Byrds really learned to fly with ‘Yesterday’

Spencer Patterson

Friday, July 16, 2004 | 8:55 a.m.

The Byrds' 1967 record "Younger Than Yesterday" opens with the cynical salvo, "So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star."

"Just get an electric guitar / Then take some time and learn how to play / And with your hair swung right / And your pants too tight / It's gonna be all right," go the lyrics, poking fun at the insta-pop stars of the day.

If that song didn't make the case on its own, the rest of the Byrds' fourth album sent a clear signal the Los Angeles band had little interest in simple mass appeal.

"Younger Than Yesterday" is a study in ambition, capturing the band as it moved beyond the popular folk-rock of 1965's "Mr. Tamborine Man" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and the en vogue psychedelia of 1966's "Eight Miles High."

The disc's 11 tracks -- along with six bonus cuts added to Columbia/Legacy's 1996 reissue -- display a sophistication belying the fact that the group had lost its primary songwriter less than 12 months earlier.

Though Gene Clark's exit may have initially frightened early fans, it forced fellow founders Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman and David Crosby to craft marvelous new material for an album that stands as the best in a formidable Byrds catalog.

McGuinn's jangly confections, highlighted by trademark 12-string work on his famous Rickenbacker guitar, set the standard for such latter-day giants as Tom Petty and R.E.M.

The bluegrass-influenced Hillman pushed the band in a twangy new direction, one fully realized a year later on 1968's "Sweetheart of the Rodeo," considered the blueprint for the country-rock movement.

And on his last full album effort before leaving the Byrds, Crosby left behind some of the first examples of his formidable writing skills, from gorgeous ballad "Everybody's Been Burned" to the wildly experimental "Mind Gardens."

Although the three men's diverging musical visions ultimately tore their band apart, on "Younger Than Yesterday" that combination of diverse sounds created something entirely interesting and unique.

Old-time Byrds loyalists likely clung to a brilliant reworking of "My Back Pages" as proof that the group remained the best Bob Dylan cover outfit around.

But those nostalgic moments were mostly in the rearview for a band intent on pushing the popular notion of rock 'n' roll.

Artist: The Byrds.

Title: "Younger Than Yesterday."

Year of release: 1967 (Reissued 1996, Columbia/Legacy).

Tracklisting: "So You Want To Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star," "Have You Seen Her Face," "C.T.A.," "Renaissance Fair," "Time Between," "Everybody's Been Burned," "Thoughts and Words," "Mind Gardens," "My Back Pages," "The Girl With No Name," "Why." (Bonus tracks) "It Happens Each Day," "Don't Make Waves," "My Back Pages" (alternate version), "Mind Gardens" (alternate version), "Lady Friend," "Old John Robertson" (single version).