Next year, the UK will be all of a flutter about the forthcoming General Election. For the majority though, such matters continue to assume little or no relevance to their own lives. What many people do relate to strongly is music. Next year, we will be approaching a significant anniversary in the history of UK popular music.
On April 12th 1965 a little known band from the US shot to the top of the charts both sides of the Atlantic.
At that time, it had become more customary for bands from the UK to go Stateside and make a big impression. The band I refer to had embraced the songs of the man who for many came to epitomise the singer songwriter. That band was called the Byrds and it would be difficult to overstate their influence on the music which would follow. Like many other bands of such huge influence, they did not stay together for very long but long enough for everyone to be familiar with their unique style. They more than anyone brought the songs of Bob Dylan to our consciousness. Nearly fifty years later, it would be all but impossible to get the songs of Bob Dylan out of our consciousness.
The Byrds had emerged from various branches of the popular folk scene in the US whose epicentre was in Greenwich Village. When they started out, the power base of popular music in the US was firmly entrenched in New York. In time, these young troubadours headed out West and became the forerunners of the Hippy Generation and the Summer of Love. By the end of the decade, anyone who was anyone in the US music industry had relocated to Los Angeles. They have been there ever since.
As with many short lived groups of such lasting influence, the Byrds' members were a wide mix of characters whose collective egos limited any chances of lasting. For the time they were together they left us with some of the defining performances of the sixties. Their first hit was their rendition of the Dylan song "Mr Tambourine Man". From the opening chords, a new sound had been born, "Folk rock". The Rickenbacker guitar of singer Roger McGuinn along with the intricate harmonies of Gene Clark and David Crosby formed a unique, dynamic sound. A sound like theirs is ultimately judged in hindsight. I have the 45 single and can assure you that it still sounds really fresh - that is the ultimate measure.
By September of 1967, the other band members had grown tired of David Crosby in the aftermath of the now iconic Monterey festival. Crosby had become too political on stage for their liking and had also annoyed them by playing with Buffalo Springfield at the same festival.
Within a couple of years, Crosby had joined up with Springfield's Stephen Stills and the recently departed Hollies harmony man Graham Nash. The rest as they say is history. The first Crosby, Stills and Nash album came in the wake of their debut appearance at the Woodstock festival. By the time of their second album, they had become hot property and along with Led Zeppelin, were the jewels in the crown of the rapidly expanding Atlantic record label managed so skillfully by the late Ahmet Ertegun. For their second album, they realised that they would need to add to their personnel if only for the purpose of touring to promote the album. For studio recordings, Stephen Stills had played keyboards and lead guitar - clearly impossible on tour with live performances. They returned for another ex-Buffalo Springfield member. The addition of Neil Young created the iconic Deja Vu album which still stands as one of the great recordings from that golden era.
One of my Christmas presents this year was the latest solo album by David Crosby. This is his third release since his first solo effort "If I could only remember my name" in 1971. For a man who has overcome drug addiction and a liver transplant, this latest offering is a revelation. Crosby largely returns to his acoustic roots and those distinctive harmonies feature throughout the album.
This week, the UK lost one of it's greatest social activists with the passing of Tony Benn. While Crosby has never been a politician himself, his entire career has been notable for his political activity. Only recently, Crosby has been performing at Occupy Wall Street with long term harmony partner Graham Nash. Much of the "Hippy nonsense" being spouted by Crosby and his peers in the sixties have since been viewed in a different light. In the half century since those early days, the world is slowly coming around to the basic messages being espoused by the "Hippies". Crosby and his musical friends recognised much of what was going wrong with the world and questioned the madness of war and the extent to which we remained disengaged from the youth in our society. They warned against the ill effects of capitalism and have been proved right on just about every level. People like Crosby were arguably the musical equivalent of Tony Benn. Like him, they have remained true to their core beliefs and principles and continue to fight against the blatant injustices they see all around them. They were campaigning against US involvement in Vietnam in the late sixties. They were proved right. They have been proved right over every single war since then too. Their stance on the growing gulf between the haves and the have-nots is as loud today as it was then - long may it continue.
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