Turn! Turn! Turn! (album)
Encyclopedia
Turn! Turn! Turn! is the second album
by the folk rock
band
The Byrds
and was released in December 1965 on Columbia Records
(see 1965 in music
). Like its predecessor, Mr. Tambourine Man
, the album epitomized the folk rock genre and continued the band's successful mix of vocal harmony
and jangly twelve-string
Rickenbacker
guitar
. The album's lead single and title track, "Turn! Turn! Turn!", was a Pete Seeger
adaptation of text from the Book of Ecclesiastes
that had previously been arranged
in a chamber-folk style by the band's lead guitarist Jim McGuinn
, while working with folksinger Judy Collins
. The arrangement that McGuinn used for The Byrds' version utilized the same strident folk rock style as the band's previous hit singles.
The album peaked at #17 on the Billboard Top LPs
chart and went to #11 in the United Kingdom. The "Turn! Turn! Turn!" single
preceded the album by two months and topped the chart in the United States. Another single taken from the album, "Set You Free This Time
", was less successful and failed to break into the U.S. Top 50. The album marked an increase in McGuinn's songwriting output and rhythm guitarist David Crosby
received his first writing credit on a Byrds' album. However, the band's prolific songwriter Gene Clark
still contributed most of the original material. The album also included two Bob Dylan
covers: "The Times They Are a-Changin'
" and the then unreleased song, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune
". Turn! Turn! Turn! would be the last Byrds' album to feature the full participation of Gene Clark until the release of the original quintet's 1973 reunion album, Byrds
.
s "Mr. Tambourine Man
" and "All I Really Want to Do", The Byrds entered Columbia Studios in Hollywood on June 28, 1965 to set about recording their follow-up album. By the latter half of 1965, the folk rock trend that The Byrds had been instrumental in originating was gaining pace, with hit records by the likes of Cher
, The Turtles
, We Five
, and Barry McGuire
clearly bearing the hallmarks of The Byrds' influence. Despite being such an influential band, The Byrds had been disappointed with the relative lack of success that their second single "All I Really Want to Do" had achieved in the American charts and felt that they needed a strong third single in order to maintain their foothold in the marketplace.
Initially, the band had elected to record a third Bob Dylan
cover
, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
", as their next single but despite a couple of attempts to record the song in June and August 1965, it was ultimately rejected. The band then briefly considered issuing a version of Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'" as a single instead, but this idea was also discarded, although the song does appear on Turn! Turn! Turn! The song finally selected by the band for their third single was Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!", a musical adaptation of words taken from the Biblical
Book of Ecclesiastes, which would return The Byrds to the top of the Billboard Hot 100
.
The recording of the album was not without its tensions, with several members of the band expressing feelings of resentment towards the close working relationship that was beginning to form between McGuinn and producer
Terry Melcher
. Rhythm guitar
ist David Crosby was particularly vocal in his disapproval, since he felt that McGuinn and Melcher (along with the band's manager Jim Dickson) were conspiring to keep his songs off of the album. Crosby had brought the self-penned "Stranger In a Strange Land" and "The Flower Bomb Song", along with Dino Valenti's
"I Don't Ever Want to Spoil Your Party" (later released by Quicksilver Messenger Service
as "Dino's Song") to the recording sessions but all three songs were rejected and remained unreleased at the time. Tension was also developing between the band's principal songwriter, Gene Clark, and the rest of The Byrds due to the higher level of income Clark was receiving from his songwriting. This resulted in Clark becoming increasingly isolated within the band and some of his best songs being relegated to appearances on B-sides
or being left unreleased altogether. Ultimately, this resentment would be a contributing factor in Clark's departure from the band in early 1966. Yet another source of conflict was the power struggle that was developing between Terry Melcher and Jim Dickson. For his part, Dickson had aspirations to produce the band himself, which led to him being overly critical of Melcher's production work and would culminate in Melcher's dismissal following completion of the album.
that McGuinn had developed while working on Judy Collins' 1963 album, Judy Collins 3
, the idea of reviving the song came to McGuinn during The Byrds' first American tour. The master recording
of the song reputedly took 78 takes, spread over five days of recording, to perfect. Rolling Stone
editor David Fricke
has noted that the song's plea for peace and tolerance was custom-made for the 1960s, a decade colored by assassinations, urban rioting and the horrors of the Vietnam War
. Peaking at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the single represented the high water mark of folk rock as a musical trend and reinforced The Byrds' standing as a formidable chart act.
The Byrds also chose to include two Bob Dylan songs on the album, in an attempt to repeat the success that they had enjoyed with their covers of his material on their debut LP
. "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" was an unreleased outtake
from Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin'
album that had been obtained by the band through Dylan's publisher. Dylan himself was impressed when he heard The Byrds' reading of his song, telling McGuinn "Up until I heard this I thought you were just another imitator...but this has got real feeling to it." The other Dylan song that the band included on Turn! Turn! Turn! was "The Times They Are a-Changin'", which was given a sardonic reading by the band, subverting the seriousness evident in the original and replacing it with irony.
