For an album that only peaked at number 77 on the Billboard LPs chart, the Byrds’ 1968 masterpiece Sweetheart of the Rodeo has had quite a long and healthy life. Almost immediately after its release, despite its inability to catch on with the record-buying masses, the group’s attempt at fusing rock with vintage country music began influencing other musicians, who formed bands of their own—some of which subsequently became among the biggest rock bands of all time.
Now, a half-century later, two founding members of the Byrds, guitarist-singer Roger McGuinn and multi-instrumentalist-singer Chris Hillman (who cut the album with the late singer-songwriter-musician Gram Parsons and drummer Kevin Kelley), are heading out on tour to perform Sweetheart in its entirety for the first time ever. McGuinn and Hillman will be joined onstage by Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, some of the countless musicians who consider Sweetheart a seminal recording.
We spoke with McGuinn and Hillman about the upcoming tour and the legacy of the Byrds’ sixth—and extremely influential—album.
How did the Sweetheart of the Rodeo gigs come together?
Roger McGuinn: My wife and I were in Buenos Aires and sitting in the airport thinking it’s the 50th anniversary of Sweetheart of the Rodeo. It might be fun to do something about it.
Chris Hillman: Roger discussed the idea with Marty. Roger then brought it to me and I immediately agreed to do it. I love working with Roger and I haven’t had the opportunity to work with him for a good 15 years. It’s always a very productive, enjoyable thing playing music with Roger McGuinn. Marty and Roger are very close and I’ve known Marty since the ’80s. He is, as are the Superlatives, very well-versed in the Sweetheart stuff and all the Byrds music. He’s just perfect for this. They’re such a good band; it’s a great package.
Why this album? This isn’t something you did with Notorious Byrd Brothers or Younger Than Yesterday or any of the other Byrds albums.
CH: Well, it’s the 50th anniversary of the record. It’s also the last record I worked on with Roger before I went off and did the Flying Burrito Brothers. Sweetheart of the Rodeo wasn’t really my favorite Byrds album, but it did open a vast floodgate for West Coast country-rock or country music to come out. It was Sweetheart that initiated all that, that really led up to the Eagles. The legacy of Sweetheart of the Rodeo probably surpassed a lot of the other Byrds projects.
Chris, is it fair to say there wouldn’t have been a Flying Burrito Brothers if you hadn’t done this first?
CH: Pretty much, yeah. Or a Poco or Dillard and Clark or any number of things.
Were you satisfied with Sweetheart at the time?
RM: I’m just happy that after about 40-some years, it became popular. Nobody liked it when it came out. Country people didn’t like it and the rock people didn’t like it. It just fell through the cracks. And then gradually, after 40 years, people kind of caught on to it and said hey, this wasn’t bad at all. People just didn’t get it [at the time]. Well, some people did. I had some friends who loved it. I remember going to a country station in L.A. and it had a long hallway and down at the end of the hall there was a bulletin board with the album cover pinned up to it. I thought, oh great, they’re playing the Byrds’ album. Then when I got closer to it I saw it said in big marker, “Do not play!” Then [disc jockey] Ralph Emery at WSM wouldn’t play the “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” single.
Why wouldn’t Emery play it?
RM: He put it on a preview turntable and played about 10 seconds’ worth and said, “I’m not going to play that on my show.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “What’s it about?” and I said, “I don’t know. It’s a Bob Dylan song.” Then he went into a commercial for Clark truck seats. He said, “No matter what kind of a rig you drive, a Clark seat will fit it. Go on down to your Clark dealer’s today and get one. Mile after mile, you’ll be glad you did.” So Gram Parsons and I decided to write a song about that called “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man.” We said, “This guy’s not a real truck driver. We like truck drivers. He’s the kind of guy that dresses up like a cowboy and hangs out at the drugstore.” That’s meaning of the title.
How did Marty Stuart and his band get involved in the Sweetheart tour?
RM: I’d worked with Marty before and toured with him and been on his TV show when he had that going and I played with him at [Nashville’s] Ryman Auditorium a couple of times. He has [post Sweetheart Byrds guitarist] Clarence White’s Telecaster, the B-Bender guitar, and he learned how to work that. He can play all Clarence’s licks. When I’m on stage with Marty, it’s like I’m back with Clarence, who was my really good friend back then. [Marty is] playing the steel guitar parts that Lloyd Green played on the album. We’ve got Gary Scruggs’ son [Chris] on stage. He plays bass normally, but he also plays steel. He’s part of the Fabulous Superlatives band.
Is Marty going to sing the songs that Gram did on the album?
CH: No, Marty’s gonna sing a few songs in the show, but probably some of the stuff we did leading up to Sweetheart of the Rodeo. For the second Byrds album, we recorded “Satisfied Mind,” a big hit for Porter Wagoner. That was our first foray into country music, so to speak. Roger and I will split up the vocals on the Sweetheart material. We’ll be doing songs that led up to Sweetheart, like “Time Between,” from Younger Than Yesterday, and “The Girl With No Name,” “Old John Robertson,” stuff like that. Marty knows how to play Clarence’s licks but he goes beyond that and does his own signature stuff. He’s a really wonderful player.
RM: We’re gonna construct a little play, showing the evolution of how we were dabbling in country music and then Gram came along and fired us up to do the whole album.
Before you started on Sweetheart, your original intent was to do something a lot more ambitious, an overview of American music in general. How did the focus turn strictly to country?
RM: That was the influence of Gram Parsons and Chris. Gram and Chris were both really into country and I loved it too. For me it’s always been part of folk music. The other thing was a little too ambitious. It was going to go from early music through Baroque and into Appalachian and how the Celtic music came over to America and became distilled in the mountains and then became country music and then how R&B started and rock ’n’ roll and then go out through some kind of synthesizer thing and space music. It was just a wild idea and I couldn’t get anybody to go along with it. It would have been a lot of work. I’m not sure we could have pulled it off.
