We played a few more Hollywood star parties, all of which were very interesting, but nowhere near as interesting as another character who’d entered our lives—Derek Taylor. A very bright and hilariously dry-witted guy, Derek had been The Beatles’ press agent and the right-hand man to their manager, Brian Epstein. In 1965, after severing ties with Epstein, Derek moved to California with his wife Joan and their children. He set up his own PR firm and started working with The Beach Boys. After Dickson and Tickner gave him a small percentage of their commission to work with us, he took on The Byrds as clients too. Derek was fantastic; he was our window on both The Beatles and the whole British music scene that we were enamored with at the time. Thanks to his hard work, we were all over the teen and preteen magazines, including cover stories in Teen Beat and similar publications. Derek was a madman at times; very funny, and if you got on the wrong side of him he would find a subtle way to get you back—usually in print. He was obviously a go-getter who would wake up each morning, have a drink and a cigarette, and fire up his one-man promotion machine. It didn’t take long before he had us booked on all the Los Angeles-area TV outlets like The Lloyd Thaxton Show, Sam Riddle’s Hollywood A Go-Go, Where the Action Is, 9th Street West, and American Bandstand. Soon we were on network shows, too, including Hullabaloo and Shindig.
The summer of 1965 found us embarking on our first big tour across the Midwest. I was pretty excited. Other than the Nevada gig and the folk festival in Honolulu with The Golden State Boys, my travels outside California were pretty limited. At first, our inexperienced management team put us with a booking firm called the Willard Alexander Agency, which handled big bands and had no prior experience booking rock acts. We leased a bus—not a decked-out luxury tour bus, but a plain old passenger bus with a few sleeping cots—and away we went to conquer America in a month with Dickson’s friend John Barrick along for the ride as our first road manager.
Dickson, Tickner, and Derek Taylor decided it would really add to the show to have a few of the dancers from Ciro’s travel with us too. It was always a surreal moment when we would pull into a county fair in Iowa or some place, start the first show, and then watch the crowd reaction as the dancers came out, gyrating wildly in their full Sunset Strip regalia. Some of the local guys didn’t take too kindly to these strange people dancing in their town and sometimes took so much offense that a fight would occasionally break out on the dance floor while we continued playing our show.
That wasn’t the only challenge. I had never experienced a Midwest summer before, and it was hard to make my hair behave in that environment. I was a curly-headed boy, but I went to great lengths to get my hair straight to fit in with the band’s look. This involved about forty-five minutes of styling, but it was all in vain. The heat and humidity would turn me right back into a curly-headed boy who looked like he’d been out shoveling sand in a windstorm.
Holiday Inns and hotel chains were still a relatively new thing in the mid-1960s. They’d just started building them a few years prior, so we were usually camped out in these old hotels in the middle of whatever town we were playing. They were nice enough, but they usually had no amenities except a radio—no air conditioning and no television. It was almost like traveling in the 1930s or ’40s, but we handled it pretty well. For us, it was all a grand adventure.
As soon as he began working with us, Derek Taylor launched a campaign to convince Dickson and Tickner to book an English tour for the late summer. He thought we should go right after we finished our first big tour across America. Our managers thought it was too soon. They argued that we should wait until we had another couple of singles out, but Derek was persistent. There was certainly no argument from any of us in the band; we were more than ready to board a plane for London. It was finally agreed, and we were booked for a string of shows by Mervyn Conn, a notorious English promoter. Of course, we knew nothing about him, but he was the “go to” promoter in the UK at the time. We were all excited to be preparing for the next grand adventure—flying over the Atlantic.
When the Midwest tour was over, we departed out of Chicago on the first day of August. We didn’t even get time off to go back home for a few days to rest. We just hopped onboard a Pan Am flight and off to London we went, with Derek leading the charge back to the motherland. We arrived around eight in the morning the next day—a Monday—to be greeted by lots of screaming fans and a very interesting man who promptly served us with a writ, demanding we change our band name. Apparently, there was another group in England called The Birds—in fact, one of their members was future Small Faces and Rolling Stones member Ronnie Wood. These guys didn’t have a lot going with their career at the time, so their manager decided to drum up a little publicity by suing us. It was a waste of time, but at least it made for good copy in the musical press for a few days.
