(Untitled) is the ninth album by the American rock band the Byrds and was released in September 1970 on Columbia Records. It is a double album, with the first LP featuring live concert recordings from early 1970, and a second disc consisting of new studio recordings. The album represented the first official release of any live recordings by the band, as well as the first appearance on a Byrds' record of new recruit Skip Battin, who had replaced the band's previous bass player, John York, in late 1969.

The studio album mostly consists of newly written, self-penned material, including a number of songs that had been composed by band leader Roger McGuinn and Broadway theatre director Jacques Levy for a planned country rock musical that the pair were developing. but plans for the musical fell through. A single taken from the album, "Chestnut Mare" b/w "Just a Season", was released in the U.S. in October 1970, but missed the Billboard Hot 100 chart, bubbling under at number 121. The single was later released in the UK in January 1971, where it did considerably better, reaching number 19 on the UK Singles Chart.

Background

Following the dismissal of the Byrds' bass player, John York, in September 1969, Skip Battin was recruited as a replacement at the suggestion of drummer Gene Parsons and guitarist Clarence White. Battin was, at 35, the oldest member of the band and the one with the longest musical history. After the break-up of Skip & Flip, Battin moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a freelance session musician and formed the band Evergreen Blueshoes. Thus, the McGuinn, White, Parsons, and Battin line-up of the band was the most stable and longest lived of any configuration of the Byrds.

For most of 1969, the Byrds' leader and guitarist, Roger McGuinn, had been developing a country rock stage production of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt with former psychologist and Broadway impresario Jacques Levy. The musical was to be titled Gene Tryp, an anagram of the title of Ibsen's play, and would loosely follow the storyline of Peer Gynt, with some modifications to transpose the action from Norway to south-west America during the mid-19th century. "Lover of the Bayou" would be re-recorded by McGuinn in 1975 and appear on his Roger McGuinn & Band album.

Despite not being staged at the time, Gene Tryp was eventually performed in a revised configuration by the drama students of Colgate University, between November 18 and November 21, 1992, under the new title of Just a Season: A Romance of the Old West.

Conception and title

Having toured extensively throughout 1969 and early 1970, the Byrds decided that the time was right to issue a live album.

The album's innominate title actually came about by accident. These working titles were intended to signify the artistic rebirth that the band felt the album represented. This being the case, it made perfect sense to capture their sound in a live environment, and so two consecutive New York concert appearances were recorded. The first of these was the band's performance at Queens College's Colden Auditorium on February 28, 1970, and the second was their performance at the Felt Forum on March 1, 1970. Of the seven live tracks featured on the album, "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star", "Mr. Tambourine Man", "Mr. Spaceman", and "Eight Miles High" were drawn from the Queens College performance, while "Lover of the Bayou", "Positively 4th Street", and "Nashville West" originated from the Felt Forum show. Byrds biographer Johnny Rogan has suggested that the appearance of the band's earlier hit singles "Mr. Tambourine Man", "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star", and "Eight Miles High" on the live record had the effect of forging a spiritual and musical link between the band's current line-up and the original mid-1960s incarnation of the band.

"Lover of the Bayou" is followed on the album by a cover of Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street", which would be the last Dylan song that the Byrds covered on an album until "Paths of Victory", which was recorded during the 1990 reunion sessions featured on The Byrds box set. The majority of the songs included on the studio album were penned by the band members themselves, in stark contrast to their previous album, which had largely consisted of cover versions or renditions of traditional material.

Among the songs recorded for the album were Parsons and Battin's "Yesterday's Train", a gentle meditation on the theme of reincarnation; a cover of Lowell George and Bill Payne's "Truck Stop Girl", sung by Clarence White; and a light-hearted reading of Lead Belly's "Take a Whiff on Me". The album also included the Battin-penned "Well Come Back Home", a heartfelt comment on the Vietnam War. Lyrically, "Just a Season" touches on a variety of different subjects, including reincarnation, life's journey, fleeting romantic encounters and finally, stardom, as touchingly illustrated by the semi-autobiographical line, "It really wasn't hard to be a star."

The album also includes the song "Hungry Planet", which was written by Battin and record producer, songwriter, and impresario Kim Fowley. The album's second Battin–Fowley penned song, "You All Look Alike", was again sung by McGuinn and provided a sardonic view of the plight of the hippie in American society. As of 20, this track has never been officially released, although a live version is included on (Untitled)/(Unissued). "Lover of the Bayou" was also recorded during studio sessions for (Untitled), but ultimately, a live recording of the song would be included on the album instead, with the studio recording appearing for the first time on the (Untitled)/(Unissued) reissue. It reached number 11 in the United Kingdom, where it spent a total of four weeks on the charts.

Although (Untitled) was released exclusively in stereo commercially, there is some evidence to suggest that mono copies of the album (possibly radio station promos) were distributed in the U.S. In addition, there are advance promo copies of the album known to exist which list both "Kathleen's Song" and "Hold It" as being on the album: the former under the simplified title of "Kathleen" and the latter as "Tag". While "Hold It" does indeed appear on the official album release, at the end of the live recording of "Eight Miles High", it was not listed as a separate track on commercially released copies of the album.

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Upon its release, (Untitled) was met with widespread critical acclaim and strong international sales, with advance orders alone accounting for the sale of 100,000 copies. Roy Carr, writing in the NME, commented that, "the Byrds still retain an artistry and freshness unmatched by most others in their genius. Even changes in personnel and direction haven't dulled their appeal or magical charms."

(Untitled) was remastered at 20-bit resolution as part of the Columbia/Legacy Byrds series. It was reissued in an expanded form with the new title of (Untitled)/(Unissued) on February 22, 2000. The remastered reissue of the album contains an entire bonus CD of previously unreleased live and studio material from the period.