The Byrds' "Mind Gardens"

Yester-day I listened to the Byrds' Younger than Yesterday, and I noticed a small thing about "Mind Gardens."  The "walls all down" part of the line "I tore the walls all down" is sung to a descending phrase (E D C#), so there's a musical representation of the walls' coming down.

Just for the sake of making this post a bit more than just "hey, there's significance to this descending phrase," I was going to note the origin of the phrase "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," which occurs earlier in the song, but in doing so, I actually found something I hadn't realized before.  I've known for years that this is a phrase from Shakespeare's Hamlet.  It's actually in Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy.  He asks himself "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them." (III.i.65-68).  But I hadn't realized that both Hamlet and David Crosby's song are talking about minds.  Hamlet specifically mentions "in the mind," where Crosby seems to use a garden as a metaphor for a mind.

The Byrds' "Thoughts and Words" and "Don't Make Waves"

This morning I listened to the Byrds' Younger than Yesterday.  I found an interesting structural thing in "Thoughts and Words."  There are harmony vocals during the third verse, but the lyrics for those harmony vocals are different from the lyrics for the lead vocals.  The lead vocal line is "One day you came into my mind, and everything looked as though it was all mine," and the harmony vocal is "One day you came into my mind, and everything, it was all mine."  This happens for the other line in that verse too, but I can't make out all of the harmony vocals.

I've written a few posts about this sort of thing already, but I'm still always really excited when I find something like it.  The lead vocals and the harmony vocals are saying different things even though they're saying (singing, technically) almost the exact same words.  Here, the lead vocals say that "everything looked as though it was all mine" (although it should be "everything looked as though it were all mine" since it's in the subjunctive mood).  The lead vocals realize that what it seems like isn't what it is, but the harmony vocals are more taken by whoever came into his mind, saying that "everything, it was all mine."

Also, a very minor point about "Don't Make Waves," which is a bonus track: I found an instance of internal rhyme in the line "Malibu is calling you, her days and nights so warm."

The Byrds' "I Am a Pilgrim"

Earlier I listened to the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and I noticed that “I Am a Pilgrim” is pretty similar to “Wayfaring Stranger.”  I’ve heard a few versions of “Wayfaring Stranger,” but the lyrics I’m most familiar with are actually the ones that Roger McGuinn’s posted on his Folk Den (so this might not be a very impartial assessment).  He also has an entry for "I Am a Pilgrim," which is only slightly different from the version on Sweetheart of the Rodeo.  The lyrics are roughly the same too (typos notwithstanding).

The first verse of “I Am a Pilgrim” matches up to the first verse of “Wayfaring Stranger” pretty closely.  There’s the description of a “stranger” (both songs) “travelling through” (“I Am a Pilgrim”) or “wandering through” (“Wayfaring Stranger”) a land that’s “wearisome” (“I Am a Pilgrim”) or full of “woe” (“Wayfaring Stranger”).  These first two lines are followed by a contrast, specifically the “bright land” (“Wayfaring Stranger”) or “yonder city” (“I Am a Pilgrim”) that the pilgrim is trying to reach.

The next section in each (a verse in “I Am a Pilgrim” but a chorus in “Wayfaring Stranger”) talks about relatives who have already reached the pilgrim’s destination:  “I’ve got a mother, sister, and a brother / Who have gone this way before” in “I Am a Pilgrim,” and “I’m going there to see my father” in “Wayfaring Stranger.”  The second chorus of “Wayfaring Stranger” starts with “I’m going there to see my mother.”

Both also mention the Jordan River (“I’m going down to the river of Jordan / Just to bathe my wearisome soul” in “I Am a Pilgrim” and “I’m just a-going over Jordan” in “Wayfaring Stranger”), but I don’t think the river has the same rôle in both songs.

I also have a book that contains the music and lyrics for “I Am a Pilgrim.”  It’s from 1964, so it predates the Byrds’ version of the song, but it still includes these similarities to “Wayfaring Stranger.”  The lines are slightly different though.  Instead of “I’ve got a mother, sister, and a brother / Who have gone this way before,” the book has “I got a mother, sister, and a brother / Who have gone to that sweet land.”  And where the Byrds’ version has:

I’m going down to the river of Jordan
Just to bathe my wearisome soul
If I can just touch the hem of His garment, good Lord
Then I’d know He’d take me home

the book has:

As I go down to the river of Jordan,
Just to bathe my weary soul,
If I could touch but the hem of His garment, good Lord,
Well, I believe it would make me whole

It’s the same idea, but slightly different grammatically.  The book’s lyrics also rhyme (“soul”/“whole”) where the Byrds’ version doesn’t (“soul”/“home”).

A lot of folk songs exist in slightly different versions (like the version of "I Am a Pilgrim" in this book I have and the Byrds' version), so I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere back in history, "I Am a Pilgrim" and "Wayfaring Stranger" were the same song.