Of the self-penned material on the album, three songs were written by Gene Clark, including "The World Turns All Around Her", which echoed his Beatlesque songs of tortured romance on the band's debut album, and "If You're Gone", a poetic confession of emotional insecurity. To highlight the wistful melancholy of "If You're Gone", McGuinn and Melcher devised a droning, Gregorian
harmony part that sounds uncannily like another instrument and foreshadowed the raga rock
experimentation that the band would undertake on their next album. The third Clark-penned song on the album was "Set You Free This Time
", a densely-worded rumination on a failed relationship that lyrically exhibited the influence of Bob Dylan. The song had been written by Clark during The Byrds' 1965 tour of England, after a night spent drinking with Paul McCartney
at the fashionable Scotch of St James
club in London.
McGuinn's songwriting contributions to the album included "It Won't Be Wrong
", a song that had been co-written with McGuinn's friend Harvey Gerst in 1964. The song had previously been issued in a completely different version under the alternate title of "Don't Be Long" on a 1964 single that the band had released under the pseudonym of The Beefeaters. Another of McGuinn's contributions was an adaptation of the traditional
folk song
"He Was a Friend of Mine
". The Byrds' version featured newly written lyrics by McGuinn dealing with the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy
on November 22, 1963. The song pre-dated the formation of The Byrds, as McGuinn explained to author Johnny Rogan
in 1977: "I wrote that song the night John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I suppose you could say it's one of the earliest Byrds songs." "He Was a Friend of Mine" is notable for being the first Byrds' recording to feature McGuinn playing an acoustic guitar
, instead of his usual twelve-string Rickenbacker.
Turn! Turn! Turn! also featured the McGuinn and Crosby song "Wait and See". This represented the first release of a song written by the pair, although they had previously collaborated on "The Airport Song", a track that wouldn't be heard publicly until the release of the Preflyte
album in 1969. "Wait and See" also represented the first time that Crosby had received a songwriting credit on a Byrds' album. Both men wanted to move away from the simple boy/girl romance songs that the band had been writing since 1964 but ironically, "Wait and See" was even more in that tradition than the earliest of Gene Clark's songs. Another cover that was included on the album was "Satisfied Mind
", a 1955 country and western chart-topper for Porter Wagoner
, which had been suggested by The Byrds' bass player
, Chris Hillman
. The song was the first sign of the band's interest in country music
, a genre they would explore further on subsequent albums, culminating with 1968’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo
. As with the band's previous album, Turn! Turn! Turn! ended on a quirky, tongue-in-cheek note, with a whimsical send-up of Stephen Foster
's 19th century classic, "Oh! Susanna
h", arranged by McGuinn. Despite being recorded as an intentionally humorous reading of the song, McGuinn later admitted to journalist Vincent Flanders that he was dissatisfied with the track, stating "That was a joke, but it didn't come off, it was poorly told."
Due to the infighting caused by the other band members' resentment of Gene Clark's songwriting dominance within The Byrds, two of the songs that Clark had brought to the recording sessions were excluded from the album. Clark's romantic and densely worded "She Don't Care About Time", which featured guitar work inspired by Bach
's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
", was issued on the B-side of the "Turn! Turn! Turn!" single, while the Dylanesque
"The Day Walk (Never Before)" was left to languish in the Columbia tape vaults for more than 20 years. "The Day Walk (Never Before)" was finally issued in 1987 when it was chosen as the title track of The Byrds' archival album, Never Before
. In the modern era, both "She Don't Care About Time" and "The Day Walk (Never Before)" have been added to the remaster
ed Turn! Turn! Turn! CD
as bonus tracks.
, CS 9254 in stereo
) and March 22, 1966 in the UK (catalogue item BPG 62652 in mono, SBPG 62652 in stereo). It peaked at #17 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, during a chart stay of 40 weeks, and reached #11 in the United Kingdom, spending a total of 5 weeks on the UK chart. The preceding "Turn! Turn! Turn!" single was released on October 1, 1965 in the U.S. and October 29, 1965 in the UK, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #26 on the UK Singles Chart
. A second single taken from the album, "Set You Free This Time" (b/w "It Won't Be Wrong"), was released on January 10, 1966 in the U.S., peaking at #63 on the Billboard Hot 100 but failing to chart in the UK. The album's front cover photograph was taken by Guy Webster at his studio in Beverly Hills
and was later nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover
. The LP's back cover liner notes were written by The Byrds' publicist
, Derek Taylor
, and were actually an edited version of a much longer description of the album and its recording that would later appear in its complete form in the February 15, 1966 edition of Record World
magazine.
Upon release, the album garnered mostly positive reviews, with Robert Shelton commenting in The New York Times
that the album was "not so strong as the first Byrds LP, Mr. Tambourine Man, but still an effective program of folk-rock." Billboard
magazine described the album's contents by noting that "the group offers a diversified program of material that is certain to soar up the LP charts." In the UK, Richard Bruce enthusiastically praised the album in his review for Music Echo by describing the record as "so sensationally brilliant that even after [one] hearing, I've no hesitation in saying they are proving they have as big a talent as The Beatles
and The Stones
!" In more recent years, Richie Unterberger
has noted on the Allmusic website that the album "was only a disappointment in comparison with Mr. Tambourine Man. It was still quite good, however, particularly the ringing number one title cut, a classic on par with the "Mr. Tambourine Man" single."
Turn! Turn! Turn! was remastered at 20-bit
resolution and partially remix
ed as part of the Columbia/Legacy
Byrds series. It was reissued in an expanded form on April 30, 1996, with seven bonus tracks, including two alternate versions of songs included on the original album, three outtakes, and the Gene Clark penned B-side, "She Don't Care About Time".
