Younger Than Yesterday

Younger Than Yesterday
Studio album by The Byrds
Released	February 6, 1967
Recorded	November 28 – December 8, 1966, Columbia Studios, Hollywood, CA
Genre	Folk rock, Psychedelic rock
Length	29:11
Label	Columbia
Producer	Gary Usher
Professional reviews
Allmusic link Robert Christgau (B-) link
The Byrds chronology
Fifth Dimension (1966) Younger Than Yesterday (1967) The Byrds' Greatest Hits (1967)
Singles from Younger Than Yesterday
"So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" / "Everybody's Been Burned" Released: January 9, 1967 "My Back Pages" / "Renaissance Fair" Released: March 13, 1967 "Have You Seen Her Face" / "Don't Make Waves"" Released: May 22, 1967

Younger Than Yesterday is the fourth album by the American rock band The Byrds and was released in February, 1967 (see 1967 in music) on Columbia Records,^[1] catalogue item CL 2642 in mono, CS 9442 in stereo.^[2] It peaked at #24 on the Billboard Albums chart during a stay of 24 weeks,^[3] and reached #37 in the United Kingdom.^[4] The band released a preceding single from the album, "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star", on January 9, 1967 which reached #29 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.^[5] Two additional singles were taken from the album, "My Back Pages" and "Have You Seen Her Face", which reached #30 and #74 on the Billboard chart respectively.^[5] None of the singles taken from the album charted in the United Kingdom.^[5] "My Back Pages" is notable for being the last single release by The Byrds to break into the Top 40 in the United States.^[5]

Background

Recording sessions for the album were produced by Brian Wilson's former musical collaborator, Gary Usher, who would go on to produce the band's next two albums as well.^[6] The entire album was completed during a work-intensive, eleven day period, starting on November 28 and finishing on December 8, 1966.^[7] The original working title for the record was Sanctuary but ultimately this was dropped in favour of a title inspired by the chorus lyrics of the Bob Dylan song, "My Back Pages", which the band covered on the album;^[7]

Ah, but I was so much older then,

I'm younger than that now.^[8]

Younger Than Yesterday was the first album to be entirely recorded by The Byrds without the participation of original member and principle songwriter, Gene Clark.^[1] Jim McGuinn and David Crosby continued to hone their songwriting skills in an attempt to fill the void left by Clark, and Michael Clarke, initially hired for his looks, continued to mature into a competent and at times, impressive drummer.^[1] The most surprising development within The Byrds at this time, was the emergence of Chris Hillman as the band's third songwriter.^[2] On The Byrds' previous album, Fifth Dimension, Hillman's writing contributions had been a shared credit for the instrumental "Captain Soul" and a co-arranger credit for "Wild Mountain Thyme".^[9] On Younger Than Yesterday, however, he is credited as the sole songwriter of four tracks, as well as a co-writer on "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star".^[10]

Music

"So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" was an acerbic but good-natured swipe at the success of manufactured rock bands like The Monkees, although the song also suggested certain ironies due to pre-fabricated aspects of the Byrds' own career, leading some fans to mistake it for an autobiographical song.^[7] Hillman's driving bassline and McGuinn's chiming, twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar riff form the core of the song,^[2] while the production is rounded off with the sound of screaming teenage fans, taped at a Byrds' concert in Bournemouth, England during the band's 1965 UK tour.^[1] South African jazz musician, Hugh Masekela, contributed the trumpet solo to the song and both he and The Byrds would later perform "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" together at the Monterey Pop Festival.^[11]

The album also found The Byrds successfully expanding their musical style into several different directions. Chris Hillman contributed two country-rock flavored songs, "Time Between" and "The Girl with No Name", the latter of which was inspired by a young lady named Girl Freiberg.^[10] Both songs featured the country-style guitar playing of Clarence White, who would go on to become a full member of The Byrds from 1968 through to 1973, during the band's latter-day line-up.^[12] Both "Time Between" and "The Girl with No Name", like "Mr. Spaceman" before them,^[13] anticipated The Byrds future experimentation in the country-rock genre.^[1] These two Chris Hillman songs, along with "Have You Seen Her Face" and the LSD-influenced "Thoughts and Words",^[10] brought a melodic flavour to the album that had been missing from the band since Gene Clark's departure.^[2]

Meanwhile, McGuinn and Crosby's songs, written both separately and together, feature an expansion of the jazz influences and psychedelia that had been featured heavily on their previous album, Fifth Dimension. "C.T.A.-102", named after the quasar of the same name and written by McGuinn and his science-fiction minded partner Bob Hippard, was a whimsical but ultimately serious song that speculated on the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.^[1] The song features studio sound effects, simulated alien voices and the sound of an oscillator.^[10]

