The Notorious Byrd Brothers is the fifth studio album by the American rock band the Byrds, released on January 15, 1968, by Columbia Records. The album represents the pinnacle of the Byrds' late-'60s musical experimentation, with the band blending together elements of psychedelia, folk rock, country, electronic music, baroque pop, and jazz. With producer Gary Usher, they made extensive use of a number of studio effects and production techniques, including phasing, flanging, and spatial panning. The Byrds also introduced the sound of the pedal steel guitar and the Moog modular synthesizer into their music, making it one of the first LP releases on which the Moog appears.
Recording sessions for The Notorious Byrd Brothers took place throughout the latter half of 1967 and were fraught with tension, resulting in the loss of two members of the band; Additionally, original band member Gene Clark, who had left the group in early 1966, rejoined for three weeks during the making of the album, before leaving again. Author Ric Menck has commented that in spite of these changes in personnel and the conflict surrounding its creation, The Notorious Byrd Brothers is the band's most cohesive and ethereal-sounding album statement.
The Notorious Byrd Brothers reached number 47 on the Billboard Top LPs chart and number 12 on the UK Album Chart. A cover of the Gerry Goffin and Carole King song "Goin' Back" was released in October 1967 as the lead single from the album to mild chart success. The album later came to be widely regarded as one of the Byrds' best album releases, as well as their most experimental and progressive. By the time of the album's release, however, only McGuinn and Hillman remained in the group. Though he remained a band member and continued to honor his live concert commitments with the group, Clarke was temporarily replaced in the studio by noted session drummers Jim Gordon and Hal Blaine.
David Crosby's dismissal
thumb|[[David Crosby was fired from the Byrds midway through recording sessions for the album.]]
David Crosby was fired by McGuinn and Hillman in October 1967, partly as a result of friction arising from Crosby's displeasure at the band's wish to record the Goffin–King composition "Goin' Back". Although the Byrds did record "Triad", the song's subject matter compelled McGuinn and Hillman to prevent it from being released at the time.
Crosby had also annoyed the other members of the Byrds during their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival when he gave lengthy in-between-song speeches on several controversial subjects, including the JFK assassination and the benefits of giving LSD to "all the statesmen and politicians in the world". He further irritated his bandmates at Monterey by performing with rival group Buffalo Springfield, filling in for ex-member Neil Young.
His stock within the band deteriorated still further following the commercial failure of his song "Lady Friend", when it was released as the A-side of a Byrds single in July 1967. His absence from many of the recording sessions for The Notorious Byrd Brothers was the final straw for McGuinn and Hillman. Crosby received a generous severance package and began to collaborate with his new musical partner, Stephen Stills.
Much to Crosby's chagrin, McGuinn and Hillman reworked his unfinished song "Draft Morning" following his departure and included it in the final running order for the album, giving themselves a co-writing credit.
Gene Clark's temporary return
Following Crosby's departure, Gene Clark was asked to rejoin the band. His debut solo album (co-produced by the Byrds' then current producer, Gary Usher, with both Clarke and Hillman playing on it) had been a critical success, but a commercial failure and Clark was currently inactive. Clark rejoined the Byrds in October 1967 for three weeks, during which time he and the band performed on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour television program, lip-syncing "Goin' Back" and "Mr. Spaceman". There is also studio documentation and eyewitness accounts to suggest that Clark contributed backing vocals to "Goin' Back" and "Space Odyssey". Author and musician Ric Menck has remarked that if Clark is present on either "Space Odyssey" or "Goin' Back", his contributions are not obvious and must have been buried very low in the mix by producer Gary Usher.
Music
Production
Despite its troubled genesis, the album contains some of the band's most gentle and ethereal music, as well as some of its most progressive and experimental. Lyrically, it attempted to deal with many contemporary themes such as peace, ecology, freedom, drug use, alienation and mankind's place in the universe.
thumb|A [[Moog modular synthesizer similar to the one used during the recording of The Notorious Byrd Brothers.]]