The Byrds
Additional personnel
He further stated:
Irwin's assertions that no liberties were taken have been proven false in a couple of instances. The vocals on most of the album's songs are mixed noticeably higher than they were on the original mixes and the fades are different on almost every song as well.
Many fans enjoy the remixed album because it is very close to the original mix in most cases and offers noticeably better sound quality. However, there are also a lot of fans who dismiss the remix as revisionist history
and prefer to listen to the original mix on vinyl
or on the pre-1996 CD releases.
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
by the folk rock
Folk rock
Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...
band
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
The Byrds
The Byrds
The Byrds were an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1964. The band underwent multiple line-up changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn remaining the sole consistent member until the group disbanded in 1973...
and was released in December 1965 on Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
(see 1965 in music
1965 in music
-Events:*January 4 – Fender Musical Instruments Corporation is sold to CBS for $13 million.*January 12 – Hullabaloo premieres on NBC. The first show included performances by The New Christy Minstrels, comedian Woody Allen, actress Joey Heatherton and a segment from London in which Brian Epstein...
). Like its predecessor, Mr. Tambourine Man
Mr. Tambourine Man (album)
Mr. Tambourine Man is the debut album by the American folk rock band The Byrds and was released in June 1965 on Columbia Records . The album, along with the single of the same name, established the band as an internationally successful rock act and was also influential in originating the musical...
, the album epitomized the folk rock genre and continued the band's successful mix of vocal harmony
Vocal harmony
Vocal harmony is a style of vocal music in which a consonant note or notes are sung at the same time as a main melody in a predominantly homophonic texture. Vocal harmonies are used in many subgenres of European art music, including Classical choral music and opera and in the popular styles from...
and jangly twelve-string
Twelve string guitar
The twelve-string guitar is an acoustic or electric guitar with 12 strings in 6 courses, which produces a richer, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar...
Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker, is an electric and bass guitar manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California...
guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
. The album's lead single and title track, "Turn! Turn! Turn!", was a Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
adaptation of text from the Book of Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes
The Book of Ecclesiastes, called , is a book of the Hebrew Bible. The English name derives from the Greek translation of the Hebrew title.The main speaker in the book, identified by the name or title Qoheleth , introduces himself as "son of David, king in Jerusalem." The work consists of personal...
that had previously been arranged
Arrangement
The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...
in a chamber-folk style by the band's lead guitarist Jim McGuinn
Roger McGuinn
James Roger McGuinn is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' records...
, while working with folksinger Judy Collins
Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins is an American singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records ; and for her social activism. She is an alumna of the University of Colorado.-Musical career:Collins was born and raised in Seattle, Washington...
. The arrangement that McGuinn used for The Byrds' version utilized the same strident folk rock style as the band's previous hit singles.
The album peaked at #17 on the Billboard Top LPs
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
chart and went to #11 in the United Kingdom. The "Turn! Turn! Turn!" single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
preceded the album by two months and topped the chart in the United States. Another single taken from the album, "Set You Free This Time
Set You Free This Time
"Set You Free This Time" is a song by the American folk rock band The Byrds, written by band member Gene Clark and first released in December 1965 on the group's Turn! Turn! Turn! album. According to Clark, the song was written in just a few hours during The Byrds' 1965 British tour, after a night...
", was less successful and failed to break into the U.S. Top 50. The album marked an increase in McGuinn's songwriting output and rhythm guitarist David Crosby
David Crosby
David Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash , and CPR...
received his first writing credit on a Byrds' album. However, the band's prolific songwriter Gene Clark
Gene Clark
Gene Clark, born Harold Eugene Clark was an American singer-songwriter, and one of the founding members of the folk-rock group The Byrds....
still contributed most of the original material. The album also included two Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
covers: "The Times They Are a-Changin'
The Times They Are a-Changin' (song)
"The Times They Are a-Changin" is a song written by Bob Dylan and released as the title track of his 1964 album, The Times They Are a-Changin. The song was ranked #59 on Rolling Stones 2004 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time....
" and the then unreleased song, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune
Lay Down Your Weary Tune
"Lay Down Your Weary Tune" is song written by Bob Dylan in 1963. It was originally recorded for his album The Times They Are a-Changin, but it was ultimately left off of that record. Dylan's studio recording of the song was eventually released on his 1985 box set Biograph...
". Turn! Turn! Turn! would be the last Byrds' album to feature the full participation of Gene Clark until the release of the original quintet's 1973 reunion album, Byrds
Byrds (album)
Byrds is the twelfth album by the American rock band The Byrds and was released in March 1973 on Asylum Records . It was recorded as the centerpiece of a reunion between the five original members of The Byrds: Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, Chris Hillman, and Michael Clarke...
.
Background
In the wake of the international success of their debut album and the hit singleHit single
A hit single is a recorded song or instrumental released as a single that has become very popular. Although it is sometimes used to describe any widely-played or big-selling song, the term "hit" is usually reserved for a single that has appeared in an official music chart through repeated radio...
s "Mr. Tambourine Man
Mr. Tambourine Man
"Mr. Tambourine Man" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan, which was released on his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. The Byrds also recorded a version of the song that was released as their first single on Columbia Records, reaching number 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 chart and...
" and "All I Really Want to Do", The Byrds entered Columbia Studios in Hollywood on June 28, 1965 to set about recording their follow-up album. By the latter half of 1965, the folk rock trend that The Byrds had been instrumental in originating was gaining pace, with hit records by the likes of Cher
Cher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
, The Turtles
The Turtles
The Turtles are an American rock group led by vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman. The band became notable for several Top 40 hits beginning with its cover version of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" in 1965...
