![]() Socially conscious songs about car phones and rain forests try much too hard, although ex-Byrds Hillman and David Crosby make two of the lightweight love songs sound pretty with their vocal harmonies. "King of the Hill" sounds like Petty's best Byrds imitations, but it has lyrics dumb enough for Don Henley. The best song is a minor Elvis Costello composition, "You Bowed Down," which has a neat melody (Costello sings harmony) but a stilted lyric. It's a delight to hear that sound again, even if the songs and the passion can't begin to compare with the Byrds' classic albums. As a result, "Back From Rio" persuasively re-creates the sound of the Byrds' folk-rock phase, with McGuinn's 12-string Rickenbacker guitar and twangy voice seemingly unchanged from 1965. Tom Petty, who owes the biggest debt, not only co-wrote the first single, "King of the Hill," and sang the duet vocal, but also lent three of his Heartbreakers to the project. ![]() McGuinn has retained the affection of his rock heirs, though, and several of them helped him make his comeback album respectable. He didn't really disappear with the loot to Brazil, but he might as well have, for he began the '80s with a dispirited reunion with former Byrd Chris Hillman and ended the decade with pro-forma club shows. McGuinn has capitalized on the publicity surrounding the box set to release his first solo album in 14 years, "Back From Rio" (Arista). Tambourine Man," psychedelic-rock in 1966 with "Eight Miles High" and country-rock in 1968 with "Sweetheart of the Rodeo." These breakthroughs are lovingly re-created on the recent box-set retrospective "The Byrds" (Columbia), which features 90 songs on four CDs or cassettes accompanied by a 56-page booklet (though the value of the set is undercut by the fact that every real rock-and-roll fan should own the Byrds' first six albums in their entirety). As the leader of the Byrds, he established folk-rock in 1965 with "Mr. McGuinn is the only person ever to launch three different revolutions in rock-and-roll. Even Roger McGuinn, the man who sang the original "Eight Miles High," has forgotten this crucial lesson. Recent psychedelic-rockers such as Jellyfish, King's X, Lenny Kravitz, Redd Kross, Trip Shakespeare, Emotional Fish and Mazzy Star have all created wonderful sounds, but they haven't come up with many real songs to hang their sounds on. That's what so many paisley revivalists have forgotten: The gargoyles and angels of psychedelic-rock will stay in the air only if the song they decorate provides a firm foundation. Underneath the raga-jazz guitar harmonies and churchlike vocals, "Eight Miles High" was such a good song that Leo Kottke could record it successfully with just an acoustic guitar several years later. It was a brilliant single, but it was willfully misunderstood by a thousand middle-class guitarists with more ambition than discipline. ![]() "Eight Miles High," a product of the Byrds' fascination with John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar, is that rarest of rarities: a genuinely avant-garde rock-and-roll recording. ![]() You could see it coming." It was a perceptive prediction, for such is the history of psychedelic-rock: a few strokes of genius used to justify a mountain of rubbish. British songwriter Robyn Hitchcock remembers the first time he heard the Byrds' 1966 single "Eight Miles High." "I knew at once it was a great record," he recalls, "but at the same time I knew it would open the door for a lot of very bad records. ![]()
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