famous role in his youth being the photographer in Michaelangelo Antonioni's classic 1966 Swinging London-set Blow Up, though he continued to appear in films for decades, landing roles in Last Orders and Gangs of New York shortly before his death. In the wake of Blow Up, he also had a... [+] Read More
Artist: Souther-Hillman-Furay Band
Formed in 1973 at the urging of Asylum Records president David Geffen, Souther-Hillman-Furay was the offspring of just about every notable country-rock band. Richie Furay was a founding member of both Buffalo Springfield and Poco; Chris Hillman had been with the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Stephen Stills' Manassas; and J.D. Souther... [+] Read More
Artist: Bob Gibson & Bob Camp
Bob Gibson and Bob Camp (also known as Hamilton Camp) both had notable solo careers of their own. Gibson was an influential performer in the folk revival, doing a little to take traditional folk interpretations into a more imaginative realm, and an influence on performers such as Roger McGuinn. Camp, who changed his name to Hamilton Camp after... [+] Read More
Artist: Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke was the original drummer of the Byrds, appearing on their first five albums before leaving around the end of 1967. Clarke was the least talented of the five members that were on the Byrds' 1965-67 recordings, as unlike the other for he did almost no songwriting. His drumming was basic and for the most part appropriate for the... [+] Read More
Artist: Lords of Acid
Lords of Acid's exaggeratedly sexual acid house dance music gained a cult following with their 1991 album, Lust. Previously, the band had released three singles that laid the groundwork for the dense, throbbing Lust and its club hits, "Rough Sex" and "I Must Increase My Bust." Between their debut and their second album, 1994's Voodoo-U, the... [+] Read More
Artist: Gene Clark
Gene Clark will always be best remembered for his two-year stint as a vocalist with the Byrds between 1964 and 1966. A fine legacy to be sure, but the shame of it is that there was far more to Clark's body of work than that; he was a superb songwriter, one of the founding fathers of country-rock, and recorded a number of fine albums with an... [+] Read More
Artist: Chris Hillman
Along with frequent collaborator Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman was the key figure in the development of country-rock, virtually defining the genre through his seminal work with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Hillman was born on December 4, 1944, in Los Angeles, where he grew up listening to Spade Cooley and Cliffie Stone and taught... [+] Read More
Artist: Tom Kimmel
Although he has developed a following for his own releases over the course of a 20-year career, Tom Kimmel has had more success landing tracks on albums by better-known artists. Born in Memphis, TN, and raised in rural Alabama, Kimmel graduated from the University of Alabama and relocated to Nashville in the early '80s. Early credits as a... [+] Read More
Artist: Jim Dickson
A jazz buff and recording engineer, Jim Dickson was in the right place at the right time during the early '60s folk-rock boom of L.A. A part-time engineer at World-Pacific studios, by the time Dickson met the fledging Byrds he had already recorded hip comedian Lord Buckley as well as started his own publishing company by launching Dino Valenti's... [+] Read More
Artist: Jacques Levy
Although best-known for his work in musical theater, Jacques Levy was also an occasional lyrical collaborator of rock icons Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn. Born in New York City on July 29, 1935, Levy graduated from the Big Apple's City College in 1956, earning his PhD in clinical psychology from Michigan State University five years later. After... [+] Read More
Artist: Allen Stanton
A rather mysterious figure in Byrds annals, Stanton is known by rock fans almost solely for producing the group's third album, Fifth Dimension, in 1966. Stanton was West Coast Vice President at Columbia when Terry Melcher, who had produced the Byrds' first two albums, was eased out of his position with the band. Fifth Dimension was an erratic... [+] Read More
Artist: The Squires
From Bristol, Connecticut, the Squires enjoy a higher profile than most of the thousands of similar teenage bands that cut a single or two in the mid-'60s. That's because both sides of their second and last 45, "Going All the Way"/"Go Ahead" (1966), were anthologized on the earliest Pebbles volumes. This was indeed one of the strongest garage... [+] Read More
Artist: Joe Bonamassa
Guitar mastermind Joe Bonamassa, a young player with the childhood dream of playing music similar to legends like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix, was 22 when he inked a deal with Epic. His drive to make music a career was an instant whirlwind.
Hailing from Utica, NY, Bonamassa could play the blues before he could drive a... [+] Read More
Artist: Tom Petty
Upon the release of their first album in the late '70s, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers were shoehorned into the punk/new wave movement by some observers who picked up on the tough, vibrant energy of the group's blend of Byrds riffs and Stonesy swagger. In a way, the categorization made sense. Compared to the heavy metal and art rock that... [+] Read More
