James Roger McGuinn
(known professionally as Roger McGuinn
, previously as Jim McGuinn
, and born James Joseph McGuinn III
on July 13, 1942) [1] 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. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with the Byrds.
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Early life
Roger McGuinn was born and raised in
Chicago,
Illinois. His parents, James and Dorothy, were involved in
journalism and
public relations, and during his childhood, they had written 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 him a
guitar. (During the early 1980s, he paid tribute to the song that encouraged him to play guitar by including "Heartbreak Hotel" in his autobiographical show). Around the same time, he was also influenced by country artists and/or groups such as
Johnny Cash,
Carl Perkins,
Gene Vincent and
The Everly Brothers.
During 1957, he enrolled as a student at Chicago's
Old Town School of Folk Music, where he learned the five-string
banjo and continued to improve his guitar skills. After graduation, McGuinn performed solo at various
coffeehouses on the
folk music circuit where he was discovered and hired as a
sideman by folk music groups like
the Limeliters, the
Chad Mitchell Trio, and
Judy Collins. He also played guitar and sang backup harmonies for
Bobby Darin. Soon after, he relocated to the
West Coast, eventually
Los Angeles, where he eventually met the future members of
The Byrds.
During 1962, after he ended his association with the
Chad Mitchell Trio,
Bobby Darin hired him to be a backup guitarist and harmony singer. (At that approximate time, Darin wanted to add some folk roots to his repertoire, seeing it as a burgeoning musical field.) Unfortunately, about a year and a half after McGuinn began to play guitar and sing with Darin, Darin became ill and retired from singing. Subsequently, Darin opened T.M. Music in
New York City's
Brill Building, hiring McGuinn as a song writer for $35 a week. During 1963, just one year before he co-founded the Byrds, he was a studio musician in New York City, recording with
Judy Collins and
the Paul Simon-Art Garfunkel duo. At the same time, he was hearing of
The Beatles, and wondering how
Beatlemania might affect folk music. When
Doug Weston gave McGuinn a job in Los Angeles, at the
Troubadour, McGuinn had included Beatles' songs in his act, and he consequently turned his attention to another folkie who was also a Beatle fan,
Gene Clark, who joined forces with McGuinn in
The Byrds, in July 1964.
The Byrds
During his time with the Byrds, McGuinn developed two innovative and very influential styles of electric guitar playing: "jingle-jangle" — generating ringing
arpeggios based on
banjo finger picking styles he learned while at the Old Town School; and secondly, 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."
While tracking the Byrds' first single, "
Mr. Tambourine Man," at
Columbia studios, McGuinn discovered an important component of his style. "The 'Rick'
[Rickenbacker guitar] by itself is kind of thuddy," he notes. "It doesn't ring. But if you add a
compressor, you get that long
sustain. To be honest, I found this by accident. The
engineer, Ray Gerhardt, would run compressors on everything to protect his precious equipment from loud rock and roll. He compressed the heck out of my
12-string, and it sounded so great we decided to use two
tube compressors [likely Teletronix LA-2As] in series, and then go directly into the
board. That's how I got my 'jingle-jangle' tone. It's really squashed down, but it jumps out from the radio. With compression, I found I could hold a note for three or four seconds, and sound more like a
wind instrument. Later, this led me to emulate John Coltrane's
saxophone on '
Eight Miles High.' Without compression, I couldn't have sustained the riff's first note."
"I practiced eight hours a day on that 'Rick,'" 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 (with the second string tuned an octave higher). The
C. F. Martin guitar company has even released a special edition 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.
The Byrds recorded several albums after
Mr. Tambourine Man
during 1965. The single, "
Turn! Turn! Turn!", written by Pete Seeger with the lyrics drawn from Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, was the Byrds second Number One success during late 1965. During 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. 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 their "jam-band" style of playing during that period.
After several personnel changes, the group disbanded during 1973, with
Chris Hillman playing bass with the band for their final show in February of that year. Notable band members included
David Crosby,
Gene Clark,
Michael Clarke,
Clarence White,
Skip Battin and
Gram Parsons, all of whom went on to form successful groups.
During 1968, McGuinn helped create the groundbreaking Byrds 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 and other styles but Gram Parson's and Chris Hillman's buegrass-western-country influences came to the forefront. Other artist's albums, and even Byrd songs by Hillman on previous albums showed a strong country influence but "Sweetheart" was the first fully fledged country rock album.
Post-Byrds
After the break-up of the Byrds, McGuinn released several solo albums throughout the 1970s. He toured with
Bob Dylan in 1975 and 1976 as part of Dylan's "
Rolling Thunder Revue". During 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.
