The album peaked at number 153 on the Billboard Top LPs album chart and reached number 15 on the UK Albums Chart. Hyde is unique within the band's discography for being the only album on which McGuinn sings the lead vocal on every track. It was the first album to feature the new band line-up of Clarence White ( guitar), Gene Parsons ( drums), John York ( bass), and founding member Roger McGuinn ( guitar). The album was produced by Bob Johnston and saw the band juxtaposing country rock material with psychedelic rock, giving the album a stylistic split-personality that was alluded to in its title. Hyde is the seventh studio album by the American rock band the Byrds and was released in March 1969 on Columbia Records. As Marsellus Wallace laid it on the line for Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction, “Boxers don’t have an Oldtimers’ Day.”īut both stand the test of time as great American originals.Dr. Especially not when, like Ali, after 61 professional bouts (including 41 brutal rounds against Joe Frazier alone), they develop Parkinson’s syndrome. Unlike musicians, boxers don’t continue making comebacks in their 50s and 60s and 70s. Then both going into steep professional decline around 1980.Īfter that, of course, their paths diverge. Both then making big comebacks in the mid-1970s (even crossing paths in the effort to free imprisoned fighter Ruben Carter). Both falling deeply out of favor with their fans in the mid-1960s - Dylan by going electric at Newport, Ali by embracing Islam and refusing induction into the US army. Both achieving fame at an early age, at the start of the 1960s. Stashed in a closet somewhere, I’ve got some pages I once wrote about the parallels in the lives of the two, Dylan and Ali: born within a few months of each other on either side of the US’s entry into WWII with the attack on Pearl Harbor. The only other popular figure I recall feeling that way about is Muhammad Ali. Truth be told, I’m not a gung-ho Dylan fan in the sense of liking more than half of what he’s put out.įor me, Dylan feels like family - he’s been there for as long as I can remember. One thing’s for sure: regardless of his voice or his playing or his later, unmemorable songs, Dylan was one of the greatest songwriters of our time This is a splendid live performance, and it’s clear that everyone’s having fun and enjoying jamming with the other greats. You may have trouble with Roger McGuinn, but Tom Petty is easier. Dylan’s voice is unmistakable, of course, and if you want to test yourself, close your eyes and guess who’s singing or playing. I hadn’t looked at the participants, but when Clapton soloed, bending notes right and left, I thought to myself, “Damn! That’s Eric Clapton.” And then I identified several voices, the easiest being the plaintive whine of Neil Young, and then Young’s guitar solo, too. ![]() So when I got into the shower, I took my laptop into the bathroom and blasted this song on high volume. I found this on YouTube and hadn’t heard it. Since then he’s played it publicly many times, and one of them was this performance at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert (celebrating three decades since his first album) in 1992. (It took me decades longer.) One sign of that is although Dylan recorded the song in 1964, the first time he performed it in public was in 1988. (Yes, I know there’s no accounting for taste, and your mileage may vary.)Īt any rate, by 1964, when this song was released, Dylan was apparently already disillusioned with the Sixties’ “we’re gonna change the world” mentality. I like the early Dylan, up to “Nashville Skyline”, and some individual songs since then, but as for the later Dylan, well, meh. Truth be told, I’m not a gung-ho Dylan fan in the sense of liking more than half of what he’s put out. I guess that refrain refers to the faux wisdom of the young and the adoption of the Socratic “I am not sure of anything” stand of the old. I always paused at the refrain, “Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now,” but never listened to the words that closely or read the lyrics. Until I read a bit about the history of “My Back Pages”, written by Bob Dylan, I hadn’t realized that it was about abandoning one’s youthful ideals.
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