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bAnd they choose their members for many reasons, but you’d think playability would be at the top of the list. It didn’t work out that way in the summer of 1964 when one of rock’s most influential bands, the Byrds, completed their lineup. Already having four highly talented members, they didn’t just have a drummer. Fate struck when they saw Michael Clarke hanging out at the Troubadour Club in LA, “We didn’t care if he could play drums or not,” Roger McGinn recalled with a laugh the other day. “It’s like two of the Rolling Stones rolled into one!”
Clarke in particular boasted Brian Jones’ thick pout and Mick Jagger’s lush lips, not to mention the lean physique of the rock star of his era. The mere fact that one of music’s most important and respected bands is prized for such qualities is a testament to the power landscape, style and fashion in popular music. While that may be obvious in today’s pop world, in the world of ’60s rock and roll, when the mantra was “it’s all about the music, man,” such elements were rarely acknowledged.
But as McGinn clarifies, “When you’re in a band, you want to create something mysterious. Visual style has always been very important to that,” he said.
A gorgeous new photo-driven book, The Byrds 1964-67, argues that during that era, the Byrds had as much voice in the realm of style as they did vocally. History records the Byrds as the band that pioneered folk-rock, electrifying Dylan songs like Mr. Tambourine Man and Pete Seeger’s Turn. back off! Zor!, helped create psychedelic and raga rock with songs like Eight Miles High and So You Wanna Rock’n’Roll Star, and set the country rock trend with the seminal Rodeo album Swirty Heart. Featuring extensive interviews with the three original members – McGinn, Chris Hillman and David Crosby – the book reveals many entertaining details about the development of the band’s sound, as well as the band’s interpersonal relationships along the way. But the paintings tell a different story, one shot through with sartorial flair and whimsy, as well as the power of masculine beauty. “Tom Petty once said, ‘The Byrds were a good-looking band,'” Hillman recalled with a laugh. “He said, ‘They had nice hair and clothes,’ and we did!”
That angle was hardly lost on youth magazines in the mid-’60s, highlighted by sloppy captions on “Groove” photo spreads. “Back then, before we were bombarded with visuals via social media, having a group like the Byrds in teen magazines and on American TV was a gateway to a whole new wardrobe,” says Holly George Warren. He co-authored the book Rock in Fashion with designer John Varvatos. “The Byrds were the group that brought the Anglo cool introduced to America by the Beatles and the Stones.”
Indeed, when the Byrds chose their first wardrobe, their model was the beginning of the Fab Four. Under that, they adopted a uniform look, dressing the members in tab-collared shirts and velvet-trimmed tight black suits. But the look didn’t last long and the members didn’t like it at all. “We didn’t like the similarities,” Hillman said.
Somewhat surprisingly, they were relieved one night when their charges were stolen from the club they were playing at. According to Hillman, the criminals were members of Little Richard’s band. “When Roger McGinn told John Lennon about it, Lennon said, ‘I wish they’d steal it,'” Hillman recalls. Ours Suitable!’
In fact, Beatle clothing was the second look adopted by the Byrds. In their heyday, when they were still known as the Jets, the first players wore crisp white shirts and looked as clean as choir boys. “We were working with folk bands and they had that look,” McGinn said. “Groups like the Kingston Trio started that collegiate style and we carried it. Gradually we became bohemians.”
“They’re starting to take on a very individualistic look,” George-Warren says. “What you saw then was the first sign of what would later become the ‘counter-cultural aspect.’
One of the most recognizable and recognizable early style choices is McGuinn’s tiny, rectangular wire-rimmed glasses, an accessory that can be found inexpensively at any drug store. McGinn made them look different by tricking them with cool blue lenses. He was inspired by the round cobalt blue glasses worn by Lovin’ Spoonful singer John Sebastian, who McGinn met on the Greenwich Village folk scene at the time. McGinn said: “’Wow, those are cool shades!’ I said. “Try them on, look up at the street lights and move your head. It looks really cool!’ So, I put the blue lenses in. I didn’t want to wear them all the time, but a TV producer in England saw them and said, ‘Everybody needs a gimmick.’
“Not since Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison has a pop star had such an impact on glasses,” George-Warren said. “Later, we see John Lennon through his grandfather’s glasses.”
The book opens with scenes of boys in the audience wearing those glasses at Syro, where Byrd builds the audience and the scene. Dressed in old Vegas-style booths, the club was big in the 1940s when audiences came for acts like Tony Bennett and Sinatra. In the 60s, it fell on hard times. The bookies picked up the Byrds by booking. “We filled that space,” David Crosby said. It was full of people and there was a line to get inside. Everyone noticed, which really helped us.
