![]() Spacemen" are loose and hardly definitive. The setlist is also distractingly schizophrenic, veering from the likes of "Lover of the Bayou" to Dylan's laid-back "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" with little in the way of segue. Singing lead on a handful of songs, such as Jackson Browne's "Jamaica, Say You Will", White offers a vocal counterpart to McGuinn, but the harmonies from the band's heyday are largely nowhere to be found. The a cappella "Amazing Grace" that closes the set is a far cry from the McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, and Chris Hillman frontline that helped make the band famous.īut then there's the guitar. McGuinn and White tear it up on cuts like "Jesus Is Just Alright" and "Lover of the Bayou". "There are so many songs we'd all like to hear, and there are so many songs we'd like to do for you, but there's only a little bit of time," apologizes McGuinn before someone requests "Nashville West". "You want to play that one, Clarence?" he asks, before letting White off his leash. ![]() The traditional "Black Mountain Rag/Soldier's Joy" includes two of the disc's best minutes, easing into a 12-string free "Mr. #THE BYRDS LIVE WITH EIGHT MILES HIGH FREE# Tambourine Man", Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd", and Leadbelly's "Take a Whiff (On Me)", tracks that showcase McGuinn and White sans clunky rhythm section. ![]() Indeed, the two later lead a radically reworked "Eight Miles High" past the 18-minute mark, but that also includes a lengthy interlude featuring the plodding bassist Skip Battin and drummer Gene Parsons who, frankly, drag down the John Coltrane-inspired epic (the liners note the section was mostly inserted to give McGuinn and White a cigarette break). It's partly their fault that Live at the Royal Albert Hall 1971 never quite reaches the heights McGuinn and White aim for, but it's also clear, instrumental aptitude or not, that the Byrds had moved beyond the logical end of its creative road. Listening to this set, it's easy to imagine the band deciding to tour forever, like the Dead did, existing for fleeting moments of ephemeral glory while memories of its better days faded away. But that was not to be, and in retrospect, with fine but hardly earth-shattering documents such as this one as proxy witness, pulling the plug was probably for the best.When the Byrds kicked off the second phase of their multistage career in March 1966 with the release of “Eight Miles High,” they also happened to launch a new chapter in rock history. The quintet pretty much spent the previous year mining the Bob Dylan songbook, fine-tuning its own collective songwriting talents and perfecting the folk-rock genre with chart-topping singles like “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” But as their busy 1965 – which included two albums and many live appearances – started to wind down, the Byrds were getting restless. ![]() ![]() That fall, the band participated in a tour spearheaded by American Bandstand host Dick Clark.
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