, We Five
We Five
We Five was a 1960s folk rock musical group based in San Francisco, California. Their best-known hit was their 1965 remake of Ian and Sylvia's "You Were on My Mind", which reached #1 on the Cashbox chart, #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart...
, and Barry McGuire
Barry McGuire
Barry McGuire is an American singer-songwriter best known for the hit song "Eve of Destruction", and later as a pioneering singer and songwriter of Contemporary Christian Music.-Early life:...
clearly bearing the hallmarks of The Byrds' influence. Despite being such an influential band, The Byrds had been disappointed with the relative lack of success that their second single "All I Really Want to Do" had achieved in the American charts and felt that they needed a strong third single in order to maintain their foothold in the marketplace.
Initially, the band had elected to record a third Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
cover
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan and featured on his Bringing It All Back Home album, released on March 22, 1965 by Columbia Records . The song was originally recorded on January 15, 1965 with Dylan's acoustic guitar and harmonica and William E. Lee's bass...
", as their next single but despite a couple of attempts to record the song in June and August 1965, it was ultimately rejected. The band then briefly considered issuing a version of Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'" as a single instead, but this idea was also discarded, although the song does appear on Turn! Turn! Turn! The song finally selected by the band for their third single was Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!", a musical adaptation of words taken from the Biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
Book of Ecclesiastes, which would return The Byrds to the top of the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
.
The recording of the album was not without its tensions, with several members of the band expressing feelings of resentment towards the close working relationship that was beginning to form between McGuinn and producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
Terry Melcher
Terry Melcher
Terrence P. Melcher was an American musician and record producer, who was instrumental in shaping the sound of American West Coast rock music. His greatest contribution to the culture of the time was producing The Byrds' innovative hits "Mr Tambourine Man" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and his...
. Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
ist David Crosby was particularly vocal in his disapproval, since he felt that McGuinn and Melcher (along with the band's manager Jim Dickson) were conspiring to keep his songs off of the album. Crosby had brought the self-penned "Stranger In a Strange Land" and "The Flower Bomb Song", along with Dino Valenti's
Chet Powers
Chester William Powers, Jr. was an American singer-songwriter, and a member of the rock group Quicksilver Messenger Service. He was also known by the stage name "Dino Valenti" and, as a songwriter, as Jesse Oris Farrow...
"I Don't Ever Want to Spoil Your Party" (later released by Quicksilver Messenger Service
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Quicksilver Messenger Service is an American psychedelic rock band, formed in 1965 in San Francisco.-Introduction:Quicksilver Messenger Service gained wide popularity in the Bay Area and, through their recordings, with psychedelic rock enthusiasts around the globe and several of their albums ranked...
as "Dino's Song") to the recording sessions but all three songs were rejected and remained unreleased at the time. Tension was also developing between the band's principal songwriter, Gene Clark, and the rest of The Byrds due to the higher level of income Clark was receiving from his songwriting. This resulted in Clark becoming increasingly isolated within the band and some of his best songs being relegated to appearances on B-sides
A-side and B-side
A-side and B-side originally referred to the two sides of gramophone records on which singles were released beginning in the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song , while the B-side, or...
or being left unreleased altogether. Ultimately, this resentment would be a contributing factor in Clark's departure from the band in early 1966. Yet another source of conflict was the power struggle that was developing between Terry Melcher and Jim Dickson. For his part, Dickson had aspirations to produce the band himself, which led to him being overly critical of Melcher's production work and would culminate in Melcher's dismissal following completion of the album.
Music
Turn! Turn! Turn! opens with the Pete Seeger penned title track, which had been issued as a single two months ahead of the release of the album. Based on an arrangementArrangement
The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...
that McGuinn had developed while working on Judy Collins' 1963 album, Judy Collins 3
Judy Collins 3 (Judy Collins album)
Judy Collins #3 is an album by American folk singer Judy Collins released in 1963. It spent 10 weeks on Billboard's Top 150 album charts in 1964, peaking at #126 on May 16.-Track listing:# "Anathea"...
, the idea of reviving the song came to McGuinn during The Byrds' first American tour. The master recording
Master recording
A multitrack recording master tape, disk or computer files on which productions are developed for later mixing, is known as the multi-track master, while the tape, disk or computer files holding a mix is called a mixed master.It is standard practice to make a copy of a master recording, known as...
of the song reputedly took 78 takes, spread over five days of recording, to perfect. Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
editor David Fricke
David Fricke
David Fricke is a senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine, where he writes predominantly on rock music. In the 1990s, he was managing editor before stepping down.-Background:David Fricke is a graduate of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania...
has noted that the song's plea for peace and tolerance was custom-made for the 1960s, a decade colored by assassinations, urban rioting and the horrors of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. Peaking at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the single represented the high water mark of folk rock as a musical trend and reinforced The Byrds' standing as a formidable chart act.
