Revenge of The Rickenbacker: R.E.M. & The Byrds
We’ll call today “Revenge of the Rickenbacker!” After spending the morning listening to R.E.M.’s Reckoning and a few other classics from their IRS years, I was craving more Rickenbacker rock. I was consumed with a desire to hear some of those bands that made that jangling, chiming guitar sound famous. To my way of thinking there are two bands that really stand out in that field — The Byrds and Tom Petty — and Petty clearly learned from listening to The Byrds.
Oddly enough, I started with the least Byrds-y, least Rickenbacker-drenched album in their catalog: the Gram Parsons-led Sweethearts of The Rodeo. The first side of that album stands up as one of the best Side A’s of the vinyl era. As great as those songs are, I was still jonesing to get my jangle on, so I queued up “Everyone’s Been Burned.” It’s a classic David Crosby gem from Younger Than Yesterday, an album that features their wonderful version of “My Back Pages.”
Next up was Turn! Turn! Turn!, which is probably my favorite Byrds album- at least from that classic, early period. “If You’re Gone” is a mesmerizing, haunting, hypnotic, brilliant song by the underrated Gene Clark. Many Byrds’ fans prefer Clark’s “Set You Free This Time,” also on Turn!, and it’s a great, great song but “If You’re Gone” is still, for my money, the best thing Clark ever did and the best song on the album. There’s also the Biblically inspired title track written by Pete Seeger and the Dylan-penned wonders “The Times Are A-Changing” and “Lay Down Your Weary Tune.” There’s nothing about this album I don’t like.
I don’t know if The Byrds found this sound first and it really doesn’t matter because they did something special with it, something that stands up all these years later as evidenced by the influence it has had through the decades. I don’t know if Peter Buck found his sound by listening to Byrds records or if he heard it secondhand by listening to bands influenced by them, but there is a sonic thread that unites them. Long live Rickenbacker!