During 1978, McGuinn joined fellow ex-Byrds
Gene Clark and
Chris Hillman to form "McGuinn, Clark and Hillman," and the band released its debut album with
Capitol Records in 1979. The media loved the band and they performed on many TV rock shows, including repeated performances on The Midnight Special, where they played both new material and Byrds hits. "Don't You Write Her Off" reached #33 in April 1979. While some believe that the slick production and disco rhythms didn't flatter the group, and the album had mixed reviews both critically and commercially, it sold enough to generate a follow up. McGuinn, Clark and Hillman's second release was to have been a full group effort entitled "City," but a combination of Clark's unreliability and his dissatisfaction with their musical direction (mostly regarding Ron and Howard Albert's production) resulted in the billing change on their next LP "City" to "Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, featuring Gene Clark." By 1981 Clark had left and the group continued briefly as "McGuinn/Hillman."
During 1987 Roger McGuinn was the
opening act for Dylan and
Tom Petty. During 1991 he released his comeback solo album
Back from Rio
to successful acclaim.
Roger McGuinn has used the
World Wide Web to continue the folk music tradition since November 1995 by recording a different folk song each month on his site. The songs are made available from his web site and a selection (with guest vocalists) was released on
CD as
Treasures from the Folk Den.
In November 2005, McGuinn released a four-CD box set containing one hundred of his favorite songs from the Folk Den.
On
July 11,
2000, McGuinn testified before in a
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on downloading music from the
Internet that artists do not always receive the royalties that (non-Internet based) 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.
[2]
McGuinn currently tours as a solo artist.
Religious faith and name changes
During 1965 McGuinn briefly explored the
Subud spiritual association and began to practice the
latihan, an exercise in quieting the mind. McGuinn changed his name in 1967 after
Subud's founder
Bapak told him it would better "vibrate with the universe."
Bapak sent Jim the letter "R" and asked him to send back ten names starting with that letter. Owing to a fascination with airplanes, gadgets and
science fiction, he sent names like "Rocket," "Retro," "Ramjet," and "Roger," the latter a term used in
signalling protocol over two-way radios, military and
civil aviation. Roger was the only "real" name in the bunch and
Bapak chose it. While using the name Roger professionally from that time on, McGuinn only officially changed his middle name from Joseph to Roger. McGuinn left the Subud religion in 1977, the same year that he met his wife Camilla (they married the next year). Both have been steeped in the
Christian faith since that time.
[3] [4]
Discography
Albums
- Roger McGuinn
(1973)
- Peace on You
(1974)
- Roger McGuinn & Band
(1975)
- Cardiff Rose
(1976)
- Thunderbyrd
(1977)
- McGuinn, Clark & Hillman
(1978) (with Gene Clark and Chris Hillman)
- City
(1980) (with Chris Hillman, featuring Gene Clark)
- McGuinn - Hillman
(1981) (with Chris Hillman)
- Back from Rio
(1990)
- Born to Rock and Roll
(1991)
- Live from Mars
(1996)
- McGuinn's Folk Den
(4 volumes) (2000)
- Treasures from the Folk Den
(2001)
- Limited Edition
(2004)
- The Folk Den Project
(2005)
- Live from Spain
(2007)
- 22 Timeless Tracks from the Folk Den Project
(2008)
McGuinn also appears on the various artists anthology
Adios Amigo: A Tribute to Arthur Alexander
(1994). McGuinn performs a cover version of "Anna." He has also performed the songs "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and "The Ballad of Easy Rider" which were included on the
soundtrack of the film
Easy Rider
. Another soundtrack that features McGuinn is the 1977 film
Ransom
. McGuinn performed "Shoot 'Em" which appears on the anthology album
Byrd Parts 2
, released on Australia's Raven Records label in 2003. McGuinn also appears with Bruce Springsteen on the live download "Magic Tour Highlights (Live)" singing "Turn! Turn! Turn!" Roger McGuinn also did guitar the work in The Beach Boys version of California Dreaming video.
Singles
Year
| Single
| Chart Positions
| Album
|
US MSR
| US Country
| CAN Country
|
1989
| "You Ain't Going Nowhere" (w/ Chris Hillman)
| —
| 6
| 11
| Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two
(Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album)
|
1991
| "King of the Hill"
| 2
| —
| —
| Back from Rio
|
"Someone to Love"
| 12
| —
| —
|
References
- McGuinn's entry on the Britannica Online Encyclopedia
- Transcript — Lars Ulrich, Roger McGuinn Testify Before Senate Judiciary Committee on Downloading Music on the Internet — July 11, 2000
- No Ordinary Folk
- Growing Bolder With Roger McGuinn