“We really started doing country songs way back on the second album,” Hillman pointed out, introducing their 1965 cover of the Porter Wagoner hit “Satisfied Mind.” Introducing another pre-Parsons catalog pick, 1966’s “Mr. You can sense a bit of a long-standing agenda in the thesis behind this 45-minute opening act: Gram Parsons has long gotten credit as the chief engineer behind their most influential album, even though he was in the Byrds for a grand total of five months, which obviously doesn’t sit entirely well with McGuinn and Hillman. In other words, they want you to know, this wasn’t their first trip to the rodeo. The first set of this two-part show is mostly dedicated to songs of a country-ish nature that preceded the “Sweetheart” album in the Byrds’ catalog. “I heard Ringo Starr do a Buck Owens song, ‘Act Naturally’,” said McGuinn, “and I thought, if the Beatles can get away with a country beat, the Byrds can, too.” Hillman recalled his own point of more vaguely country inspiration: “We heard the Beatles, I think it was on the ‘Revolver’ album, and we heard them doing ‘Falling, yes I am falling…’” (The tune he excerpted, “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” was actually on “Help!” in the UK and “Rubber Soul” in the U.S., but close enough for country-rock.) Pepper” comparison may be a joke, but the Beatles - earlier Beatles - were invoked Tuesday as a roundabout roots-music stimulant. At the opening night of the short national jaunt Tuesday at the Theatre at Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, it was like time hadn’t flown at all, partly because entire recent national movements have been dedicated to recreating this vibe.
Fans are getting the desired “Sweetheart” deal with a tour headlined by ex-Byrds Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, backed by country renaissance man Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatyves (creative misspelling ours). That R&R&C&W landmark status makes it riper than any other effort in the Byrds’ catalog - even their earlier, far more successful efforts - for silver-haired, silver-anniversary commemoration. “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” is widely regarded as the world’s first true country-rock album. And hearing that psych-pop landmark, what evolutionary choice did the Byrds have in 1968 but to blow the collective minds of the Haight-Ashbury generation with… an album of traditional country music. The Beach Boys’ 1966 release “Pet Sounds” has often been cited by Paul McCartney as the springboard for the Beatles’ “Sgt. If the Byrds didn't do country-rock first, they did it brilliantly, and few albums in the style are as beautiful and emotionally affecting as this.Tracing the progression of rock ‘n’ roll as art in the 1960s, it’s easy to see how each of the great bands of the time attempted to build on and outdo what had come just before. While many cite this as more of a Gram Parsons album than a Byrds set, given the strong country influence of McGuinn's and Hillman's later work, it's obvious Parsons didn't impose a style upon this band so much as he tapped into a sound that was already there, waiting to be released. Though Gram Parsons had joined the band as a pianist and lead guitarist, his deep love of C&W soon took hold, and Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman followed his lead significantly, the only two original songs on the album were both written by Parsons (the achingly beautiful "Hickory Wind" and "One Hundred Years from Now"), while on the rest of the set classic tunes by Merle Haggard, the Louvin Brothers, and Woody Guthrie were sandwiched between a pair of twanged-up Bob Dylan compositions. But no major band had gone so deep into the sound and feeling of classic country (without parody or condescension) as the Byrds did on Sweetheart at a time when most rock fans viewed country as a musical "L'il Abner" routine, the Byrds dared to declare that C&W could be hip, cool, and heartfelt. The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo was not the first important country-rock album ( Gram Parsons managed that feat with the International Submarine Band's debut Safe at Home), and the Byrds were hardly strangers to country music, dipping their toes in the twangy stuff as early as their second album.
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