The Byrds also chose to include two Bob Dylan songs on the album, in an attempt to repeat the success that they had enjoyed with their covers of his material on their debut LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
. "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" was an unreleased outtake
Outtake
An outtake is a portion of a work that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era, significant outtakes have been appended to CD and DVD reissues of many albums and films as bonus tracks or features, in film often, but not...
from Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin'
The Times They Are a-Changin'
The Times They Are a-Changin opens with the title track, one of Dylan's most famous songs. Dylan's friend, Tony Glover, recalls visiting Dylan's apartment in September 1963, where he saw a number of song manuscripts and poems lying on a table. "The Times They Are a-Changin'" had yet to be recorded,...
album that had been obtained by the band through Dylan's publisher. Dylan himself was impressed when he heard The Byrds' reading of his song, telling McGuinn "Up until I heard this I thought you were just another imitator...but this has got real feeling to it." The other Dylan song that the band included on Turn! Turn! Turn! was "The Times They Are a-Changin'", which was given a sardonic reading by the band, subverting the seriousness evident in the original and replacing it with irony.
Of the self-penned material on the album, three songs were written by Gene Clark, including "The World Turns All Around Her", which echoed his Beatlesque songs of tortured romance on the band's debut album, and "If You're Gone", a poetic confession of emotional insecurity. To highlight the wistful melancholy of "If You're Gone", McGuinn and Melcher devised a droning, Gregorian
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
harmony part that sounds uncannily like another instrument and foreshadowed the raga rock
Raga rock
Raga rock is a term used to describe rock or pop music with a heavy Indian influence, either in its construction, its timbre, or its use of instrumentation, such as the sitar and tabla...
experimentation that the band would undertake on their next album. The third Clark-penned song on the album was "Set You Free This Time
Set You Free This Time
"Set You Free This Time" is a song by the American folk rock band The Byrds, written by band member Gene Clark and first released in December 1965 on the group's Turn! Turn! Turn! album. According to Clark, the song was written in just a few hours during The Byrds' 1965 British tour, after a night...
", a densely-worded rumination on a failed relationship that lyrically exhibited the influence of Bob Dylan. The song had been written by Clark during The Byrds' 1965 tour of England, after a night spent drinking with Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
at the fashionable Scotch of St James
Scotch of St James
The Scotch of St James club was a popular meeting place for rock musicians during the mid 1960s situated at 13 Masons Yard, Westminster, London SW1...
club in London.
McGuinn's songwriting contributions to the album included "It Won't Be Wrong
It Won't Be Wrong
"It Won't Be Wrong" is a song by the American folk rock band The Byrds, which appeared as the second track on their 1965 album, Turn! Turn! Turn! It was written in 1964 by band member Jim McGuinn and his friend, Harvey Gerst, an acquaintance from McGuinn's days as a folk singer at The Troubadour...
", a song that had been co-written with McGuinn's friend Harvey Gerst in 1964. The song had previously been issued in a completely different version under the alternate title of "Don't Be Long" on a 1964 single that the band had released under the pseudonym of The Beefeaters. Another of McGuinn's contributions was an adaptation of the traditional
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
folk song
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
"He Was a Friend of Mine
He Was a Friend of Mine
"He Was a Friend of Mine" is a traditional folk song in which the singer laments the death of a friend. The earliest known version of the song is titled "Shorty George"...
". The Byrds' version featured newly written lyrics by McGuinn dealing with the assassination of President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
on November 22, 1963. The song pre-dated the formation of The Byrds, as McGuinn explained to author Johnny Rogan
Johnny Rogan
Johnny Rogan is an author of Irish descent best known for his books about music and popular culture. He has written influential biographies of The Byrds, The Smiths and Van Morrison. His writing is characterised by "an almost neurotic attention to detail", epic length and a sometimes hostile...
in 1977: "I wrote that song the night John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I suppose you could say it's one of the earliest Byrds songs." "He Was a Friend of Mine" is notable for being the first Byrds' recording to feature McGuinn playing an acoustic guitar
Acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
, instead of his usual twelve-string Rickenbacker.
Turn! Turn! Turn! also featured the McGuinn and Crosby song "Wait and See". This represented the first release of a song written by the pair, although they had previously collaborated on "The Airport Song", a track that wouldn't be heard publicly until the release of the Preflyte
Preflyte
Preflyte is a compilation album by the American folk rock band The Byrds and was released in July 1969 on Together Records . The album is a collection of demos recorded by The Byrds at World Pacific Studios in Los Angeles during 1964, before the band had signed to Columbia Records...
album in 1969. "Wait and See" also represented the first time that Crosby had received a songwriting credit on a Byrds' album. Both men wanted to move away from the simple boy/girl romance songs that the band had been writing since 1964 but ironically, "Wait and See" was even more in that tradition than the earliest of Gene Clark's songs. Another cover that was included on the album was "Satisfied Mind
A Satisfied Mind
A Satisfied Mind is a compilation of 9 of the 12 songs from the 1962 Capitol album Big Bluegrass Special plus "A Satisfied Mind" which was previously released as flipside of Glen Campbell's 1966 Capitol single "Can’t You See I’m Trying"....
", a 1955 country and western chart-topper for Porter Wagoner
Porter Wagoner
Porter Wayne Wagoner was a popular American country music singer known for his flashy Nudie and Manuel suits and blond pompadour. He introduced the young Dolly Parton near the beginning of her career on his long-running television show, and they were a well-known duet throughout the late 1960s and...
, which had been suggested by The Byrds' bass player
Bassist
A bass player, or bassist is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments...
, Chris Hillman
Chris Hillman
Christopher Hillman was one of the original members of The Byrds which in 1965 included Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, and Michael Clarke....
