Gene Parsons - Triste Magazine 2000

(Byrdmaniax) is still one of my least favorite albums although it is a little easier to listen to now.

Skip Battin - Barry Ballard 1976

On that one ('Byrdmaniax') I think we went a little overboard in the fact of taking a long time and spending a lot of the record company's money. The group were in Europe when the album was released and we heard the final mixes in Holland. It was somewhat of a disappointment for us. We had done a dynamite cut of 'Jamaica, Say You Will' which Jackson Browne had played piano on, and it was not even used. He had come in and taught us the song and Gene, Clarence, Jackson and I laid down this beautiful track which was really hot and very tasty, but for some reason it was considered the demo.

Kim (Fowley) and I definitely had our own style which didn't mesh as well as we would have liked but at the same time that gave birth to me having a solo album. The next Byrd album that we cut ('Farther Along') was really a reaction to 'Byrdmaniax'. We came over here to England and did one of our own in eight days just to show everybody that was what we wanted to do, to get down to business and do it. Perhaps we over-reacted and maybe we could have made a better album. 'America's Great National Pastime' was the single in the States and it did have some success and it was the most accepted Byrd single in a few years. The idea for the song came from a Coke ad on TV that Kim had seen. He called me on the phone saying he had this great idea for a song and we actually wrote it on the phone in about fifteen or twenty minutes.