Take Five: (Former) Rarities from the Byrds

Three Los Angeles musicians – Gene Clark, David Crosby and Jim (later Roger) McGuinn – started playing together in 1964 as a folk trio. Expanding to a quintet and taking the name the Byrds, the group developed its own hybrid of folk and rock. That sound was exemplified by their pioneering reading of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a no. 1 single in the U.S. (and top ten in seven other countries). That single lit the fire; the group would land several more singles on the Billboard Hot 100, and each of its 12 studio releases would appear on Billboard’s album chart. The Byrds’ influence on pop music is considerable, and most of its members went on to similarly well-regarded careers after the group’s end.

Even with a dozen studio albums released during the band’s active years (1964-73, not counting reunions), a considerable number of worthy recordings didn’t make it onto albums. While all of those would eventually be appended to CD-era reissues of Byrds albums, those tracks remain underappreciated. On the 60th anniversary of the release of their second album 1965’s Turn! Turn! Turn!, here are five songs that were, until the dawn of the compact disc, rare Byrds tracks.

“She Don’t Care About Time” (1965)
Guitarist and founding Byrds member Gene Clark composed the jangling folk rock of “She Don’t Care About Time,” and the group recorded the song in August 1965. The tune was featured as the B-side of the “Turn! Turn! Turn!” single, released in the U.S. in October of that year. But when the album Turn! Turn! Turn! appeared on record store shelves two months later, the song wasn’t on the record. It did, however, surface more than three decades later as a bonus track on that album’s expanded CD reissue.

“Triad” (1967)
Byrds guitarist David Crosby wrote the autobiographical “Triad” about a ménage à trois; in the view of Columbia Records executives, the song’s controversial lyrics rendered it unsuitable for release. The band did record the song, and performed it live onstage at least once (at Hollywood’s famed Whisky a Go Go). Once Crosby left the band, he offered the song to his friends in Jefferson Airplane, who recorded it and released their version on 1968’s Crown of Creation. The original Byrds recording finally surfaced on the 1997 expanded reissue of their fifth studio album, 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers.

“Lady Friend” (1967)
David Crosby wrote “Lady Friend” in 1967, and the Byrds recorded it in contentious sessions during April and June of that year. In June the group performed it live as part of their set at the landmark Monterey Pop Festival. “Lady Friend” was released as a single in July, reaching a disappointing no. 82 on the U.S. charts (and failing to chart at all outside the U.S.). By the time of the release of 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers, Crosby had been dismissed from the band, making it all but inevitable that the track would be left off that album. “Lady Friend” would, however, appear on many subsequent Byrds compilations and reissues beginning in 1990.

“Old John Robertson” (1967)
Bassist Chris Hillman and guitarist Roger McGuinn co-wrote “Old John Robertson,” recording the brief (under two minutes) song in late June 1967. The track was released just three weeks later, as the B-side of “Lady Friend.” The song would appear on an album six months later. But the version of “Old John Robertson” on The Notorious Byrd Brothers features a substantially different mix, adding fiddle by an uncredited session player) plus then-trendy “psychedelic” studio effects like flanging and phasing. The single version first appeared on an album in 1982, on The Original Singles, 1967-1969, Volume 2, and showed up on CD-era expanded album reissues.

“Willin’” (1970)
Guitarist Lowell George wrote the trucker anthem “Willin’” when he was a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. At Zappa’s urging, George left to form a band of his own. That group, Little Feat recorded the song in 1971. A year earlier, though, the Byrds recorded their version of the song, intended for release on their 1970 (Untitled) double album. The track was left off the final release, but surfaced as a bonus track of the 2000 (Untitled)/(Unissued) set.