. The song was the first sign of the band's interest in country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
, a genre they would explore further on subsequent albums, culminating with 1968’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Sweetheart of the Rodeo is the sixth album by American rock band The Byrds and was released on August 30, 1968 on Columbia Records...
. As with the band's previous album, Turn! Turn! Turn! ended on a quirky, tongue-in-cheek note, with a whimsical send-up of Stephen Foster
Stephen Foster
Stephen Collins Foster , known as the "father of American music", was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century...
's 19th century classic, "Oh! Susanna
Oh! Susanna
"Oh! Susanna" is a minstrel song by Stephen Foster . It was published by W. C. Peters & Co. in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1848. The song was introduced by a local quintette at a concert in Andrews' Eagle Ice Cream Saloon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 11, 1847. Foster was said to have written...
h", arranged by McGuinn. Despite being recorded as an intentionally humorous reading of the song, McGuinn later admitted to journalist Vincent Flanders that he was dissatisfied with the track, stating "That was a joke, but it didn't come off, it was poorly told."
Due to the infighting caused by the other band members' resentment of Gene Clark's songwriting dominance within The Byrds, two of the songs that Clark had brought to the recording sessions were excluded from the album. Clark's romantic and densely worded "She Don't Care About Time", which featured guitar work inspired by Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring is the most common English title of the 10th movement of the cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147 composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. A transcription by the English pianist Myra Hess was published in 1926 for piano solo and in 1934 for piano duet...
", was issued on the B-side of the "Turn! Turn! Turn!" single, while the Dylanesque
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
"The Day Walk (Never Before)" was left to languish in the Columbia tape vaults for more than 20 years. "The Day Walk (Never Before)" was finally issued in 1987 when it was chosen as the title track of The Byrds' archival album, Never Before
Never Before (album)
Never Before is a compilation album by the American rock band The Byrds, consisting of previously unreleased outtakes, alternate versions, and rarities. It was initially released by Re-Flyte Records in December 1987 and was subsequently reissued on CD in 1989, with an additional seven bonus tracks...
. In the modern era, both "She Don't Care About Time" and "The Day Walk (Never Before)" have been added to the remaster
Remaster
Remaster is a word marketed mostly in the digital audio age, although the remastering process has existed since recording began...
ed Turn! Turn! Turn! CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
as bonus tracks.
Release and reception
Turn! Turn! Turn! was released on December 6, 1965 in the United States (catalogue item CL 2454 in monoMonaural
Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction is single-channel. Typically there is only one microphone, one loudspeaker, or channels are fed from a common signal path...
, CS 9254 in stereo
Stereophonic sound
The term Stereophonic, commonly called stereo, sound refers to any method of sound reproduction in which an attempt is made to create an illusion of directionality and audible perspective...
) and March 22, 1966 in the UK (catalogue item BPG 62652 in mono, SBPG 62652 in stereo). It peaked at #17 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, during a chart stay of 40 weeks, and reached #11 in the United Kingdom, spending a total of 5 weeks on the UK chart. The preceding "Turn! Turn! Turn!" single was released on October 1, 1965 in the U.S. and October 29, 1965 in the UK, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #26 on the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
. A second single taken from the album, "Set You Free This Time" (b/w "It Won't Be Wrong"), was released on January 10, 1966 in the U.S., peaking at #63 on the Billboard Hot 100 but failing to chart in the UK. The album's front cover photograph was taken by Guy Webster at his studio in Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
and was later nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover
Grammy Award for Best Recording Package
The Grammy Award for Best Recording Package is one of a series of Grammy Awards presented for the visual look of an album. It is presented to the art director of the winning album, not to the performer, except if the performer is also the art director....
. The LP's back cover liner notes were written by The Byrds' publicist
Publicist
A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a public figure, especially a celebrity, a business, or for a work such as a book, film or album...
, Derek Taylor
Derek Taylor
Derek Taylor was an English journalist, writer and publicist, best known for his work as press officer for The Beatles...
, and were actually an edited version of a much longer description of the album and its recording that would later appear in its complete form in the February 15, 1966 edition of Record World
Record World
Record World magazine was one of the three main music industry trade publications in the United States, along with Billboard and Cash Box magazines. It was founded in 1946 under the name Music Vendor, but since 1964 changed it to Record World, under the ownership of Sid Parnes and Bob Austin, both...
magazine.
Upon release, the album garnered mostly positive reviews, with Robert Shelton commenting in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
that the album was "not so strong as the first Byrds LP, Mr. Tambourine Man, but still an effective program of folk-rock." Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
magazine described the album's contents by noting that "the group offers a diversified program of material that is certain to soar up the LP charts." In the UK, Richard Bruce enthusiastically praised the album in his review for Music Echo by describing the record as "so sensationally brilliant that even after [one] hearing, I've no hesitation in saying they are proving they have as big a talent as The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
and The Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
!" In more recent years, Richie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger is a US author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing.-Life and writing:Having worked as a DJ at WXPN in Philadelphia, he started reviewing records for Op magazine in 1983...
has noted on the Allmusic website that the album "was only a disappointment in comparison with Mr. Tambourine Man. It was still quite good, however, particularly the ringing number one title cut, a classic on par with the "Mr. Tambourine Man" single."
Turn! Turn! Turn! was remastered at 20-bit
Bit
A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...
resolution and partially remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
ed as part of the Columbia/Legacy
Legacy Recordings
Legacy Recordings is Sony Music Entertainment's catalog division. It was founded in 1990 by CBS Records under the leadership of Jerry Shulman, Richard Bauer, Gary Pacheco and Amy Herot to handle reissues of recordings from the vast catalogues of Columbia Records, Epic Records and associated...
