Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde is the seventh studio album by the American rock band the Byrds, released on March 5 1969, by Columbia Records. The album was produced by Bob Johnston and saw the band juxtaposing country rock material with psychedelic rock, giving the album a stylistic split-personality that was alluded to in its title. It was the first album to feature the new band line-up of Clarence White (guitar), Gene Parsons (drums), John York (bass), and founding member Roger McGuinn (guitar).
The album peaked at number 153 on the Billboard Top LPs album chart and reached number 15 on the UK Albums Chart. A preceding single, "Bad Night at the Whiskey" (b/w "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man"), was released on January 7, 1969, but it failed to chart in the United States or in the United Kingdom. In addition, a non-album single featuring a cover of Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay", which was recorded shortly after the release of Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde and also produced by Johnston, peaked at number 132 on the Billboard chart. Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde is the lowest charting album of the band's career in the United States, edging out the later Farther Along by one place.
Background
Following the departure of Gram Parsons from the band, lead guitarist Roger McGuinn and bass player Chris Hillman decided that they needed to find a replacement member to meet their forthcoming concert obligations. With an appearance at the Newport Pop Festival looming, McGuinn and Hillman moved quickly to recruit noted session guitarist and longtime Byrd-in-waiting, Clarence White. After the Newport Pop Festival appearance, White began to express dissatisfaction with the band's drummer, Kevin Kelley, and soon persuaded McGuinn and Hillman to replace Kelley with Gene Parsons (no relation to Gram), a friend of White's from their days together in the band Nashville West.
The new McGuinn, Hillman, White and Parsons line-up of the band was together for less than a month before Hillman departed to form the Flying Burrito Brothers with Gram Parsons.
Amidst so many changes in band personnel, McGuinn decided that he alone would sing lead vocals on the band's new album, to give it a sense of sonic unity. McGuinn felt that it would be too confusing for fans of the Byrds to have the unfamiliar voices of the new members coming forward at this stage and so White, Parsons and York were relegated to backing vocal duties during the recording of the album. Ultimately, the band were unhappy with Johnston's work on Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde and, as a result, it was the only Byrds' album to be produced by him. In that instance he incurred the band's wrath by overdubbing a female choir on to the recording, allegedly without the Byrds' consent. Among these songs were "Nashville West", an instrumental written by Parsons and White during their tenure with the country rock group of the same name, and "Your Gentle Way of Loving Me", a song that Parsons and Gib Guilbeau had released as a single in 1967.
Another song recorded during these sessions was McGuinn's "King Apathy III", a comment on political apathy and a championing of the rural idyll as an antidote to the excesses of the L.A. rock scene. which McGuinn had originally learned from watching Bob Gibson and Bob Camp at Chicago's Gate of Horn club back in April 1961. "Old Blue" features the first appearance on a Byrds' recording of the Parsons and White designed StringBender, an invention that allowed White to duplicate the sound of a pedal steel guitar on his Fender Telecaster. Emery was not, in fact, a Klansman.
An acetate version of Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, dated October 16, 1968, and containing a seven-track programme for the album is known to exist. At this point the album consisted of the songs "Old Blue", "King Apathy III", "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" and "This Wheel's on Fire" on side one, with "Your Gentle Way of Loving Me", "Nashville West" and "Bad Night at the Whiskey" on side two. while the McGuinn—York penned title track was not.
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The album was released to generally positive reviews, with famed rock critic Robert Christgau declaring the album "first-rate Byrds, a high recommendation." Johanna Schrier, writing in The Village Voice, described the album as "smooth and strong like a blended whiskey", before suggesting that it was "Part kin to Sweetheart of the Rodeo, part the acid offspring of Notorious Byrd Brothers." Disc magazine were particularly enthusiastic in their praise of the album, stating "[This is] their best album since perhaps Younger Than Yesterday, perfectly illustrating the two completely disparate sides of the group: far-out electronic rock and hick, twangy country."
Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde was remastered at 20-bit resolution as part of the Columbia/Legacy Byrds series. It was reissued in an expanded form on March 25, 1997, with five bonus tracks, including the outtake "Stanley's Song". Although the producer of the Columbia/Legacy Byrds' series, Bob Irwin, has stated that only the first four Byrds' albums underwent any remixing, some fans of the band maintain that Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde was also remixed, citing distinct differences between the 1997 reissue and the original album.