Byrds' The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Menck Ric

Author:Menck, Ric
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing
Published: 2007-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

By the spring of 1967, the Byrds should have been poised to take over the world of pop music. They were signed to one of the biggest record labels in the world. They were working with a producer who had great empathy for their material and was a creative genius in the studio. They had just released a single (“So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star”) that cracked the top 30, and an album (Younger Than Yesterday) that was being hailed by the press as their greatest musical achievement to date. Whatever momentum they had lost from Gene Clark’s departure and the scandal surrounding “Eight Miles High” was behind them now. Yet, everything seemed to be disintegrating around them.

It was hard not to notice that their once rabid LA fanbase had dwindled away to nothing. In May they played a series of shows at the Whisky a-Go-Go with an up and coming band called the Doors in the opening slot: the Doors blew the Byrds off the stage. Jim Dickson attended at least one of the Whisky performances and was so ashamed by the Byrds’ lackluster performance that he refused to attend any more of the shows. He was actually embarrassed for the band. Publicist Derek Taylor witnessed one of the Whisky shows as well and agreed that the band was terrible. Realizing he couldn’t stomach watching the band deteriorate before his very eyes, Taylor handed in his resignation and it would be only a matter of time before the rest of the Byrds management team would crumble around them. Next to go was Rita Rendall, Tickner’s wife and the band’s efficient office manager, and finally Tickner and Dickson both dissolved their relationship with the Byrds as well. For Dickson it was especially painful when the end arrived. He’d thrown himself into managing the group with the same enthusiasm and emotional commitment Brian Epstein had for the Beatles. For the better part of three whirlwind years Dickson’s every waking moment was consumed by the affairs of the Byrds. And he wasn’t just there for them in a business capacity. He was a father figure to each of the members in the beginning when they needed that kind of mentoring. It was hard for Dickson not to feel bitter about the way everything turned out, especially in his final days with the band, when Crosby callously flaunted a young upstart named Larry Spector whom he declared would make an excellent new manager for the Byrds. Dickson knew Spector didn’t have the experience to handle the job, and that Crosby was just being swayed by the fact that Spector managed Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, two of the hippest young actors on the LA scene. In another couple of years Hopper and Fonda would turn Hollywood on its ear with a self-directed film called Easy Rider, which catered specifically to a young audience and featured contemporary rock & roll music interwoven within the film’s plot line. (Many have noticed that

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