The Byrds: Breaking the British Stranglehold on American Music

Disc Weekly’s exclusive report on “Mr Tambourine Man”, the Byrds debut album: 17th July 1965

I don’t know if the Americans have any equivalent to our MBE awards. If they have, I nominate THE BYRDS for consideration at an early date.

This American fivesome have at last achieved what the Yanks have been hoping and praying for over the last eighteen months.

They’ve broken the British stranglehold on the American pop charts and music scene, and they’ve done it with a sound and style which is all their own.

The album detailed in this piece won’t be issued here by CBS until August or September. But Disc weekly obtained a copy to find out exactly what makes this group tick.

This is pop-folk at its best. Songs with a message sung in a manner which attracts the younger generations, and gives them something to think about as well as something for dancing.

The Byrds are obviously sensible characters who know what the pop scene is about.

Leader Jim McGuinn has some penetrating comments to make on the current situation.

The English rock ‘n’ roll groups are a new package, a new presentation of music in which music finds a new form. Life is the same thing. It’s just going through different manifestations – and music is life.

Jim explains things

“The English rock ‘n’ roll groups are a new package, a new presentation of music in which music finds a new form. Life is the same thing.
It’s just going through different manifestations – and music is life.“

We sent something over to England, and they’re echoing it back to us with a slightly different flavour because they’re different people.

And now we can take what they gave us and echo it back to them with something else, another flavour added.”

Folksters like them because they’re Dylanised, and feature real folk songs in their repertoire, popularising it to the top of the commercial hit parade without distorting it unduly or destroying its meaning and message.

Popsters like the Byrds because they have a sound which is catchy, compelling and belongs to them alone.

You can frug, twist, jerk or watusi to the beat laid down by the Byrds and enjoy doing it in the knowledge that you’re hearing real music, which conveys something to all generations.