Crosby's songwriting skills had also developed rapidly, with "Renaissance Fair" (co-written with McGuinn) being an example of his increasingly delicate and atmospheric writing style as well as an example of his and McGuinn's guitar and vocal interplay. Crosby's moody, jazz-influenced "Everybody's Been Burned" was actually a song that dated back to 1962, before the formation of The Byrds,^[2] which Crosby had demoed for the future Byrds manager, Jim Dickson, as early as 1963.^[1]

Crosby's ambitions for artistic control within the band were expanding along with his compositional skill, and the resulting turmoil would ultimately lead to his dismissal from the group during recording sessions for The Byrds' next album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers.^[1] One source of discontent for Crosby during the recording of Younger Than Yesterday was related to the Bob Dylan cover, "My Back Pages". The song was suggested as a suitable vehicle for The Byrds by their manager, Jim Dickson,^[2] but since it was the fourth song from Dylan's Another Side of Bob Dylan album that the band had covered, Crosby felt, with some justification, that recording "My Back Pages" was formulaic and a step backwards artistically.^[2] However, since the album's release, critics have praised the song as one of The Byrds' strongest Dylan interpretations.^[1]

Meanwhile, Crosby insisted upon the inclusion of two contentious tracks on the album. The first, "Mind Gardens", was disliked by the other band members and derided by McGuinn as having no "rhythm, meter, or rhyme."^[14] In fact, Crosby himself echoed McGuinn's comments but saw the song's unusual structure, atonal vocal and allegorical lyrics^[2] as being positive aspects of the song, rather than negative.^[1] In later years, Crosby commented on the song in interview, stating "it was unusual and not everybody could understand it because they'd never heard anything like it before. At that time everything was supposed to have rhyme and have rhythm. And it neither rhymed nor had rhythm, so it was outside of their experience."^[1]

The second contentious song that Crosby fought to have included on the album was the closing track "Why", which had already been issued as the B-side of the band's "Eight Miles High" single, some eleven months earlier.^[1] The version of "Why" included on Younger Than Yesterday is a totally different take from the previously released version. The group re-recorded the song between December 5 - 8, 1966, during sessions for the Younger Than Yesterday album.^[1][15] Exactly why Crosby insisted on resurrecting the song when there was other, more interesting material in reserve remains a mystery.^[1]

Release and legacy

Younger Than Yesterday was released on February 6, 1967 in the United States and April 7, 1967 in the UK.^[1][7] A contemporary review by Sandy Pearlman in Crawdaddy! praised the album's musical eclecticism, while noting "This sound is dense, but not obviously and impressively complicated. That is, it is very coherent. It works because of its unity, not out of an accumulation of contrasting effects such as volume changes and syncopations."^[1] Although Younger Than Yesterday only achieved moderate chart success at the time, its critical stature has grown substantially over the years.^[16] In 2003, the album was ranked at #124 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.^[17]

Younger Than Yesterday was remastered at 20-bit resolution and had three of its tracks remixed as part of the Columbia/Legacy Byrds series.^[18] It was reissued in an expanded form on April 30, 1996, with six bonus tracks, including "Lady Friend" and "Old John Robertson", which were both issued as a non-album single in July 1967. The remastered CD also included the David Crosby penned track, "It Happens Each Day", which had been omitted from the original album and "Don't Make Waves", a song that had been written for the Alexander Mackendrick film of the same name. The final track on the CD extends to include a hidden track, featuring the guitar parts from "Mind Gardens", which were originally played backwards but are presented here playing forwards, as they were initially recorded.^[1]

Track listing

Side 1

1. "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" (Chris Hillman, Jim McGuinn) – 2:05
2. "Have You Seen Her Face" (Chris Hillman) – 2:25
3. "C.T.A.-102" (Jim McGuinn, Robert J. Hippard) – 2:28
4. "Renaissance Fair" (David Crosby, Jim McGuinn) – 1:51
5. "Time Between" (Chris Hillman) – 1:53
6. "Everybody's Been Burned" (David Crosby) – 3:05

Side 2

1. "Thoughts and Words" (Chris Hillman) – 2:56
2. "Mind Gardens" (David Crosby) – 3:28
3. "My Back Pages" (Bob Dylan) – 3:08
4. "The Girl with No Name" (Chris Hillman) – 1:50
5. "Why" (Jim McGuinn, David Crosby) – 2:45