Byrds series. It was reissued in an expanded form on April 30, 1996, with seven bonus tracks, including two alternate versions of songs included on the original album, three outtakes, and the Gene Clark penned B-side, "She Don't Care About Time".
Side 1
- "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season)" (Book of Ecclesiastes/Pete SeegerPete SeegerPeter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
) – 3:49 - "It Won't Be WrongIt Won't Be Wrong"It Won't Be Wrong" is a song by the American folk rock band The Byrds, which appeared as the second track on their 1965 album, Turn! Turn! Turn! It was written in 1964 by band member Jim McGuinn and his friend, Harvey Gerst, an acquaintance from McGuinn's days as a folk singer at The Troubadour...
" (Jim McGuinnRoger McGuinnJames Roger McGuinn is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' records...
, Harvey Gerst) – 1:58 - "Set You Free This TimeSet You Free This Time"Set You Free This Time" is a song by the American folk rock band The Byrds, written by band member Gene Clark and first released in December 1965 on the group's Turn! Turn! Turn! album. According to Clark, the song was written in just a few hours during The Byrds' 1965 British tour, after a night...
" (Gene ClarkGene ClarkGene Clark, born Harold Eugene Clark was an American singer-songwriter, and one of the founding members of the folk-rock group The Byrds....
) – 2:49 - "Lay Down Your Weary TuneLay Down Your Weary Tune"Lay Down Your Weary Tune" is song written by Bob Dylan in 1963. It was originally recorded for his album The Times They Are a-Changin, but it was ultimately left off of that record. Dylan's studio recording of the song was eventually released on his 1985 box set Biograph...
" (Bob DylanBob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
) – 3:30 - "He Was a Friend of MineHe Was a Friend of Mine"He Was a Friend of Mine" is a traditional folk song in which the singer laments the death of a friend. The earliest known version of the song is titled "Shorty George"...
" (traditionalTraditional musicTraditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
, new words and arrangement Jim McGuinn) – 2:30
Side 2
- "The World Turns All Around Her" (Gene Clark) – 2:13
- "Satisfied MindA Satisfied MindA Satisfied Mind is a compilation of 9 of the 12 songs from the 1962 Capitol album Big Bluegrass Special plus "A Satisfied Mind" which was previously released as flipside of Glen Campbell's 1966 Capitol single "Can’t You See I’m Trying"....
" (Red Hayes, Jack RhodesJack RhodesAndrew Jackson Rhodes was an American country music producer and songwriter, penning such hits as "A Satisfied Mind", "Silver Threads and Golden Needles", "Conscience I'm Guilty", "The Waltz of the Angels", "Beautiful Lies", and "Till the Last Leaf Shall Fall"...
) – 2:26 - "If You're Gone" (Gene Clark) – 2:45
- "The Times They Are a-Changin'The Times They Are a-Changin' (song)"The Times They Are a-Changin" is a song written by Bob Dylan and released as the title track of his 1964 album, The Times They Are a-Changin. The song was ranked #59 on Rolling Stones 2004 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time....
" (Bob Dylan) – 2:18 - "Wait and See" (Jim McGuinn, David CrosbyDavid CrosbyDavid Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash , and CPR...
) – 2:19 - "Oh! SusannaOh! Susanna"Oh! Susanna" is a minstrel song by Stephen Foster . It was published by W. C. Peters & Co. in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1848. The song was introduced by a local quintette at a concert in Andrews' Eagle Ice Cream Saloon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 11, 1847. Foster was said to have written...
h" (Stephen FosterStephen FosterStephen Collins Foster , known as the "father of American music", was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century...
) – 3:03
1996 CD reissue bonus tracks
- "The Day Walk (Never Before)" (Gene Clark) – 3:00
- "She Don't Care About Time" [Single Version] (Gene Clark) – 2:29
- "The Times They Are A-Changin’" [First Version] (Bob Dylan) – 1:54
- "It's All Over Now, Baby BlueIt's All Over Now, Baby Blue"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan and featured on his Bringing It All Back Home album, released on March 22, 1965 by Columbia Records . The song was originally recorded on January 15, 1965 with Dylan's acoustic guitar and harmonica and William E. Lee's bass...
" [Version 1] (Bob Dylan) – 3:03 - "She Don't Care About Time" [Version 1] (Gene Clark) – 2:35
- "The World Turns All Around Her" [Alternate Mix] (Gene Clark) – 2:12
- "Stranger in a Strange Land" [Instrumental] (David Crosby) – 3:04
Singles
- ""Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)" b/w "She Don't Care About Time" (Columbia 43424) October 1, 1965 (US #1, UK #26)
- "Set You Free This Time" b/w "It Won't Be Wrong" (Columbia 43501) January 10, 1966 (US #63)
- "It Won't Be Wrong" b/w "Set You Free This Time" (CBS 202037) February 18, 1966
Personnel
NOTE: Sources for this section are as follows:The Byrds
- Jim McGuinnRoger McGuinnJames Roger McGuinn is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' records...
- lead guitarLead guitarLead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...
, acoustic guitarAcoustic guitarAn acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
, vocalsSingingSinging is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments... - Gene ClarkGene ClarkGene Clark, born Harold Eugene Clark was an American singer-songwriter, and one of the founding members of the folk-rock group The Byrds....
- guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, harmonicaHarmonicaThe harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...
, tambourineTambourineThe tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....
, vocals - David CrosbyDavid CrosbyDavid Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash , and CPR...
- guitar, vocals - Chris HillmanChris HillmanChristopher Hillman was one of the original members of The Byrds which in 1965 included Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, and Michael Clarke....
- electric bassBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
(backing vocal on "Lay Down Your Weary TuneLay Down Your Weary Tune"Lay Down Your Weary Tune" is song written by Bob Dylan in 1963. It was originally recorded for his album The Times They Are a-Changin, but it was ultimately left off of that record. Dylan's studio recording of the song was eventually released on his 1985 box set Biograph...
") - Michael ClarkeMichael Clarke (musician)Michael Clarke , was an American musician, best known as the drummer for the 1960s rock group The Byrds from 1964 to 1967. He died in 1993, at age 47, from liver failure, a direct result of more than three decades of heavy alcohol consumption.-Biography:Clarke was born Michael James Dick in...
- drumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
(tambourine on 5, harmonica on bonus track 16)
Additional personnel
- Terry MelcherTerry MelcherTerrence P. Melcher was an American musician and record producer, who was instrumental in shaping the sound of American West Coast rock music. His greatest contribution to the culture of the time was producing The Byrds' innovative hits "Mr Tambourine Man" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and his...
- organOrgan (music)The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
on "He Was a Friend of MineHe Was a Friend of Mine"He Was a Friend of Mine" is a traditional folk song in which the singer laments the death of a friend. The earliest known version of the song is titled "Shorty George"...
"
Release history
| Date | Label | Format | Country | Catalog | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 6, 1965 | Columbia Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company... |
LP LP album The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry... |
US | CL 2454 | Original mono Monaural Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction is single-channel. Typically there is only one microphone, one loudspeaker, or channels are fed from a common signal path... release. |
| CS 9254 | Original stereo release.* | ||||
| March 22, 1966 | CBS Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company... |
LP | UK | BPG 62652 | Original mono release. |
| SBPG 62652 | Original stereo release.* | ||||
| 1975 | CBS | LP | UK | S 33645 | Double album stereo reissue with Mr. Tambourine Man Mr. Tambourine Man (album) Mr. Tambourine Man is the debut album by the American folk rock band The Byrds and was released in June 1965 on Columbia Records . The album, along with the single of the same name, established the band as an internationally successful rock act and was also influential in originating the musical... .* |
| 1976 | Embassy Embassy Records Embassy Records was originally a UK budget record label that produced cover versions of current hit songs that were sold exclusively in Woolworths shops at a cheaper price than the original recordings. As such, Embassy can be seen as the UK equivalent of U.S. labels such as Hit and Bell Records... |
LP | UK | EMB 31257 | Stereo reissue with alternative cover.* |
| 1977 | Embassy | LP | UK | CBS 31526 | Stereo reissue with alternative cover (different cover to above release).* |
| 1987 | Columbia | CD Compact Disc The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,... |
US | CK 9254 | Original CD release. |
| 1993 | Columbia | CD | UK | COL 468180 | |
| April 30, 1996 | Columbia/Legacy Legacy Recordings Legacy Recordings is Sony Music Entertainment's catalog division. It was founded in 1990 by CBS Records under the leadership of Jerry Shulman, Richard Bauer, Gary Pacheco and Amy Herot to handle reissues of recordings from the vast catalogues of Columbia Records, Epic Records and associated... |
CD | US | CK 64846 | Reissue containing seven bonus tracks and a partially remixed version of the stereo album.* |
| May 6, 1996 | UK | COL 4837062 | |||
| 1999 | Simply Vinyl | LP | UK | SVLP 037 | Reissue of the partially remixed stereo album.* |
| 2003 | Sony Sony Music Entertainment Sony Music Entertainment ' is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation.... |
CD | Japan | MHCP-67 | Reissue containing seven bonus tracks and the partially remixed stereo album in a replica LP sleeve.* |
| 2006 | Sundazed Sundazed Records Sundazed Records is a record label based in Coxsackie, in the Catskills of New York. It specializes in obscure and rare recordings from the 1950s to the 1970s.Label founders Bob Irwin and his wife Mary started the label in 1989... |
LP | US | LP 5198 | Reissue of the original mono release. |
| * The album's title track and "He Was a Friend of Mine" were never mixed into stereo and appear in mono on all stereo releases of the album. | |||||
Remix information
Turn! Turn! Turn! was one of four Byrds albums that were partially remixed as part of their re-release on Columbia/Legacy. The reason for the remix was explained by Bob Irwin (who produced these re-issues for compact disc) during an interview:He further stated:
Irwin's assertions that no liberties were taken have been proven false in a couple of instances. The vocals on most of the album's songs are mixed noticeably higher than they were on the original mixes and the fades are different on almost every song as well.
Many fans enjoy the remixed album because it is very close to the original mix in most cases and offers noticeably better sound quality. However, there are also a lot of fans who dismiss the remix as revisionist history
Historical revisionism (negationism)
Historical revisionism is either the legitimate scholastic re-examination of existing knowledge about a historical event, or the illegitimate distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear in a more or less favourable light. For the former, i.e. the academic pursuit, see...
and prefer to listen to the original mix on vinyl
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
or on the pre-1996 CD releases.