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Bob Dylan, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Byrds Mr Tambourine Man

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Byrds Mr Tambourine Man

It was 1965. Bob Dylan had gone electric, had just brought it all back home, and he weren’t gonna’ work on Maggie’s farm no more.

The Beatles had crawled off to sleep in the bath were ready for new horizons, too. By the end of 1965 they would release the Dylan-influenced Rubber Soul, an album that would inspire more musical changes that blossomed into such things as Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds.

April 12, 1965

But on April 12, 1965 the Byrds released the single, Mr Tambourine Man. The song had appeared on Dylan’s Bringing It… album. The first cut on side two.

Byrds Mr Tambourine Man
45 of record

The Bringing It… album cover is the one with Dylan sitting in what appeared to be a someone’s living room surrounded by lots of items for fans to stare at and discuss. It also had a long-legged woman lounging red-dressed. Cigarette in hand. Sally Grossman, the wife of Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman.

Byrds Mr Tambourine Man

The living room was the second home of Albert and Sally. The place in a little artsy town in Ulster County, NY called Woodstock. In four years a couple of hippies would hatch the idea for a recording studio there. That’s another story for another time.

Byrds Mr Tambourine Man

Wrecking Crew

The Byrds had recorded Mr Tambourine Man on January 20, 1965 at Columbia Studios in Hollywood. Like many LA bands, the musicianship was not as strong as the session men available and Roger McGuinn was the only Byrd to actually play on that recording.  The players had the nickname of the Wrecking Crew and included including Hal Blaine (drums), Larry Knechtel (bass), Jerry Cole (guitar), and Leon Russell (electric piano). Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark sang. 

Byrds Mr Tambourine Man

Folk Rock

Columbia Records released the “Mr. Tambourine Man” single on April 12, 1965 and on June 26 it became Billboard’s #1 song. McGuinn’s jangly electric 12-string Rickenbacker guitar was part of the song’s hook and formed the Byrds’ trademark sound.

Folk-rock had been born thanks to Bob Dylan and the Byrds.

Music et al, Music of the 60s, Peace Love Art and Activism

Pan American Buffalo Springfield

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Pan American Buffalo Springfield

April 11, 1966
Pan American Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield (photo from https://rockhallows.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/the-troubadour/) Top L – R: Stephen Stills, Bruce Palmer, and Rich Fury. Bottom L – R: Neil Young and Dewey Martin.

Used to play
in a rock ‘n’ roll band,
But they broke up.
We were young and we were wild,
It ate us up.♥

Neil Young, Buffalo Springfield Again

Singular Comet

Some bands are like comets. They streak brightly but briefly across our musical horizon, leaving behind great memories.

On April 11, 1966, the short-lived Buffalo Springfield made their live debut at The Troubadour in Hollywood, California.

They would release three albums:

  • Buffalo Springfield (1966)
  • Buffalo Springfield Again (1967)
  • Last Time Around (1968)

And then they were gone.

Pan American Buffalo Springfield

Beginnings

The first incarnation of the Buffalo Springfield was an international mix: Richie Furay (Ohio) (vocals, guitar), Dewey Martin (Texas) (drums); Bruce Palmer (Ontario) (bass); Stephen Stills (Texas) (vocals, guitar); and Neil Young  (Manitoba) (vocals, guitar)

Stills had first met Neil Young in Canada while Stills was touring there. Bruce Palmer was also from Canada and met Young there. Richie Fury and Stills met in Los Angeles. And when the four of them formed a band they added Dewey Martin.

Their first single was “Go and Say Goodbye” with “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” as the B-side, but radio DJs preferred Clancy and that became the minor hit on the west coast.

Pan American Buffalo Springfield

Nowadays Clancy…

All Music describes Clancy, written by Neil Young, as “a kaleidoscope of emotions and feelings of rejection and alienation that touches nerves in anyone who listens. Young has written 100 other songs that are probably “better” than this, but he’s never written anything else quite like it.”

Clancy was the first song I heard by Springfield. I fell in love with it, but it haunted me because I didn’t even know who it was or the title. When WOR-FM first changed to a rock format they had DJ contract issues and it simply played songs unannounced.

