Byrds, Parsons Had ‘Sweetheart’ of an Album

In the notes about the songs in this reissue, Byrds historian Johnny Rogan claims that we are getting two albums in one in this edition of a landmark collection that, thanks in large part to the influence of new member Gram Parsons, reunited rock with its country roots.

That’s because you can listen to the album the way it was released in 1968 or you can program your CD player for even more of Parsons’ touch. Think of the latter version as the “director’s cut.”

The Byrds’ original folk-rock stance in the mid-’60s was so influential that the band was eventually voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But it wasn’t the original lineup that went into the studio in 1967 to record “Sweetheart.”

The band had continued as a quartet after Gene Clark left it in 1966, but Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman had to begin recruiting when David Crosby and Michael Clarke also left the following year.

The new Byrds were drummer Kevin Kelly and, most importantly, Parsons, a singer-songwriter who had strong ideas about a soulful merger of country and rock.

Parsons was barely out of his teens when the Byrds went into the studio to record “Sweetheart,” but he had already laid the foundation for the album’s direction with a country-rock album he had made with the International Submarine Band for Lee Hazelwood’s LHI records.

“Gram’s bag is country and we’re going to let him do his thing,” McGuinn said in a Rolling Stone interview at the time.

Parsons was scheduled to sing lead vocal on several of the tracks, according to David Fricke’s liner notes in the reissue, but Columbia Records executives reportedly got nervous when Hazelwood claimed that Parsons was still under contract to LHI.

Parsons’ vocals remained on three songs, including his signature “Hickory Wind” and Merle Haggard’s “Life in Prison,” but the band redid the vocals on others, including “The Christian Life” and “One Hundred Years From Now.”

The album’s 10 original tracks--which included the Byrds’ hit version of Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”--are supplemented on this new edition by eight other numbers, five of which feature Parsons on lead vocal. They include Parsons’ original interpretations of “The Christian Life” and “One Hundred Years From Now,” plus a Parsons original, “Lazy Days,” that didn’t appear on the “Sweetheart” collection in any form.

Parsons was only with the Byrds for one album before teaming with Hillman to form the Flying Burrito Brothers, whose A&M; recordings represented a much more daring and ultimately more influential fusion of country and rock. Parsons also had a brief but memorable solo career before dying of a drug overdose in 1973 at age 26.

As a bonus, the album includes a radio commercial that was put together in the ‘60s to promote the original album. In it, two fans can’t make up their minds whether the country music they are hearing from the album is really by the Byrds. Eventually, the announcer steps in to end the debate. “For their latest Columbia album . . . , the Byrds take 11 trips to the country. Why not fly with them?”

Twenty-nine years later, it is still a trip worth taking.

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