Album Reviews

Listening to this previously unreleased 1971 Royal Albert Hall live performance makes clear that by this time The Byrds were little more than Roger McGuinn’s backing band, but with Clarence White on guitar, Skip Battin on bass and Gene Parsons on drums, what a good backing band!

Compare this to The Byrds’ performance at the Monterey Pop Festival back when they were a band—never mind that there David Crosby’s great harmonies step all over lead vocalist McGuinn, which may in part explain the Byrds circa 1971!

Not that the early Byrds were a great live show. I saw them back in the ‘60s with the original line-up and that night at least, it was a shaky business, with unsteady rhythms and off-key harmonies.

This concert was also a mixed affair but for different reasons. The extended “Eight Miles High” loses its driving Coltrane-esque, psychedelic edge and with Clarence White taking the guitar lead becomes more countrified though the late Skip Battin’s lengthy bass break steals the song, unlikely as that may seem.

There are spirited takes of the repetitive “Lover of the Bayou” (the concert opener) and excellent renditions of “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,” and “Truck Stop Girl,” which makes sense since those were part of the group’s original countrified set list. “Baby, What You Want Me to Do” is filler and a game take on Jackson Browne’s “Jamaica, Say You Will” (remember this was 1971 and Browne was still a relative unknown) falls flat.

Side two covers a blah “Tambourine Man” (Roger was probably pretty sick of it by then), but good versions of “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Take a Whiff (On Me),” “Chestnut Mare” and “Jesus Is Just Alright.” Side three is the meandering “Eight Miles High.”

Side four gets off to a good start with a spirited “So You Want to Be a Rock’n’ Roll Star” in which McGuinn’s 12 string shines and you can easily imagine a youngster in Gainsville, Florida named Tom Petty listening intently to the original and formulating his future plans!

“Hey, Mr. Spaceman” loses some of its fun and drive due to an over-syncopated drum part but Clarence White’s guitar shines through as it does throughout. White was struck and killed in 1973 by a drunk driver loading his gear into a van after a gig in the California desert the night after attending McGuinn’s birthday party.

McGuinn tries out and succeeds with “I Trust” from the forthcoming Byrdmaniax album issues a month after the concert.

The great jam “Nashville West” goes down smoothly as an encore requested by the UK audience, there’s an okay countrified cover of “Roll Over Beethoven” and the show ends with, of all things, a heartfelt, well-harmonized a cappella version of “Amazing Grace.”

The recording is obviously an excellent sounding stereo board mix intended as a musicians’ reference so don’t expect to hear much of the great Royal Albert Hall’s acoustics, though you can hear the size of the space in the audience applause.

It’s a decent recording and a fine mix, just don’t expect the extension, immediacy and acoustic excellence you’d get from the Royal Hall had the date been set up as an actual live concert recording event.

A definite “must have” for Byrdmaniacs and Clarence White fans; others should proceed with caution.