Between coming off a long tour and having just flown all night, we were exhausted when we checked into the Europa Hotel on Grosvenor Square. Derek, assuring us he’d take care of it, called up John Lennon. Within an hour a very strange gentleman showed up to the hotel lobby with a bag of purple hearts. These were the pills The Beatles used to help them keep going in the face of a grueling schedule. Most musicians relied on that kind of thing in those days, so John sent his guy over to help us out as we began the UK tour. Reinvigorated, McGuinn and Crosby immediately started doing press interviews. The rest of us were on the bench temporarily, but—being a little older and wiser in this area—they seemed to be the right ones to handle a somewhat hostile English press.
At day’s end, the band went out to the Scotch club, a hip new hangout. I wasn’t feeling well, so I didn’t go out with the other guys that evening. The experience, however, helped Gene write one of his classic songs, “Set You Free This Time.” He finished it late that night, inspired by meeting Paul McCartney at the club. The Beatles became fast friends to The Byrds, thanks to the opportunity Derek created. He was in heaven coming back to his homeland with his new group. I suspect it was a way to show Brian Epstein what he had accomplished in America since leaving The Beatles.
The tour officially began on Tuesday, August 3, with an appearance on Ready Steady Go!, the biggest pop music TV show in England. We taped our performance of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “All I Really Want to Do” before driving up to a small town called Nelson for our first concert. I mentioned I wasn’t feeling well when everyone went out the night before, and I was feeling even worse by the time we arrived in Nelson. That was the night I collapsed in the dressing room with bronchitis. My memory is a little hazy, but I recall a turban-wearing East Indian physician leaning over me and giving me a huge shot of penicillin. I somehow managed to rally and play the show that evening. As it turned out, I just happened to be the first to fall. My bandmates would soon be navigating the same treacherous waters of bad health over the next week. Not a great time to get sick.
The English tour was a disaster as far as our live performances were concerned—bad sound, suspect equipment, and an English press that didn’t make things any easier. Mervyn Conn, our English promoter who was one step shy of a circus carney, overhyped us to the press, calling us “America’s Beatles.” That may have bordered on sacrilege to a British audience. Nobody was more beloved than The Beatles, so the expectations he set weren’t realistic. The critics seemed to almost enjoy watching us stumble through the tour. One of the more memorable of our decidedly uneven series of shows was at a tiny London club called Blaises. Curious to see what all the buzz was about, the audience was filled with a who’s who of British musicians: John Lennon, George Harrison, Pete Townshend, Bill Wyman, Brian Jones, and Graham Nash turned out for yet another rough and very loose performance on a stage that was so small we couldn’t even fit all our gear on it. I even managed to break a bass string that night—not fun.
I think it was after that gig that we all ended up at someone’s house for an impromptu party with Brian Jones, John Lennon, and some other musicians. Everyone was having a great time, but I was so sh
y in those days that I usually tried to blend into the background. The last thing I ever wanted was to stand out in a crowd. Plus, I figured if Lennon noticed me, he’d probably get me with some sarcastic remark. At some point, during a lull in the conversation, John glanced over at me. He nodded his head in my direction and asked the others, “Does he talk?” Everybody erupted in laughter, and I could feel my face and ears get hot. I’m sure I must have turned bright red. Looking back, though, it was pretty funny. John made it all okay when he ordered Wimpy Burgers for everyone at the party. As a gesture, it was really nice. As a burger? Those must have been the worst burgers in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Nothing like topping off a questionable British tour with some questionable British food.
It turned out Tickner and Dickson were right; we should have waited, worked on our stage presence, and had a few more recognizable songs in our arsenal before trying to conquer Great Britain. After a punishing two weeks, we were ready to get out of there. But going home didn’t seem that appealing, either. During our time away, Ciro’s had closed down and then reopened as a new teen club called It’s Boss. The scene The Byrds had created on the Sunset Strip had already started morphing into something unrecognizable. Meanwhile, Los Angeles was totally engulfed in the Watts riots. Reading about our city burning up was pretty strange, especially being so far away. As for “The Battle of Britain,” we certainly weren’t returning as triumphant heroes. Feeling defeated, we limped back to California, licking our wounds but determined to rebuild.
