The Byrds' Greatest Hits is the first greatest hits album by the American rock band the Byrds and was released in August 1967 on Columbia Records. It is the top-selling album in the Byrds' catalogue and reached number 6 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, but failed to chart in the UK.
Content
The album provides a summary of the Byrds' history during Gene Clark and David Crosby's original tenure with the band and also functions as a survey of the group's hit singles from 1965 to 1967, a period when the band had its greatest amount of success on the singles chart. Most of the band's U.S. A-sides from this period are included on the album, along with three of their more important album tracks: "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better", "The Bells of Rhymney", and "Chimes of Freedom". In addition, four of the singles included on the album had charted in the United Kingdom, peaking at the following positions on the UK Singles Chart: "Turn! Turn! Turn!" number 26; "Eight Miles High" number 24; "All I Really Want to Do" number 4; and "Mr. Tambourine Man" number 1. Rogan further opined that "Turn! Turn! Turn!" summed up the decade's counter-cultural values as much as "Blowin' in the Wind", "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" or "All You Need Is Love", while "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Eight Miles High" helped to introduce the subgenres of folk rock and psychedelic rock respectively into the popular music of the day.
The album was first issued on CD by Columbia Records in 1985 and was later re-released in a remastered form in 1991 with alternative cover artwork. In the UK and Europe, this 1991 edition of the album was titled Greatest Hits: 18 Classics Remastered and included an additional seven bonus tracks taken from the Byrds' post Younger Than Yesterday career (a period not covered by the original album). The album was remastered again at 20-bit resolution as part of the Columbia/Legacy Byrds series and reissued in an expanded and remixed form on March 30, 1999. The three bonus tracks on the 1999 reissue included two of the remaining singles from the Byrds' 1965–1967 career, plus the number 63 charting B-side, "It Won't Be Wrong".
On March 16, 2009 Sony Music released a new Byrds compilation titled Greatest Hits as part of their Steel Box Collection series. This compilation album is not the same as the original The Byrds' Greatest Hits album, although it does have four of the same tracks in common.
Reception
Upon release, The Byrds' Greatest Hits was met with positive reviews. Paul Williams enthusiastically waxed lyrical about the album in a review published in Crawdaddy! magazine: "Any greatest hits album is insignificant. By definition it contains nothing unfamiliar; and yet this very fact offers great potential beauty, for a well-made greatest hits LP might then unleash the emotion of familiarity in an artistic context. The Byrds have achieved that goal: always masters of the form, they have now taken the concept of a great hits anthology and created from it an essay into rediscovery." A November 1967 review of the album in Beat Instrumental declared "This is probably the best collection LP to come out of the states this year, and has songs that won't date for years to come." In his review of the SACD version of the album for the Music Tap website, Robert Olsen described the album as "a compilation album featuring some of the better known recordings from the first 4 albums." In 2003, the album was ranked at number 178 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, although it was dropped when the list when was updated in 2012.
Track listing
Side one
- "Mr. Tambourine Man" (Bob Dylan) – 2:29
- "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" (Gene Clark) – 2:32
- "The Bells of Rhymney" (Idris Davies, Pete Seeger) – 3:30
- "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)" (Book of Ecclesiastes/Pete Seeger) – 3:49
- "All I Really Want to Do" (Bob Dylan) – 2:04
- "Chimes of Freedom" (Bob Dylan) – 3:51
Side two
- "Eight Miles High" (Gene Clark, Jim McGuinn, David Crosby) – 3:34
- "Mr. Spaceman" (Jim McGuinn) – 2:09
- "5D (Fifth Dimension)" (Jim McGuinn) – 2:33
- "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" (Jim McGuinn, Chris Hillman) – 1:50
- "My Back Pages" (Bob Dylan) – 3:08
1991 reissue bonus tracks
- <li value="12">"Jesus Is Just Alright" (Arthur Reynolds) – 2:08</li>
- "Chestnut Mare" (Roger McGuinn, Jacques Levy) – 5:07
- "I Trust" (Roger McGuinn) – 3:17
- "Lady Friend" (David Crosby) – 2:35
- "Lay Lady Lay" (Bob Dylan) – 3:16
- "Ballad of Easy Rider" (Roger McGuinn) – 2:02
- "Glory, Glory" (Arthur Reynolds) – 4:03
1999 reissue bonus tracks
- <li value="12">"It Won't Be Wrong" (Jim McGuinn, Harvey Gerst) – 1:58</li>
- "Set You Free This Time" (Gene Clark) – 2:49
- "Have You Seen Her Face" (Chris Hillman) – 2:40
Personnel
Adapted from So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star: The Byrds Day-By-Day (1965–1973), The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited, various compact disc liner notes, and other online sources:
Credits refer only to the original 11 track album.
The Byrds
- Jim McGuinn – guitar, vocals
- Gene Clark – tambourine, vocals
- David Crosby – guitar, vocals
- Chris Hillman – electric bass, vocals
- Michael Clarke – drums
Additional personnel
- Jerry Cole – rhythm guitar on "Mr. Tambourine Man"
- Larry Knechtel – electric bass on "Mr. Tambourine Man"
- Hal Blaine – drums on "Mr. Tambourine Man"
- Leon Russell – electric piano on "Mr. Tambourine Man"
- Van Dyke Parks – organ on "5D (Fifth Dimension)"
- Hugh Masekela – trumpet on "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star"
Release history
{|class="wikitable" border="1"
|-
!Date
!Label
!Format
!Country
!Catalog
!Notes
|-
|rowspan="2"|August 7, 1967
|rowspan="2"|Columbia
|rowspan="2" align="center"|LP
|rowspan="2" align="center"|US
|CL 2716
|Original mono release.
|-
|CS 9516
|Original stereo release.
|-
|rowspan="2"|October 20, 1967
|rowspan="2"|CBS
|rowspan="2" align="center"|LP
|rowspan="2" align="center"|UK
|BPG 63107
|Original mono release.
|-
|SBPG 63107
|Original stereo release.
|-
|1976
|Embassy
|align="center"|LP
|align="center"|UK
|EMB 31381
|
|-
|1985
|Columbia
|align="center"|CD
|align="center"|US
|CK 9516
|Original CD release.
|-
|1985
|CBS
|align="center"|LP
|align="center"|UK
|32068
|
|-
|1985
|CBS
|align="center"|CD
|align="center"|UK
|CDCBS 32068
|
|-
|1991
|Columbia
|align="center"|CD
|align="center"|US
|467843 2
|Titled Greatest Hits: Re-Mastered with alternative cover artwork.
|-
|1991
|Sony
|align="center"|LP
|align="center"|UK
|COL 467843 1
|Titled Greatest Hits: Re-Mastered with alternative cover artwork.
|-
|1991
|Sony
|align="center"|CD
|align="center"|UK
|COL 468316 2
|Titled Greatest Hits: 18 Classics Remastered with alternative cover artwork and seven bonus tracks.
|-
|March 30, 1999
|Columbia/Legacy
|align="center"|CD
|align="center"|US
|CK 66230
|Reissue containing three bonus tracks and a stereo remix of the entire album.
|-
|January 30, 2001
|Columbia/Legacy
|align="center"|CD
|align="center"|US
|CS 66230
|SACD reissue containing three bonus tracks and a stereo remix of the entire album.
|-
|2003
|Sony
|align="center"|CD
|align="center"|Japan
|MHCP-107
|Reissue containing three bonus tracks and a stereo remix of the album in a replica LP sleeve.
|-
|}