(Originally published in Gadfly Online)

Sweetheart of the Rodeo

 “Alt-country” is the latest marketing craze in the music industry. It’s the hot thing to write about, the hip thing to put in the car stereo, and its legions are enthusiastically storming the beach heads of Saturday Night Live and the Letterman show. The interesting thing about alt-country is that, despite the fact that it seemed to rise out of nowhere, it has been with us for decades. Many believers cite the Flying Burrito Brothers’ 1969 album, “Gilded Palace of Sin,” as the prototype and inspiration behind the current movement. That album, the result of a collaboration between Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, fused the classic country of Buck Owens and Bill Monroe with the soul music of Aretha Franklin and James Carr, as well as the rock’n’roll sounds of the day. All but ignored when it first came out, “Palace” has come to be regarded as the grand blueprint of alt-country, paving the way for everyone from Uncle Tupelo to Ryan Adams to Lucinda Williams. However, the birth of alt-country could be placed back even further, to 1968, with the release of the Byrds’ “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.” Also featuring Parsons and Hillman, one must only listen to it once to realize that if “Gilded Palace of Sin” is the Father of alt-country, than “Rodeo” is the Grandfather. While the Beatles were coming out with the modern rock of “Revolution” and the Stones were working on songs like “Street Fighting Man,” the Byrds flew in the face of the moment and released music that not only stretched back through the decades, but also paved the way for the future.
 The road to making the album was a bumpy one. In the years leading up to 1968, the Byrds had emerged as serious rivals to the Beatles. With hits such as “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn Turn Turn!” and “All I Really Want To Do,” the Byrds had
married the jangly sound of the 12-string Rickenbacker guitar to rock and folk music, with lush vocal harmonies rounding out the mix. In 1967, they released the single “Eight Miles High,” which was very much in keeping with the psychedelic sounds of that period. By that point, however, the band was falling apart. Relations between members had reached a low ebb. Guitarist David Crosby was asked to leave, Gene Clark left to pursue a solo career, and drummer Michael Clarke also left the group. Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman picked up the pieces by inviting two new musicians, Kevin Kelley to play the drums, and Gram Parsons to play the piano and guitar. Parsons brought with him a passion for country music, a genre which the Byrds had dabbled in with a handful of songs throughout the years. Hillman, a fan of country music, was delighted with the addition of Parsons, and their shared enthusiasm quickly became contagious. “My original idea was to do an album that covers the history of music, early medieval music, to Elizabethan, to early folk songs, to contemporary music--it was an ambitious project, and I couldn’t convince any of the other guys to do it” says Roger McGuinn. ”Then Gram Parsons said, Let’s record an all country album, and we all kind of kicked it around, and it sounded like fun,” he says.
“I got a black convertible, a cowboy hat, and we all went to Nashville and recorded it.”
 Coming hot on the heels of their very contemporary-sounding psychedelic album, “5D (Fifth Dimension),” the contrast could not have been more striking. Rather than kicking off with the trademark chimes of the Rickenbacker guitar, “Sweetheart” opens with the sound of steel guitar, and a mellow acoustic backing to a mid-tempo waltz. The public was not tremendously impressed. The album hovered in the lower end of the charts for weeks, and it seemed that the Byrds’ great experiment was a commercial flop. “I think we just fell between the cracks,” explains McGuinn. “We failed to capture a country audience. Call it naivete or optimistism, you know, but we felt the audience would accept this album and our pure love of the music, and that it would be a great success.” Within months, Hillman and Parsons left the Byrds to form the Burrito Brothers, and “Sweetheart” seemed to be a curious footnote in the history of one of the 60s’ bigger bands.

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