Ballad of Easy Rider (album) - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

Ballad of Easy Rider was released on November 10, 1969 in the United States (catalogue item CS 9942) and January 16, 1970 in the United Kingdom (catalogue item S 63795). The album is notable for being the first Byrds' album to be commercially issued exclusively in stereo in both the U.S. and the UK, although there is some evidence to suggest that mono promo copies of the album were distributed in the United Kingdom. To emphasize the connection between the album and Easy Rider, the back cover of the LP featured liner notes written by the film's star, Peter Fonda. Fonda's musings were written in a free-form, stream of consciousness style and optimistically opined (in a manner reminiscent of the chorus of "Jesus Is Just Alright") that "whoever the Byrds are is just alright. OH YEAH!"

The album peaked at #36 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, during a chart stay of seventeen weeks, which was a substantial improvement over its predecessor, Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde. The reverse was true in the United Kingdom, however, where the album reached #41 on the UK Albums Chart, while Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde had reached #15. The "Ballad of Easy Rider" single was released ahead of the album on October 1, 1969 (b/w "Oil in My Lamp") and reached #65 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Although this single was issued in most international territories, it was not released in the United Kingdom. A second single taken from the album, "Jesus Is Just Alright", was released on December 15, 1969 and reached #97 on the Billboard Hot 100 but failed to chart in the UK.

Upon its release, the Ballad of Easy Rider album revived The Byrds' commercial fortunes, giving the band their first U.S. Top 40 album since Younger Than Yesterday in 1967. This renewed success was, in part, due to the band's public profile having been increased as a result of their involvement with Easy Rider and the inclusion of three Byrds-related songs on the film's soundtrack album. Columbia Records' was eager to capitalize on this new-found popularity and launched an advertising campaign for the Ballad of Easy Rider album, proclaiming "The movie gave you the facts, the Ballad interprets them." However, with the exception of the title track, none of the songs on the album had much to do with the film. In fact, the album cover's sepia toned photograph of Lemuel Parsons (Gene Parsons' father) sitting astride an archaic 1928 Harley-Davidson could almost be seen as a parody of the film's biker ethos.

The album was met with mixed reviews at the time of its release, with Ed Leimbacher, in the December 1969 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, criticizing the music on the album as "only intermittently successful" and concluding that "The Byrds are still on the wing, but seem a little woozy and wobbly." Todd Selbert, writing in Jazz & Pop magazine, was more positive, describing the album as "Pretty good Byrds - their best effort since the stunning The Notorious Byrd Brothers." In more recent years, renowned music critic Robert Christgau has dismissed Ballad of Easy Rider as "the poorest Byrds album" but also noted that the album "improves with listening." Mark Deming's review for the Allmusic website was more positive: "Ballad of Easy Rider sounds confident and committed where Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde often seemed tentative. The band sounds tight, self-assured, and fully in touch with the music's emotional palette, and Clarence White's guitar work is truly a pleasure to hear."

Ballad of Easy Rider was remastered at 20-bit resolution as part of the Columbia/Legacy Byrds series. It was reissued in an expanded form on March 25, 1997 with seven bonus tracks, including the outtakes, "Way Beyond the Sun", "Fiddler a Dram (Moog Experiment)", and a rendition of "Tulsa County Blue" with John York singing lead vocals. An outtake recording of "Mae Jean Goes to Hollywood", a song written by the then little-known Jackson Browne, was also included.