Turn! Turn! Turn! (album) - Background

Background

In the wake of the international success of their debut album and the hit singles "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "All I Really Want to Do", The Byrds entered Columbia Studios in Hollywood on June 28, 1965 to set about recording their follow-up album. By the latter half of 1965, the folk rock trend that The Byrds had been instrumental in originating was gaining pace, with hit records by the likes of Cher, The Turtles, We Five, and Barry McGuire clearly bearing the hallmarks of The Byrds' influence. Despite being such an influential band, The Byrds had been disappointed with the relative lack of success that their second single "All I Really Want to Do" had achieved in the American charts and felt that they needed a strong third single in order to maintain their foothold in the marketplace.

Initially, the band had elected to record a third Bob Dylan cover, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", as their next single but despite a couple of attempts to record the song in June and August 1965, it was ultimately rejected. The band then briefly considered issuing a version of Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'" as a single instead, but this idea was also discarded, although the song does appear on Turn! Turn! Turn! The song finally selected by the band for their third single was Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!", a musical adaptation of words taken from the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, which would return The Byrds to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

The recording of the album was not without its tensions, with several members of the band expressing feelings of resentment towards the close working relationship that was beginning to form between McGuinn and producer Terry Melcher. Rhythm guitarist David Crosby was particularly vocal in his disapproval, since he felt that McGuinn and Melcher (along with the band's manager Jim Dickson) were conspiring to keep his songs off of the album. Crosby had brought the self-penned "Stranger In a Strange Land" (later released by Blackburn & Snow) and "The Flower Bomb Song", along with Dino Valenti's "I Don't Ever Want to Spoil Your Party" (later released by Quicksilver Messenger Service as "Dino's Song") to the recording sessions but all three songs were rejected and remained unreleased at the time. Tension was also developing between the band's principal songwriter, Gene Clark, and the rest of The Byrds due to the higher level of income Clark was receiving from his songwriting. This resulted in Clark becoming increasingly isolated within the band and some of his best songs being relegated to appearances on B-sides or being left unreleased altogether. Ultimately, this resentment would be a contributing factor in Clark's departure from the band in early 1966. Yet another source of conflict was the power struggle that was developing between Terry Melcher and Jim Dickson. For his part, Dickson had aspirations to produce the band himself, which led to him being overly critical of Melcher's production work and would culminate in Melcher's dismissal following completion of the album.