[Last April, I recorded a version of "Wayfaring Stranger," for which I wrote some additional vocal parts.]

The Tremeloes' "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)"

Yester-day and the day before, I listened to the two discs of an anthology of the Tremeloes titled Silence Is Golden: Anthology.  I noticed that the riff in "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)" is really similar to that in the Byrds' "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better."  And then I remembered that the riff in that Byrds' song came out of the Searchers' "Needles and Pins."  Between the three, I think there's a difference of only one or two notes.  They're all in the same key too - A major.

Not much is said about "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)" in the liner notes to this anthology.  Really, the only relevant detail I can find is that it's from 1967 - a few years after "Needles and Pins" and "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better."  So while it's possible that the riff in "Shake Hands (and Come out Crying)" was taken from either "Needles and Pins" or "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," I'm not sure if it was.  It's also possible that it's just a coincidence, but it's too similar for me to think that it's likely.

If it was taken from "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," it'd be an interesting instance of inspiration hopping across the Atlantic - first the Byrds' taking that riff from the Searchers' "Needles and Pins" (an American band taking inspiration from a British band), and then the Tremeloes taking it from the Byrds (a British band re-claiming that inspiration from an American band).  But - again - I don't know where the Tremeloes got the riff.

The Byrds' The Notorious Byrd Brothers

I just listened to the Byrds' The Notorious Byrd Brothers.  I feel kind of dumb for not noticing this before (or at least I don't remember noticing it before), but they sneak "Taps" in at the very end of "Draft Morning."  It makes sense, as the whole song is about the draft (the song is in opposition to it) and "Taps" is what's played at military funerals.

There's some interesting vocal effects on "Get to You."  Near the end there's a repeated phrase consisting of a sharp intake of air followed by two exhalations.  The intake is like that on the Beatles' "Girl" from Rubber Soul, and the exhalation isn't too dissimilar from that on the Zombies' "Time of the Season."  I don't know if it's the case here, but the Beatles certainly influenced the Byrds in other areas, so it's possible that they got that effect from "Girl."  I'm not so sure that there's any connection with "Time of the Season" though, as The Notorious Byrd Brothers came out on 3 January 1968, and "Time of the Season" wasn't released until April 1968.  So the use of that effect around the same time is probably just coincidental.

An-other interesting similarity that's probably just coincidental is that they used the Moog (or at least I think it's the Moog) for nautical effects on "Dolphin's Smile," and almost a decade later (in 1977), Electric Light Orchestra did the same thing for "The Whale" on Out of the Blue.

The Byrds' "The World Turns All Around Her"

I'm currently listening to the Byrds' Turn! Turn! Turn! for the first time.  I know some of these songs, but there are some I haven't heard before, including Gene Clark's "The World Turns All Around Her."  In about the middle of the song, there's a drum part that's really close to the introductory drum part of the Beatles' "What You're Doing."  I don't know drum terminology, but the drum part in "What You're Doing" sounds more drum-centric where the drum part in "The World Turns All Around Her" includes some of the other percussive elements of the drum kit (I think it's just that "The World Turns All Around Her" uses the snare drum, and "What You're Doing" doesn't).  "What You're Doing" was on Beatles for Sale, which came out in 1964, and Turn! Turn! Turn! was released in late 1965, so that specific influence is possible, as far as chronology goes.

It's also pretty likely that the Beatles influenced the Byrds.  In the liner notes for this album, Derek Taylor explains that George Harrison and Paul McCartney went to visit the Byrds while they were recording the album.  And I remember reading somewhere that Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, and David Crosby were doing Beatles covers even before the Byrds started.  Plus McGuinn got his twelve-string Rickenbacker after seeing George Harrison's in A Hard Day's Night.

The Byrds' The Byrds Play Dylan

I’m currently listening to the Byrds’ The Byrds Play Dylan, and I don’t understand why it isn’t sequenced chronologically.  Either chronology - the Byrds’ recording these songs or Dylan’s writing them - would suffice.  But there are songs from 1969 stuck in between songs from 1965, and I just don’t understand how that was a conscious decision anyone made.

I read a book about Dylan earlier this year (Andy Gill’s Bob Dylan:  The Stories behind the Songs 1962-1969), and one of the points it made was that Dylan was a constantly-evolving artist.  There was the early folk stuff, then the protest songs, then he went electric, and then back to roots music.  Not all of those distinctions would necessarily come across in the Byrds’ versions of these songs, but I still think it would be better to sequence the album chronologically.

Even from a more Byrds-favoring perspective, the sequencing is weird.  Songs that were originally on the same album are separated in the track listing by four or five places, and the positions of those songs on the original albums are disregarded.  Both “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and “Nothing Was Delivered” were on Sweetheart of the Rodeo, with “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” starting off the album, but here, it comes five tracks after “Nothing Was Delivered.”  Amazingly, ”Mr. Tambourine Man” the Byrds’ debut single (and therefore first Dylan cover) is track six.  The sequencing is just all over the place.