We arrived back in Los Angeles on Friday, August 20, but there wasn’t much time for rest. Columbia wanted us to release another single and start planning for a second album, so it was time to return to the studio and get to work. Though we’d just seen them in London, The Beatles actually arrived in LA around the same time we returned. They rented a home in Benedict Canyon that I heard was owned by Burt Lancaster. We were all invited up to the house, and George and Paul came down to Columbia a few days later to watch us record “The Times They Are A-Changin’”—pretty exciting having The Beatles stop by your recording session. Of course, we didn’t get much accomplished after they arrived because we were having too much fun. Of The Byrds members, David became the closest to The Beatles and was hanging around with them quite a bit during their West Coast stay.
Though our version of “All I Really Want to Do” was a Top 40 hit in the US, it didn’t make as big a splash as “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The challenge was on to come up with another undeniable hit during our summer recording sessions, and we had just the song. Jim McGuinn was a huge fan of Pete Seeger and remembered one of Pete’s greatest arrangements, “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” which had been covered by Judy Collins. Actually, McGuinn had worked with her on the recording of the song. I remember one time he was playing it on his acoustic guitar in the back of the bus during our Midwest run earlier in the summer when he asked me what I thought of it. I loved it. We all did, and we discussed recording it the next time we were in the studio.
Only problem was, Dickson was totally against us cutting the song. In his eyes, the lyrics defined a sort of strict black-and-white philosophy. There was no gray area in King Solomon’s wisdom from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes that described the cyclical nature of life. Dickson was adamant that if we insisted on recording the song and releasing it, that could be the nail in the coffin of our career. We were unphased. We worked it up, and McGuinn, once again, came up with a great intro arranged around a descending syncopated bass and drum groove. There were a lot of takes on the basic track, but we finally managed to record a stunning version, and it was magic. This was not the slick Wrecking Crew session guys, this was The Byrds! Something we could really call our own. It had the right feel, and we knew it was a hit.
Columbia released the song, and it started up the Billboard charts in October. In the meantime, we continued working on the second album with Gene’s great “Set you Free This Time,” the song he had written after meeting Paul McCartney in London. We even tackled our first true country song, “Satisfied Mind,” which was a big hit for Porter Wagoner several years earlier. I’d heard it on the radio and thought it would be a good tune for The Byrds to record. There were some other great tracks we recorded for the second album, including McGuinn’s song “It Won’t Be Wrong,” another classic Gene Clark composition called “The World Turns All around Her,” and Bob Dylan’s “Lay Down Your Weary Tune.”
When we finished recording, Dickson and Tickner booked us on another tour for November, which would prove to be our best live touring experience up to that point. Dick Clark’s Winter Caravan of Stars was like being on the road with one of the great package shows that toured the middle of the country during rock’s early golden era. Our tour mates were Bo Diddley, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and The We Five. All the acts were set up to ride in one bus together from town to town. The Byrds—being a little stranger than the other acts on the tour, and having a bit more power as the headliners, thanks to the success of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “All I Really Want to Do”—opted for our own Clark Cortez Mobile Home, where we could engage in uninterrupted mischief.
The Caravan of Stars would roll into town, usually set up in the local high school gymnasium or theater, play the show, and then we were off to the next stop. Michael and I immediately gravitated to Bo Diddley, having loved his early records. He was a great guy with a rocking band that featured the Duchess. The Duchess was a very tall, very beautiful young lady that Bo told everyone was his sister, even though we found out years later she wasn’t. That was his way of protecting her from other musicians. She played electric guitar and sang backup with his group without ever missing a dance step.
