![]() ![]() Tambourine Man,” Los Angeles became the main spawning ground for folk rock the Mamas and the Papas, Sonny and Cher, the Grass Roots and the Turtles quickly followed in the Byrds’ wake. These included McGuinn and the Byrds, who were a vital force in L.A.’s metamorphosis from Snoozeville to America’s new capital city of pop. Tambourine Man” and “My Back Pages” vividly captured not only the city’s sunny allure but also its restive, and hopeful, adolescent spirit.īut by mid-1965, Los Angeles was alive with the crisp sound of electric guitars and the cumulative roar of expensive Porsches driven by the city’s new mod gods. The distinctive chime of McGuinn’s twelve-string Ricken-backer guitar and the metallic resonance of the group’s choirboy vocals on “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,” “Eight Miles High” and on covers of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. was that of the original Byrds - McGuinn, David Crosby, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke. And while the twang ‘n’ harmony magic of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys embodied the SoCal myth of wild surf and sweet beach romance, the real sound of swinging Sixties L.A. ![]() It was, however, the very surreal quality of life there - the singular collision of great wealth, high commerce and deviant art in the film, television and music communities, heightened by the rising tide of teenage discontent and the impact of the British Invasion - that made Los Angeles the ideal playground-workshop for the mid-Sixties hip rock elite. “Just the whole attitude here, where people are superficial and so caught up in material things. “I always looked down on L.A., like it wasn’t the real world,” McGuinn says with a chuckle. As the principal singer, lead guitarist and de facto leader of the Byrds, McGuinn was also one of the city’s most distinguished rock & roll citizens - an early champion of Bob Dylan’s songs, a confidant of the Beatles and a major instigator of the folk-, acid- and country-rock movements that transformed pop music during the Sixties. He lived there for the better part of two decades, 1963 through 1980. Roger McGuinn never particularly liked Los Angeles. ![]()
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