1996 CD reissue Bonus Tracks

12. "It Happens Each Day" (David Crosby) – 2:44
13. "Don’t Make Waves" (Jim McGuinn, Chris Hillman) – 1:36
14. "My Back Pages" [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan) – 2:42
15. "Mind Gardens" [Alternate Version] (David Crosby) – 3:17
16. "Lady Friend" [Single Version] (David Crosby) – 2:30
17. "Old John Robertson [Single Version] (Jim McGuinn, Chris Hillman) – 5:05
    • NOTE: this song ends at 1:53; at 2:03 begins "Mind Gardens" [Instrumental Guitar Track] (David Crosby)

Singles

1. "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" b/w "Everybody's Been Burned" (Columbia 43987) 9 January 1967
2. "My Back Pages" b/w "Renaissance Fair" (Columbia 44054) 13 March 1967
3. "Have You Seen Her Face" b/w "Don't Make Waves" (Columbia 44157) 22 May 1967

Personnel

Release history

Remix information

Younger Than Yesterday was one of four Byrds albums that were remixed as part of their re-release on Columbia/Legacy.^[18] However, unlike Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn!, which were remixed extensively, only three tracks on Younger Than Yesterday were remixed, although it is unknown exactly which songs received this treatment.^[18] The reason for these remixes was explained by Bob Irwin (who produced these re-issues for compact disc) during an interview:

He further states:

Many fans enjoy the partially remixed album because it is very close to the original mix in most cases and offers noticeably better sound quality.^[18] However, there are also a lot of fans who dismiss the remix as revisionist history and prefer to listen to the original mix on vinyl or on the 1987 and 1989 CD releases.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r} Rogan, J. (1998). The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited. Rogan House. ISBN 0-95295-401-X. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} "Younger Than Yesterday". ByrdWatcher: A Field Guide to the Byrds of Los Angeles. http://ebni.com/byrds/lpyty.html. Retrieved 2009-08-04. 
3. ^ Whitburn, Joel. (2002). Top Pop Albums 1955-2001. Record Research Inc. ISBN 0-89820-147-0. 
4. ^ Brown, Tony. (2000). The Complete Book of the British Charts. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-7670-8. 
5. ^ ^{a b c d} "The Byrds chart data". Ultimate Music Database. http://www.umdmusic.com/default.asp?Lang=English&Search=Byrds&Where=Bands. Retrieved 2009-07-31. 
6. ^ "The Original Gary Usher Web Page". www.garyusher.com. http://www.garyusher.com. Retrieved 2009-08-04. 
7. ^ ^{a b c d} Fricke, David. (1996). Younger Than Yesterday (1996 CD liner notes). 
8. ^ Dylan, B. (2006). Lyrics: 1962-2001. Simon & Schuster. pp. 152–153. ISBN 0-74323-101-5. http://books.simonandschuster.co.uk/Lyrics/Bob-Dylan/9780743231015. 
9. ^ Rogan, Johnny. (1996). Fifth Dimension (1996 CD liner notes). 
10. ^ ^{a b c d e} Rogan, Johnny. (1996). Younger Than Yesterday (1996 CD liner notes). 
11. ^ "Monterey Pop: The First Rock Festival - Part One". The Criterion Collection. http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/231. Retrieved 2009-08-04. 
12. ^ "Clarence White Biography". allmusic. http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:kifpxq95ldde~T1. Retrieved 2009-08-04. 
13. ^ "American Band: The Byrds, from folk rock to country rock". Crazed Fanboy. http://www.crazedfanboy.com/npcr07/audiophilespcr387.php. Retrieved 2009-07-28. 
14. ^ Zimmer, Dave, and Diltz, Henry. (1984). Crosby Stills & Nash: The Authorized Biography. St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 0-312-17660-0. 
15. ^ Hyde, Bob. (1987). Never Before (1989 CD liner notes). 
16. ^ "Younger Than Yesterday review". allmusic. http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:m9508qmtbtq4. Retrieved 2009-08-04. 
17. ^ "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5938174/the_rs_500_greatest_albums_of_all_time. Retrieved 2009-08-04. 
18. ^ ^{a b c d} "The Byrds Remastered Albums 1996 - 2000". Byrds Flyght. http://users.skynet.be/byrdsfollower/remasters1996-2000.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-21. 
19. ^ Hjort, Christopher. (2008). So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star: The Byrds Day-By-Day (1965-1973). Jawbone Press. ISBN 1-90600-215-0. 
20. ^ "The Byrds speak about Younger Than Yesterday". The Byrds Lyrics Page. http://die-augenweide.de/byrds/speak/younger.htm. Retrieved 2009-10-12. 
21. ^ "Hugh Masekela: Discography 1955 - 1969". Dougpayne.com. http://www.dougpayne.com/hmd5569.htm. Retrieved 2009-10-12. 
22. ^ ^{a b} Irwin, Bob (1996). ICE Magazine #108 (March, 1996)