Whenever you passed by Bo’s dressing room before a show you’d see all the guys sitting around a table wearing their “do rags” and dealing poker. We were mesmerized by them. One night, Mark Lindsey, the lead singer with The Raiders, tossed a firecracker into Bo’s room and immediately ran off. I just happened to walk around the corner as Mark was disappearing down the other end of the hallway. I ran right into Calvin, Bo’s drummer, and immediately realized he was holding a straight razor to my throat. “What the hell you think you doin,’ boy?” he roared. I was shaking. Scared to death. I had no clue what was happening. I was five foot seven and one hundred forty-five pounds. And this huge guy is holding a razor and threatening to cut me up. Where’s this coming from? Lindsey finally returned and confessed his guilt. Calvin released me without so much as an apology, but I figured that was fine, considering I was out of the life-flashing-before-my-eyes predicament I’d been in only minutes before.
I wondered why Calvin was so jumpy, but it became clearer to me when the Caravan played in Rome, Georgia. While walking around town before show time, I happened upon some of those old water fountain signs that read “whites only” and “colored only.” I couldn’t believe it. I was a middle-class California kid seeing something in person that I’d only read about before. That was a real eye opener for me. When Mark threw that firecracker, it sounded like a gunshot in the confines of that small dressing room—not a good thing for a black man in the South to hear in 1965. Mike Clarke and I, in all our naiveté, told Bo that we were going to go to The Apollo Theater when the tour wrapped up in New York at the end of the month. “No, no, no. You are not going there alone,” he warned. “I’ll take you boys; you can’t just waltz into The Apollo looking like you do.”
When we arrived in New York, we forgot all about Bo and The Apollo. With the last show of the tour behind us, our minds were on meeting girls, which was always foremost on the agenda. Michael was so much fun to hang out with—outgoing and always attracting interesting people. We visited an up-and-coming club called Arthur that was owned by Sybil Burton, ex-wife of Richard Burton who’d left her for Elizabeth Taylor. Mike managed to get us past the red velvet rope where we met the famous Mrs. Burton and were treated royally. We fulfilled our quest in a matter of minutes by meeting two beautiful young ladies. We brought them
back to our hotel for drinks, where Mike and I were holding court in my room. Within an hour of settling in, just at the wrong time, there was a loud banging on the door. “Open up,” someone barked. “Hotel security!” We opened the door to find a guy who looked like he’d just walked out of a 1940s crime drama, complete with a half-smoked cigar hanging from his mouth and a slouched fedora perched on his head. “You can’t have girls in the room,” he said matter-of-factly. “Pack your things; you’re out of here, and I mean right now!” All of a sudden, we were outside in the middle of the night trying to hail a taxi. We ultimately ended up in a kinder, gentler hotel thanks to a friendly cab driver’s tip.
The tour ended on November 28 and was a great success. “Turn! Turn! Turn!” hit number one on the Billboard chart on December 4, and two days later, the album of the same name was released. Everything had been restored to balance after the English debacle, and we were riding high. With two number one records under our belts, we were booked on The Ed Sullivan Show, so we immediately returned to New York. Not only was Sullivan the forum where I first saw The Beatles, but his show was the best of the old-fashioned live TV variety programs featuring music, juggling, acrobats, animal acts, and comedians all performing in front of millions of Americans. It was big!
The day of the show, we checked in at the studio for rehearsals. Things started well but quickly took a turn. Sullivan’s producer, Bob Precht, was concerned that “Turn! Turn! Turn!” was a little long and asked us to cut the song down to a shorter version for the broadcast. David went ballistic. “Hey man, nobody tells The Byrds what we can and can’t do with our art!” When Precht pushed back, David ramped up the vitriol, calling this guy some really nasty names and insulting his intelligence. Not only was Bob Precht the producer of The Ed Sullivan Show, he was also Ed’s son-in-law! This was bad. Everything suddenly went silent and you could feel every bit of the tension in the air. Precht took a step closer to David. “Listen, you little punk, we’ve been doing this a long time, and we do it the way we do it, or it doesn’t happen. You, my friend, are fired, and you guys won’t ever be on this show again.” The production guys in the sound booth literally broke into applause. This was really bad.
Time Between Page 11
