Roger McGuinn

James Roger McGuinn (known professionally as Roger McGuinn and born James Joseph McGuinn III on July 13, 1942) is a popular rock American singer-songwriter and guitarist of the 1960s and 1970s. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' hit records, the pioneering folk-rock band of the 1960s, contributing much to the band's unique sound.

Early life/music career

Roger McGuinn was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. His parents, James and Dorothy, were involved in journalism and public relations, and during his childhood penned a bestseller titled Parents Can't Win. He attended The Latin School of Chicago. He became interested in music after hearing Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel," and asked his parents to buy him a guitar. In the early 1980s, he paid tribute to the song that encouraged him to pick up the guitar that he credited "Heartbreak Hotel" to his autobiographical show. Around the same time, he was also influenced by country artists and/or groups such as, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent and The Everly Brothers.

In 1957, he enrolled as a student at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music, where he mastered the five-string banjo and continued to hone his guitar skills. After graduation, McGuinn performed solo at various coffeehouses on the folk music circuit where he was discovered and hired as a sideman by folk groups like the Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and Judy Collins. He also played guitar and sang backup harmonies for Bobby Darin. Soon after, he moved to the West Coast, winding up in Los Angeles, where he eventually met the future members of The Byrds.

In 1962, after he left the Chad Mitchell Trio, Bobby Darin hired him to be a backup guitarist and harmony singer. Around that time, he wanted to add some folk to his roots thinking it was a burgeoning musical field. About a year and a half after he began to play guitar and sing with Darin, Darin lost his voice and retired from singing. Bobby opened T.M. Music in New York City's Brill Building, hiring McGuinn as a song writer for $35 a week. In 1963, just one year before he cofounded the Byrds, he was a studio musician in New York City, recording with Judy Collins and Simon and Garfunkel. At the same time, he was hearing of The Beatles, and wondered whether Beatlemania might affect folk music. When Doug Weston gave McGuinn a job in Los Angeles, at the Troubadour, McGuinn had seasoned his act with most of the Beatles songs, therefore, he would turn his attention to another folkie who was also a Beatle fan, Gene Clark, to join forces with McGuinn in The Byrds, in July of 1964.

During his time with the Byrds, McGuinn developed two innovative and highly influential styles of electric guitar playing: "jingle-jangle" -- generating ringing arpeggios based on banjo finger picking styles he learned while at the Old Town School -- and, secondly, a merging of saxophonist John Coltrane's free-jazz atonalities which hinted at the droning of the sitar, a style of playing first heard on the Byrds' 1966 single "Eight Miles High".

While tracking the Byrds' first single, "Mr. Tambourine Man," at Columbia studios, McGuinn discovered a key ingredient of his signature sound. "The 'Rick' by itself is kind of thuddy," he notes. "It doesn't ring. But if you add a compressor, you get that long sustain. To be honest, I found this by accident. The engineer, Ray Gerhardt, would run compressors on everything to protect his precious equipment from loud rock and roll . He compressed the heck out of my 12-string, and it sounded so great we decided to use two tube compressors [likely Teletronix LA-2As] in series, and then go directly into the board. That's how I got my 'jingle-jangle' tone. It's really squashed down, but it jumps out from the radio. With compression, I found I could hold a note for three or four seconds, and sound more like a wind instrument. Later, this led me to emulate John Coltrane's saxophone on 'Eight Miles High.' Without compression, I couldn't have sustained the riff's first note."

"I practiced eight hours a day on that 'Rick'," he continues, "I really worked it. In those days, acoustic 12s had wide necks and thick strings that were spaced pretty far apart, so they were hard to play. But the Rick's slim neck and low action let me explore jazz and blues scales up and down the fretboard, and incorporate more hammer-ons and pull-offs into my solos. I also translated some of my banjo picking techniques to the 12-string. By combining a flat pick with metal finger picks on my middle and ring fingers, I discovered I could instantly switch from fast single-note runs to banjo rolls and get the best of both worlds."

Another sound that McGuinn developed is made by playing a seven string guitar, featuring a doubled G-string (with the second string tuned an octave higher). The C. F. Martin guitar company has even released a special edition called the HD7 Roger McGuinn Signature Edition, that claims to capture McGuinn's signature "jingle-jangle" tone which he created with 12 string guitars, while maintaining the ease of playing a 6-string.

In 1968 he helped create the groundbreaking Byrds album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, to which many attribute the rise in popularity of country rock. After the break-up of the Byrds, McGuinn released several solo albums, and later toured with Bob Dylan during his 1975 and 1976 "Rolling Thunder Revue" and opened for Dylan and Tom Petty in 1987.

In 1978, McGuinn joined fellow ex-Byrds Gene Clark and Chris Hillman to form "McGuinn, Clark and Hillman", and the band released its debut album with Capitol Records in 1979. The media loved the band and they performed on many TV rock shows, including repeated performances on The Midnight Special, where they played both new material and Byrds hits. "Don't You Write Her Off" reached #33 in April 1979. While some feel that the slick production and disco rhythms didn't flatter the group, and the album had mixed reviews both critically and commercially, it sold enough to generate a follow up. McGuinn, Clark and Hillman's second release was to have been a full group effort entitled "City", but a combination of Clark's unreliabilty and his dissatisfaction with their musical direction (mostly regarding Ron and Howard Albert's production) resulted in the billing change on their next LP "City" to "Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, featuring Gene Clark". By 1981 Clark had left and the group briefly continued as "McGuinn/Hillman."^{[citation needed]}

McGuinn currently tours as a solo artist.