Two years later when I went away to college and had to leave my girlfriend behind, I left her a note to open when she got home from leaving me at the airport. It simply read “I miss you now,” a line I’d borrowed from the Springfield’s “On the Way Home.“

Pan American Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield departs

Despite its great music, the members often had poor chemistry. The government deported Bruce Palmer for drug possession. Neil Young left for artistic issues. Fill-in members came and went.

The band played its last gig at the Long Beach Arena on May 5, 1968. They played with Country Joe & Fish, Canned Heat, Smokestack Lightnin’,  and The Hook.

Pan American Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield branches out

Of course members went on to great things. Stephen Still to Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and occasionally Young). Neil Young to a still successful solo career with nearly as many variations as David Bowie. Furay and Jim Messina (a late Springfield member) were founding members of Poco.

Furay later joined J.D. Souther and Chris Hillman to form the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, and Messina teamed with Kenny Loggins in Loggins & Messina.

In other words, the Buffalo Springfield members have  made a lot of great music beside what they first offered.

On  May 6, 1997, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted them in the first ceremony held at the Rock and Roll Museum in Cleveland.

On November 24, 2010, the Buffalo Springfield got back together at the Bridge School Benefit Concert 2010. Original members Neil Young, Richie Furay, and Steven Stills with Rick Rosas on bass and Joe Vitale on drums

Anniversary, Beatles, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history

John Paul George Ringo Breakup

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John Paul George Ringo Breakup

April 10, 1970

John Paul George Ringo Breakup

It was 1970. We American Boomers had watched them on Ed Sullivan  six years earlier.  Six years during which we witnessed  assassinations, wars, a cultural revolution,  fear, and loathing,

Or as John Lennon had playfully sang in 1969: Everybody’s talking about, Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism, This-ism, That-ism…

Many of us had literally grown up with the Beatles. We went from  innocent early teenage years to the brink of adulthood and its disruptive realities.

The Beatles had stopped touring in 1966. Getting to see them live was always too difficult anyway, so the fact that they weren’t appearing live wasn’t that  big a deal. We would always have their newest vinyl.

John Paul George Ringo Breakup

We’d had…

…Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour in 1967.

The Beatles–in 1968–but we were such good friends by then we all simply call it their “White” album. 

Yellow Submarine and Abby Road in 1969, though there were rumors of another album already recorded.

John Paul George Ringo Breakup

We also had rumblings…

Ringo had briefly quit the Beatles in August 1968 and George had done the same in January 1969.

They gave us some solo stuff like George Harrison’s Wonderwall (1968) but that wasn’t real Beatles stuff. Was it even real George Harrison stuff?

John and Yoko’s Two Virgins the same year definitely wasn’t Beatles.

On January 30, 1969 they played on the roof of their Apple Building in London as part of their movie Get Back. Not knowing it, the impromptu live performance was their last.

John Paul George Ringo Breakup

Marriages and divorces

John got divorced. Paul got married.  Yoko got married.

On August 22, 1969, photographer Ethan Russell shot the final photos of the the four together.

photo by Ethan Russell…The thrill looks gone.

John

On September 20, 1969, John Lennon told the others that he was leaving the band, but agreed to keep it quiet until albums were released and the time was right.

Then…

Daily Mirror headline
John Paul George Ringo Breakup

Paul spills the beans

April 10, 1970, Paul McCartney made the Beatles’ secret breakup public by issuing a press release to announce that he had left the group, done in the form of a fake interview:

“Q: Is your break with the Beatles temporary or permanent, due to personal differences or musical ones?

PAUL: Personal differences, business differences, musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family. Temporary or permanent? I don’t really know.”

John Lennon was furious, especially since Paul announced the breakup, already agreed upon by the group, just one week prior to the British release of McCartney’s first solo album. When a reporter tracked down Lennon for his thoughts, he replied, “Paul hasn’t left. I sacked him.“

While the lives of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison occasionally crossed after 1970, the crossings were sometimes cordial, sometimes not.

Life without a Beatles album went on punctuated regularly by many solo offerings.

A piece of the sixties ended on April 10, 1970

Whatever happened to the life that we once knew
Can we really live without each other?
Where did we lose the touch
That seemed to mean so much
It’s always made me feel so

 

Not Yoko

You will notice that I haven’t said that “Yoko broke up the Beatles” –the oft sung sad shibboleth. That is because she did not break up the Beatles, but that’s another story for another time.

And the final final legal legal breakup was still nearly five years away.

John Paul George Ringo Breakup