Byrds (album) - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

Byrds was released on March 7, 1973 in the United States (catalogue item SD 5058) and March 24, 1973 in the United Kingdom (catalogue item SYLA 8754). Although the album was issued in stereo commercially, there are mono promo copies of the LP known to exist. The album's sleeve was adorned with photographs taken by Henry Diltz, which fittingly pictured the band in the L.A. folk club The Troubadour, where McGuinn, Clark, and Crosby had first formed the nucleus of The Byrds in 1964. The album peaked at #20 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart, during a chart stay of seventeen weeks, making it the band's highest charting album of new material in the U.S. since 1965's Turn! Turn! Turn! album. In the UK, the album reached #31 but only remained on the UK Albums Chart for one week. A total of four singles were taken from the album, beginning with "Full Circle" b/w "Long Live the King", which was released on April 11, 1973 and reached #109 on the Billboard chart. Two further singles were taken from the album during 1973, "Things Will Be Better" b/w "For Free" (which was issued exclusively in the UK and Europe), and "Cowgirl in the Sand" b/w "Long Live the King", but neither of these singles charted. Finally, a fourth single, "Full Circle" b/w "Things Will Be Better", was released in the UK in August 1975, almost two-and-a-half years after the album had first appeared, but this too failed to chart.

Upon its release, the album suffered from generally poor reviews, with Jon Landau, in the April 1973 edition of Rolling Stone magazine, criticizing it as "one of the dullest albums of the year." Landau went on to note the disunity evident on the album: "It is a different band for each of the four lead singers and while they make complementary music, it is never a continuous piece, which is what the Byrds were once all about." In fact, the consensus of most reviewers was that there was a lack of unity throughout the album and that the band's trademark jingle-jangle guitar sound was largely absent from the record. However, there were some positive reviews of the album, with Danny Halloway enthusiastically praising it in the March 31, 1973 edition of the NME: "The Byrds have overcome the novelty of reforming and really do cut it here. The band's direction is no-nonsense, straight-ahead music. There's not any cultural preaching or sloppy outtakes as intros ... I'm glad to report that The Byrds make it on the strength of the music alone."