Roger McGuinn
James Roger McGuinn is an American musician, best known for being the frontman and leader of the Byrds. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 as a member of the band. As a solo artist, he has released 10 albums and collaborated with, among others, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Chris Hillman. The Rickenbacker 12-string guitar is his signature instrument.
Early life
McGuinn was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, son of James Joseph McGuinn Jr and Dorothy Irene, daughter of engineer Louis Heyn. His parents worked in journalism and public relations, and during his childhood, they wrote a bestseller titled Parents Can't Win. He attended the Latin School of Chicago. He became interested in music after hearing Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel", and asked his parents to buy a guitar for him. Around the same time, he was also influenced by artists and/or groups such as Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent and the Everly Brothers.In 1957, he enrolled as a student at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music, where he learned the five-string banjo and 12-string guitar. After graduation, McGuinn performed solo at various coffeehouses on the folk music circuit where he was hired as a sideman by the Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and Judy Collins and other folk music artists in the same vein. In 1962, after he ended his association with the Chad Mitchell Trio, McGuinn was hired by Bobby Darin as a backup guitarist and harmony singer. Darin wanted to add a folk roots element to his repertoire because it was a burgeoning musical field. Darin opened T.M. Music in New York City's Brill Building, hiring McGuinn as a songwriter for $35 a week. About a year and a half later, Darin became ill and retired from singing.
During 1963, just one year before he co-founded the Byrds in Los Angeles, McGuinn was working as a studio musician in New York, recording with Judy Collins and Simon & Garfunkel. At the same time, he was hearing about the Beatles and wondering how Beatlemania might affect folk music. When McGuinn saw George Harrison play a 12-string Rickenbacker in the film A Hard Days Night, it inspired him to buy the same instrument.
By the time Doug Weston gave him a job at The Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles, McGuinn had begun to include Beatles' songs in his act. He gave rock style treatments to traditional folk tunes and thereby caught the attention of another folkie Beatles fan, Gene Clark, who joined forces with McGuinn in July 1964. Together they formed the beginning of what was to become the Byrds.
The Byrds
During his time with the Byrds, McGuinn developed two innovative and very influential styles of electric guitar playing. The first was "jingle-jangle", ringing arpeggios based on banjo finger picking styles he learned while at the Old Town School of Folk Music, which was influential in the folk rock genre. The second style was a merging of saxophonist John Coltrane's free-jazz atonalities, which hinted at the droning of the sitar, a style of playing first heard on the Byrds' 1966 single "Eight Miles High" and influential in psychedelic rock.While "tracking" the Byrds' first single, "Mr. Tambourine Man", at Columbia studios, McGuinn discovered an important component of his style. "The 'Ric'
"I practiced eight hours a day on that 'Ric,'" he continues, "I really worked it. In those days, acoustic 12s had wide necks and thick strings that were spaced pretty far apart, so they were hard to play. But the Rick's slim neck and low action let me explore jazz and blues scales up and down the fretboard, and incorporate more hammer-ons and pull-offs into my solos. I also translated some of my banjo picking techniques to the 12-string. By combining a flat pick with metal finger picks on my middle and ring fingers, I discovered I could instantly switch from fast single-note runs to banjo rolls and get the best of both worlds."
Another sound that McGuinn developed is made by playing a seven string guitar, featuring a doubled G-string. The C. F. Martin guitar company released a guitar called the HD7 Roger McGuinn Signature Edition that claims to capture McGuinn's "jingle-jangle" tone, which he created with 12-string guitars, while maintaining the ease of playing a 6-string guitar.
After Mr. Tambourine Man in 1965, "Turn! Turn! Turn!", written by Pete Seeger with the lyrics drawn from Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, was the Byrds' second Number One success in late 1965. In 1966, “Eight Miles High” peaked at no. 14 on the U.S. charts, achieving enduring classic status, even though the song was subject to a U.S. radio ban due to its alleged reference to recreational drug use. 1967 found the Byrds sliding still further in the charts, with “So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star” which peaked at no. 29. “My Back Pages”, another Bob Dylan cover, was released later the same year and was to be their last top 40 hit. In 1969, McGuinn's solo version of the "Ballad of Easy Rider" appeared in the film Easy Rider, while a full-band version was the title track for the album released later that year. McGuinn also performed a cover of Bob Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma " for the Easy Rider soundtrack. 1970's Untitled album featured a 16-minute version of the Byrds' 1966 hit "Eight Miles High", with all four members taking extended solos representative of the "jam-band" style of playing popular during that period.
In 1968, McGuinn helped create the groundbreaking album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, to which many attribute the rise in popularity of country rock. McGuinn originally conceived the album as a blend of rock, jazz, folk and other styles, but Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman's bluegrass-western-country influences came to the forefront.
Post-Byrds
After the break-up of The Byrds, McGuinn released several solo albums throughout the 1970s. In 1973 he collaborated with Bob Dylan on songs for the sound track of the Sam Peckinpah movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid including "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". He toured with Bob Dylan in 1975 and 1976 as part of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, cancelling a planned tour of his own in order to participate. In late 1975, he played guitar on the track titled "Ride the Water" on Bo Diddley's The 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll all-star album. In 1976, he released the album Cardiff Rose where he worked with Mick Ronson.In 1977, he released an LP titled Thunderbyrd, which was also the name of his contemporaneous band. Other members included future John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers and Fleetwood Mac guitarist Rick Vito, future Poco bassist Charlie Harrison and drummer Greg Thomas.
In 1977, McGuinn joined fellow ex-Byrds Gene Clark and Chris Hillman to form McGuinn, Clark & Hillman. The trio recorded an album with Capitol Records in 1979. They performed on many TV rock shows, including repeated performances on The Midnight Special, where they played both new material and Byrds hits. McGuinn's "Don't You Write Her Off" reached No. 33 in April 1979. While some believe that the slick production and disco rhythms didn't flatter the group, it sold well enough to generate a follow-up. McGuinn, Clark and Hillman's second release was to have been a full group effort entitled "City", but Clark's unreliability and drug problems resulted in the billing change on their next LP City to "Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, featuring Gene Clark".
Since 1981, McGuinn has regularly toured as a solo singer-guitarist. In 2018 he embarked on a tour with Chris Hillman, a fellow original Byrd, backed by Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, after which McGuinn returned to touring solo.
In 1987, McGuinn was the opening act for Dylan and Tom Petty and he performed at Farm Aid.
In 1991 he took part in the Guitar Legends concerts in Seville, Spain as part of the Expo '92 Seville.
After a decade without a recording contract, he released his comeback solo album, Back from Rio in 1991. It included the hit single "King of the Hill", written together with, and featuring, Petty. He returned with a live band featuring John Jorgenson, George Hawkins and Stan Lynch.
In 1992 McGuinn performed at the 30th Anniversary Concert for Bob Dylan with George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Tom Petty, G.E.Smith, and others.
On July 11, 2000, McGuinn testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that downloading music from the Internet causes artists to not always receive the royalties that record companies state in contracts and that, to date, the Byrds had not received any royalties for their greatest successes, "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn, Turn, Turn"; they only received advances, which were split five ways and were just "a few thousand dollars" per band member. He also stated that he was receiving 50 percent royalties from MP3.com.
He was also part of an author/musician band, Rock Bottom Remainders, a group of published writers doubling as musicians to raise proceeds for literacy charities. In July 2013, McGuinn co-authored an interactive ebook, Hard Listening, with the rest of the group.