The Notorious Byrd Brothers - Legacy

Legacy

Over the years, The Notorious Byrd Brothers has gained in reputation and is often considered the group's best work, while the contentious incidents surrounding its making have been largely forgotten. The album managed to capture the band at the height of their creative powers, as they pushed ahead lyrically, musically and technically into new sonic territory. Band biographer Johnny Rogan has noted that The Byrds' greatest accomplishment on the album was in creating a seamless mood piece from a variety of different sources, bound together by innovative studio experimentation. Although the album is widely regarded as the band's most experimental, its running time of a little under 29 minutes also makes it their briefest.

The album was voted the fourth-best album ever in a 1971 ZigZag magazine readers' poll and the 1977 edition of the Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums book ranked it at #154 in a list of the "Greatest Rock Albums of All-Time". A subsequent edition of the book, published in 1988, ranked the album at #75. In 1995, Mojo magazine placed the album at #36 in their list of "The 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made". In 2003, the album was ranked at #171 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and #32 on the NME's list of the "100 Best Albums". In 2004, Q magazine included the album in its list of "The Music that Changed the World".

The Notorious Byrd Brothers 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 six bonus tracks, including Crosby's controversial ballad "Triad", the Indian-influenced "Moog Raga", and an instrumental backing track for the outtake "Bound to Fall". The final track on the CD extends to include a hidden track featuring a radio advertisement by producer Gary Usher for the album, as well as a recording of an in-studio altercation between the band members.

Following the release of the album, The Byrds' recording of "Wasn't Born to Follow" was used in the 1969 film Easy Rider and included on the accompanying Easy Rider soundtrack album. In addition, the song "Change Is Now" has been covered by the progressive bluegrass band The Dixie Bee-Liners, on the tribute album Timeless Flyte: A Tribute to The Byrds — Full Circle, and by rock band Giant Sand, on Time Between – A Tribute to The Byrds. Ric Menck, best known for being a member of the band Velvet Crush, has written a book about the album for Continuum Publishing's 33⅓ series.