The Byrds attracted further attention by having their girlfriends perform as go-go-dancers in Syro, a trait they later brought with them on the road. At the same time, the behavior of the band members was cool. “As players, the Byrds were far and away,” Hillman said. “We weren’t a show band that turned around and smiled.”
Hillman faces a huge challenge in maintaining an equally beautiful appearance. He worked hard to straighten his naturally curly hair because he wanted to fit in with the other men. “I washed it off and put some conditioning gel on it,” he said. “I went through all that work, and then we got to the Midwest in the middle of summer, and it was so humid, my hair would ‘splash’ into springs.”
Inspired by Dylan’s proud curls, Hillman finally let his hair go. That’s supported by various members’ moves to adopt more unusual outfits. Their appearance changed according to their music. Interestingly, McGuinn likens the Byrds to an “electronic magazine” designed to reflect an ever-changing world. Crosby introduced the most unusual styles in the band, focusing on headwear. In the year In early ’67, the classic Porcellino fedora made a statement with a refresh. “I saw Borsalino in the store and I liked the color,” he said. “I decided to crimp the top to make it look like a cowboy hat and it really worked.”
Six months later, he made a Ushanka-style hat that matched the Russian shirt he chose for the photo shoot. In his theatrical move, he sported a flowing laser cape. “If you want to see something really stupid, try riding on a motorcycle hood,” Crosby said with a laugh.
“David looked like a hippie superhero riding through the Hollywood hills,” McGinn said.
Meanwhile, McGinn himself favored conservative jackets and ties but flashed them with psychedelic color. “I went to a prep school where we wore ties every day,” he said. “So that look was familiar to me.”
McGinn made another statement by playing a goatee, which was big with beatniks in the 50s but fell out of fashion in the mid-60s before McGinn helped revive it. It came about by chance. One day, while riding a razor, “I went bam and hit my lip,” McGinn said. “We had a TV show next week, so I raised the goatee to hide the wound.”
The Byrds also had a strong visual influence on their album covers. Photographer Barry Feinstein used a fisheye lens to shoot the first image in 1965. This technique was one of the first to be used and later became a psychedelic cliché.
The camera favorite was band member Gene Clark, a talented singer and the band’s most prolific songwriter in the early days. Clarke was Hollywood hot and, as the picture of men in swimsuits makes clear, totally ripped. “He grew up on a farm in Kansas, so he was upset,” Hillman said. “The man had never been to the gym, but it looked like he was. When the curtain opened, every young woman in the house had their eyes on him.”
Unfortunately, Clarke had mental health problems and developed a fear of flying, which caused him to quit the band twice. “He’s gone off the deep end,” McGinn said. (Clark died of alcohol-related complications at 46, as did Michael Clarke at 47.)
Although the group continued to lose members in the early years, they continued to grow musically. After the team lost both Crosby and Clark, the season ended in 2011. Their 1968 album The Notorious Byrd Brothers was a creative triumph that led them to sophistication, both sonically and visually. The musicians’ writing style spanned more than three years covered by the book. When Hillman left the Byrds in 1969 to help form the Flying Burrito Brothers with another former Byrd, Gram Parsons, they became the first rockers to sport “nudie suits,” a style made famous by country stars Hank Williams and Porter Wagoner. Created by Nudi Kohn, these dresses featured elaborate rhinestones and thick embroidery that showcased the silhouette of the buyer. Parsons’ clothing contained marijuana leaves. Hillman boasts giant peacocks.
Hillman’s choice of image highlighted one of the revolutionary aspects of rock style in the 60s. Like peacocks in an aviary world, rock culture focused on men as sex objects rather than women, a shift that was as brutal as the music itself in the ’60s. “It was a vision for women and men, even if they never wanted to admit it,” George-Warren said. “They pretended that looks didn’t matter. That was always brutal.
Beyond the proliferation of sexual lenses, the era saw changes in the class of people involved in rock. “Before bands like the Byrds, rock ‘n’ roll musicians never came from the upper middle class,” says Danny Fields, who edited the teen magazine Datebook in the ’60s and met Iggy Pop and managed the Ramones. “They were like Elvis in the South, or Italian kids singing doo-wop in the Northeast, or black workers. The Byrds were among the first bands of middle-class white kids. We worship them because they were the first American band to make and hit great music. And they were hot! “
Despite the Byrds’ visual appeal and musical depth, McGinn says he found the experience of watching the book, “a little sad, because it all fell apart in the end.”
But Hillman sees the more positive side. “People who weren’t alive at the time can now look at these photos and get a new perspective on the group and how different we were,” he said. “We were creative in all kinds of things.”
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