The band also began experimenting with the Moog modular synthesizer on a number of tracks, making The Notorious Byrd Brothers one of the first rock albums to feature the instrument. Being something of an electronics buff, McGuinn was eager to experiment with the synthesizer in the recording studio, although reportedly, Hillman failed to share his enthusiasm for the instrument. This use of pedal steel, along with Clarence White's countrified guitar playing, foreshadowed the country rock direction that the band would explore on their next album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
Songs
The album's opening track, "Artificial Energy", features a prominent horn section and, as such, can be seen as a stylistic relative of "Lady Friend" and "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star", two earlier Byrds' songs that made use of brass. Although the press had accused the Byrds of writing songs about drugs in the past, specifically with "Eight Miles High" and "5D (Fifth Dimension)", when the band finally did record a song unequivocally dealing with drugs it was largely ignored by journalists.
A second Goffin–King composition, "Wasn't Born to Follow", also displays country and western influences, albeit filtered through the band's psychedelic and garage rock tendencies. The song's country leanings are underscored by the criss-crossing musical dialogue between the electric guitar and pedal steel.
Another song on the album that deals with the need to escape the confines of society is David Crosby's "Dolphin's Smile". The song was an early example of Crosby's penchant for using nautical imagery in his songs, a thematic trait he would utilize in future compositions, including "Wooden Ships" and "The Lee Shore".
The McGuinn and Hillman composition "Change Is Now", with its lyrics advising the listener to live life to the full, represents a celebration of the philosophy of carpe diem (popularly translated as "seize the day"). The song was initially written by Crosby, but he was fired from the Byrds shortly after he had introduced it to the rest of the band. Played in a jazzy, 5/4 time signature, the song's vocal arrangement was greatly influenced by the music of the Four Freshmen, a vocal group that Crosby had admired as a youngster. However, the pyramid was replaced by a rectangular monolith in both the film and the accompanying novelization.
Release and reception
The Notorious Byrd Brothers was released on January 15, 1968, in the United States (catalogue item CL 2775 in mono, CS 9575 in stereo) and on April 12, 1968, in the UK (catalogue item 63169 in mono, S 63169 in stereo). Christgau grouped it with contemporary releases by Love (Forever Changes) and The Beach Boys (Wild Honey), remarking: "[i]t's hard to believe that so much good can come out of one place [i.e. Los Angeles]." Melody Maker was also complimentary about the album, describing it as "A beautiful selection, representing US pop at its finest." Parke Puterbaugh, writing for the Rolling Stone website in 1999, remarked on the presence of "burbling Moog synthesizers and purring steel guitars" on the album, which he ultimately described as "a brilliant window onto an unforgettable place and time". A subsequent edition of the book, published in 1988, ranked the album at number 75. In 1995, Mojo magazine placed the album at number 36 in their list of "The 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made". In 2003, the album was ranked at number 171 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list. It also ranked number 32 on the NMEs list of the "100 Best Albums". In 2004, Q magazine included the album in its list of "The Music that Changed the World". It was voted number 158 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).
The Notorious Byrd Brothers 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 six bonus tracks, including Crosby's controversial ballad "Triad", the Indian-influenced "Moog Raga", and an instrumental backing track for the outtake "Bound to Fall".
Following the release of the album, the Byrds' recording of "Wasn't Born to Follow" was used in the 1969 film Easy Rider and included on the accompanying Easy Rider soundtrack album. In addition, the song "Change Is Now" has been covered by the progressive bluegrass band The Dixie Bee-Liners, on the tribute album Timeless Flyte: A Tribute to The Byrds — Full Circle, and by rock band Giant Sand, on Time Between – A Tribute to The Byrds. Ric Menck, best known for being a member of the band Velvet Crush, has written a book about the album for Continuum Publishing's 33⅓ series.