Their debut single, an electrified version of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Just two years earlier, the Byrds-composed initially of McGuinn, Crosby, Hillman, singer/songwriter Gene Clark, and drummer Michael Clarke-had achieved instant fame by becoming the first American act to marry the fizzy energy of the Beatles and the British Invasion with the reverential harmonies of the folkies. About the day he was officially fired, Crosby would remember nearly a decade later that “Roger and Chris drove up in a pair of Porsches and said that I was crazy, impossible to work with, an ego-manic-all of which is partly true-that I sang shitty, wrote terrible songs, made horrible sounds, and that they would do much better without me.” The first order of business, clearly, was getting rid of the guy who was writing way too many songs about threesomes. After becoming one of the biggest bands in America, the Byrds were beginning to sputter commercially creatively, they couldn’t get on the same page. When everyone reconvened the next month to start work on their next album, it wasn’t long before Crosby instigated another petty fight-the latest in a long, long string of petty fights-forcing McGuinn and bassist Chris Hillman to conclude that change was necessary. The next day, Crosby filled in for an absent Neil Young during Buffalo Springfield’s set, deepening his band’s suspicion that he was growing sick of the Byrds. Privately, Byrds leader and guitarist Roger McGuinn agreed there was something to the conspiracy, but he believed the best way for a musician to promote their political ideas was through their music, not by harshing the vibe on stage. ![]() At that moment, though, his bandmates were mortified. The story has been suppressed, witnesses have been killed, and this is your country, ladies and gentlemen.”Įventually, Crosby’s theory would be supported by a slow trickle of government documents, the work of Oliver Stone and Don DeLillo, and several podcasts recommended by your dad. “He was shot from a number of different directions, by different guns. “When President Kennedy was killed, he was not killed by one man,” he declared, to a somewhat confused audience. ![]() ![]() Stepping toward the microphone before the Byrds could launch into “He Was a Friend of Mine”-a traditional folk song that they’d reinterpreted to lament the late JFK-Crosby snuck in a conspiratorial spiel about the real killers on that Dallas afternoon.
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