Music
The album opens with the McGuinn and Dylan penned title track, which is performed at a substantially quicker tempo than the Roger McGuinn solo version included on the Easy Rider soundtrack. The Byrds' version of the song also features the addition of an orchestra, which had been added by producer Terry Melcher in an attempt to emulate the recent hit singles "Gentle on My Mind" by Glen Campbell and "Everybody's Talkin'" by Harry Nilsson. "Ballad of Easy Rider" was McGuinn's only songwriting contribution to the Ballad of Easy Rider album, due to his being preoccupied with composing the music for a country rock adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, anagrammatically re-titled as Gene Tryp. The musical was never completed and six of the songs that McGuinn and Broadway impresario Jacques Levy had written for the project would instead see release on The Byrds' next two albums.
The remaining ten tracks on the Ballad of Easy Rider album mostly consisted of cover versions and interpretations of traditional material. Among these non-original songs was a cover of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", which the band had attempted to record twice before in June and August 1965, during the sessions for their second album, Turn! Turn! Turn!. These earlier recordings had gone unreleased at the time and McGuinn decided to revisit the composition in 1969, slowing down the tempo and radically altering the arrangement to fashion a more somber and serious version than those recorded in 1965. The Byrds' 1969 rendition of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" was also released as the B-side of the "Jesus Is Just Alright" single.
Other covers on the album included Woody Guthrie's "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)", a poignant account of a plane crash involving migrant farm workers; the gospel-styled "Jesus Is Just Alright", which went on to influence The Doobie Brothers' hit recording of the song; and Pamela Polland's "Tulsa County Blue", which would later become a moderate country hit for Anita Carter in 1971. Although "Tulsa County Blue" had been brought to the album sessions by John York and had also been sung by him in concert, the album version features McGuinn singing lead vocal. An outtake recording of "Tulsa County Blue" with York on lead vocals was finally released as a bonus track on the 1997 Columbia/Legacy reissue of Ballad of Easy Rider.
Another cover included on the album was "There Must Be Someone (I Can Turn To)", a song principally written by country singer Vern Gosdin, after he returned home one evening to find that his wife had left him and taken their children with her. The final track on the album was a meditation on the July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, titled "Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins", which continued the tradition of ending Byrds' albums on a quirky, tongue-in-cheek note. The Byrds also recorded a number of traditional songs for the album: the sea shanty "Jack Tarr the Sailor", which McGuinn sang in an approximation of an English accent; a harmony-laden arrangement of the Baptist hymn "Oil in My Lamp"; a rendition of "Way Beyond the Sun", which had been inspired by the song's appearance on the debut album by Pentangle; and a Moog synthesizer dominated version of "Fiddler a Dram". Ultimately, "Way Beyond the Sun" and "Fiddler a Dram" would not be included in the album's final track listing and would remain unreleased until the former first appeared on The Byrds box set in 1990 and the latter was included on the 1997 reissue of Ballad of Easy Rider.
The album also featured the John York composition "Fido", a song written about a stray dog that the bass player had encountered in a Kansas City hotel room while on tour. The inclusion of the song made Ballad of Easy Rider the second Byrds' album in a row to feature a paean to a canine companion (the first being Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, which had included the song "Old Blue"). A third song about a dog, "Bugler", would later appear on the band's 1971 album, Farther Along. "Fido" is notable for featuring a drum solo, the only example of such a solo on any of The Byrds' studio albums. Drummer Gene Parsons also contributed the song "Gunga Din", which related the story of two separate incidents: the first being The Byrds' appearance at a concert in Central Park where Chuck Berry had been billed to perform but had failed to appear; and the second involving John York and his mother being refused admittance to a restaurant, due to York wearing a leather jacket.
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Famous quotes containing the word music:
“Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.”
—Thomas Beecham (1879–1961)
“I used to be angry all the time and I’d sit there weaving my anger. Now I’m not angry. I sit there hearing the sounds outside, the sounds in the room, the sounds of the treadles and heddles—a music of my own making.”
—Bhakti Ziek (b. c. 1946)
“Franceska: I was happy in the life I built up for myself. I put a fine high wall of music around me and nothing could touch me. I was safe and secure. And then you had to come along and knock it all down and I hate you for that.
Maxwell: On the contrary, you love me.”
—Muriel Box (b. 1905)