Album: Mr. Tambourine Man.
Year: 1965.
In the beginning was The Byrds. Before Big Star. Before Tom Petty. Before R.E.M. Before The Smiths or The Church or any of the countless bands that picked up a 12-string Rickenbacker (what garage-rock enthusiast Craig Sullivan was fond of calling “the slow guitar”), found a couple of folks who could sing well together and started writing songs, it was The Byrds.
Because it was in the Byrds who was first created maybe my favorite sound in all of popular music. Like, have you heard last year’s Real Estate album? It’s got that sound.
That sound – McGuinn’s 12-string Rickenbacker; the harmonies of McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark; even Michael Clarke’s precise drums (or in the case of the early records, whichever studio pro actually played) – is a sound that I will chase to the ends of the earth. It’s a sound that defines The Byrds so much to my ears that I never even paid attention to the fact that Gene Clark wrote the lions share of songs on their first two albums.
Which is fine: I love their McGuinn-oriented psychedelia the best anyways, but even still, it’s impossible to resist “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better,” their best early original song, and the first indication that they were more than just a (great!) Dylan cover band.
Not only does it have a catchy riff grounding the song, the call-and-response vocals of the later verses and the chorus are utterly textbook, and the relatively long galloping guitar solo leaps out from the folk-rock framework and takes the song to a completely different place.
Video for “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better”