The Byrds Lyrics Page

Released in February '67 "Younger Than Yesterday" turned out to be the best Byrds album so far. Hillman had contributed country-rock influenced beauties while Crosby saved himself a place in Elvis' choir with his bossa "Everybody's Been Burned". McGuinn once again proved with "My Back Pages" that the Byrds were Dylan's best interpreters. With the help of Hugh Massakela on trumpet they created "So You Want To Be A Rock'n Roll Star", a critical comment on the making of rock stars (like the Monkees?) and with Clarence White's lead guitar playing on Hillman's songs they added a style to their repertoire later to be called country-rock.

Another group to fuse country music with rock rhythms, The International Submarine Band with Gram Parsons (2nd from left), John Nuese, Ian Dunlop and Mickey Gauvin started and broke up in 1967, soon to be relived with the help of Bob Buchanan, Jon Corneal, Jay Dee Maness, Earl Ball and Chris Ethridge. In April 1968 their only album "Safe At Home" was released with compositions by Parsons and arrangements of country standards like "Miller's Cave" and "Folsom Prison Blues". Unfortunately ISB's album was hardly recognized and the band broke up again.

When the Byrds played at the Monterey Pop Festival in June David Crosby joined the Buffalo Springfield (picture with Richie Furay and Stephen Stills) and made political statements about drugs on stage that annoyed his colleagues. The group played their latest singles "Have You Seen Her Face" and "Lady Friend" live, the latter being Crosby's only Byrds single A-side. It was one of Crosby's best works with the band but sold poorly. After more struggles within the band McGuinn and Hillman fired Crosby in October 1967 during the recording of their fifth album. Crosby appears on almost half of the tracks with some of his strongest contributions. "The Notorious Byrd Brothers" was released in January 1968 where a horse replaced Crosby on the sleeve.