Roger McGuinn has used the World Wide Web to continue the folk tradition since November 1995 by recording a different folk song each month on his Folk Den site. The songs are made available from his web site and a selection (with guest vocalists) was released on CD as Treasures from the Folk Den. In November 2005 McGuinn released a four-CD box set containing one hundred of his favorite songs from the Folk Den.

On July 11, 2000, McGuinn testified before in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on downloading music from the Internet that artists do not always receive the royalties that (non-Internet based) record companies state in contracts, and that to date, The Byrds had not received any royalties for their biggest hits, "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn, Turn, Turn"—they only received advances, which were split five ways and amounted to just "a few thousand dollars" per bandmember. He also stated that he was receiving 50 percent royalties from MP3.com.^[1]

Religious faith and name changes

In 1965, McGuinn joined the Subud spiritual association and practiced the latihan, an exercise in which he opened himself up to receiving spiritual guidance through the quieting of his mind. McGuinn changed his name in 1967 after Subud's founder Bapak told him it would better "vibrate with the universe." Bapak sent Jim the letter "R" and asked him to send back ten names starting with that letter. Owing to a fascination with airplanes, gadgets and science fiction, he sent names like "Rocket," "Retro," "Ramjet," and "Roger," the latter a term used in signalling protocol over two-way radios, military and civil aviation. Roger was the only "real" name in the bunch and Bapak picked it. While using the name Roger professionally from that time on, McGuinn only officially changed his middle name from Joseph to Roger.

In 1977 McGuinn became a born-again Christian.

Discography

• Roger McGuinn (1973)
• Peace on You (1974)
• Roger McGuinn and Band (1975)
• Cardiff Rose (1976)
• Thunderbyrd (1977)
• Back from Rio (1990)
• Born to Rock & Roll (1992)
• Live from Mars (1996)
• McGuinn's Folk Den (4 volumes) (2000)
• Treasures from the Folk Den (2001)
• Back to New York (2002)
• Live from Electric Lady Land (2002)
• Limited Edition (2004)
• The Folk Den Project (2005)
• Live From Spain (2007)

McGuinn also appears on the various artists anthology, "Adios Amigo: A Tribute To Arthur Alexander," (1994). McGuinn performs a cover version of "Anna." He has also performed the songs "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and "The Ballad Of Easy Rider," which were included on the soundtrack album for "Easy Rider." Another soundtrack that features McGuinn is the 1977 film "Ransom." McGuinn performed "Shoot 'Em," which appears on the anthology album "Byrd Parts 2," which was released on Australia's Raven Records label in 2003.

Cardiff Rose, 1976

Cardiff Rose (1976)[1], produced by Mick Ronson, was done on the heels of Bob Dylan's "Rolling Thunder Review" tour in 1975 which McGuinn had participated in. The album includes a pirate tale "Jolly Roger", a song about King Arthur's "Round Table", and a classic version of Joni Mitchell's "Dreamland".

1. Take Me Away
2. Jolly Roger
3. Rock and Roll Time
4. Friend
5. Partners in Crime
6. Up to Me
7. Round Table
8. Pretty Polly
9. Dreamland
10. Soul Love (demo recording)
11. Dreamland (live)

Thunderbyrd, 1977

1. All Night Long
2. It's Gone
3. Dixie Highway
4. American Girl
5. We Can Do It All Over Again
6. Why Baby Why
7. I'm Not Lonely Anymore
8. Golden Loom
9. Russian Hill

Back from Rio, 1990

1. Someone To Love
2. Car Phone
3. You Bowed Down
4. Suddenly Blue
5. The Trees Are All Gone
6. King Of The Hill
7. Without Your Love
8. The Time Has Come
9. Your Love Is A Gold Mine (Back From Rio) - feat. David Crosby
10. If We Never Meet Again

Born to Rock & Roll, 1992

1. I'm So Restless
2. My New Woman
3. Draggin'
4. The Water Is Wide
5. Same Old Sound
6. Bag Full Of Money
7. Gate of Horn
8. Peace On You
9. Lover Of The Bayou
10. Stone (The Lord Loves A Rolling Stone)
11. Lisa
12. Take Me Away
13. Jolly Roger
14. Friend
15. Dreamland
16. Dixie Highway
17. American Girl
18. Up To Me
19. Russian Hill
20. Born To Rock And Roll

References

1. ^ http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0007/11/se.01.html

External links

• Roger McGuinn - The Official Home Page
• Roger McGuinn's blog
• 2006 Roger McGuinn Interview on Modern Guitars
• Roger McGuinn's Folk Den - An archive of his monthly recordings
• Works by Roger McGuinn at Project Gutenberg
• Roger Mcguinn on This WEEK in TECH with Leo Laporte.
• 2004 Roger McGuinn Interview w/Pop Matters.com

Donate to Wikimedia