CH: It was an idea that came and went very quickly. [Sweetheart] wasn’t a big stretch for us because we’d already been doing country stuff. It was a stretch in that we all came out of folk music, except for Mike Clarke, the drummer. He probably had a little more rock experience. It wasn’t like a rock guy going down to Nashville and doing a bluegrass album, which is totally out of context. We had our feet firmly planted in that area prior to doing this album.
By the time you started on Sweetheart, all of the original band had left except for you two. Then you added Kevin Kelley on drums and then Gram Parsons. How did Gram come into the picture?
RM: We went out and did some gigs as a threesome [McGuinn, Hillman, Kelley] and there was nobody holding the rhythm together. That’s how Gram got invited. He was basically still a musician for hire but everybody thinks he was supposed to be a part of the Byrds. It was a misunderstanding.
A lot of people aren’t aware that Gram is mostly playing piano on Sweetheart .
RM: I don’t know what he played guitar on, but he did play piano. He was a good piano player. He played like Floyd Cramer, who I just found out played the break on Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel.”
CH: Roger’s wonderful line back then was that we thought we were hiring a piano player and we ended up with George Jones in a sequin suit. Gram was OK. He wasn’t really a very good piano player. His force was playing rhythm guitar and singing and writing.
Chris, Kevin Kelley was your cousin. What can you tell us about Kevin?
CH: I don’t know how we ended up having Kevin, but he actually played pretty well on Sweetheart, and prior to that he had had been in an interesting group called the Rising Sons. It was Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal. Kevin played drums and I think some other fellow played bass. That was about 1965. They might have made one record but they didn’t last too long, because Ry and Taj were off to huge careers.
Was there ever a thought when you were making this album that you might lose a lot of your original Byrds audience?
RM: No, we just loved the music so much we wanted to do it. I even went to Nudie’s [Rodeo Tailors clothing shop] and got some country stuff and I bought a Cadillac Eldorado like Nudie had. I’d drive around L.A. listening to country radio like Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton and Jerry Lee Lewis, who was doing country at that time. I used to listen to Flatt and Scruggs, all the country guys.
What were the sessions in Nashville like?
RM: They were wonderful because we were dealing with the A-team, like the Wrecking Crew kind of guys, and they were happy to be playing with us because we had a more relaxed approach to recording. They’re kind of formal, with lead sheets and all that. We were just kind of wild, doing it by ear.
CH: John Hartford was really an asset too. He could play fiddle and banjo and he was such a good guy and a good player. We had [Roy] Junior Huskey on bass and of course Lloyd Green, a wonderful steel player, and still a good friend of mine. And then we finished it up in L.A. with Clarence White, and Jay Dee Maness [also on pedal steel] on a few things. But we had a great time recording, a lot of fun. Gary Usher was one of the better producers we ever used in the Byrds, a really good guy.
RM: It was a dream to record. It was one or two takes and we had it, and we took it back to L.A. and sweetened it up with some other guys.
How was the cover material put together? You had everything from Merle Haggard and the Louvin Brothers to Woody Guthrie, of course Dylan, and then there’s a William Bell song.
RM: We just chipped in things that we liked. Gram was responsible for the Merle Haggard and George Jones stuff and the Louvin Brothers. [Guthrie’s] “Pretty Boy Floyd” came from my folk background. Chris had “Blue Canadian Rockies.” I guess he’d seen Gene Autry doing it.
CH: I think “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” Gram brought in. But I also think Taj Mahal had cut that. It’s a great tune. Gram had a great ear for R&B ballads and putting them together into more of a country presentation. “Blue Canadian Rockies,” I heard that somewhere. It was from a Gene Autry movie. It was a Cindy Walker song. She wrote that in Nashville—great songwriter. I can’t wait to tackle that one again. I always loved that song in its simplicity and beauty.
What did Columbia Records say when you handed them the tapes? Were they OK with the country direction?
RM: Columbia Records was very lenient. They never really tried to get us to go in any direction. We’d had some success with them and they didn’t really know what we were doing. “Let them go and do what they want.” I don’t remember being called in on it, like, “What did you guys do? Why isn’t this selling?”
Since you brought that up, the album wasn’t quite as big a hit as the earlier albums were. Was that a surprise to you guys?
CH: I don’t think so. I don’t think we ever approached anything, nor does any group go, “This is going to be great.” Of course, you’re going to be excited about it. I didn’t really know what to expect; it was so out of left field. It wasn’t a big-seller but it left an incredible legacy, and I really think it did open up the gates for all these country type things to come along: Burrito Brothers, Poco, Dillard and Clark. Rick Nelson was doing stuff before us, with the Stone Canyon Band.
Sweetheart is often credited as the first real country-rock album. Would you agree with that assessment of it?
RM: Well, there was [Parsons’] International Submarine Band, but it didn’t really catch on. Technically, there was country-rock before that, and even Ringo Starr did Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally,” which was kind of country rock. That was the thing that told me to write “Mr. Spaceman” in 2/4 time, because if the Beatles can get away with the 2/4 time then the Byrds could. But we were doing country as far back as “Satisfied Mind” on Turn! Turn! Turn! And some of the stuff Chris came up with was very country-ish.
What worked on Sweetheart and what didn’t work?
CH: There’s a couple tunes [that didn’t] but I’ve never done an album where I come off wishing I had done something different. You follow your heart and then later you go, “Well, maybe that wasn’t the right choice to make.” That’s just normal. All in all, I think that we had a good selection. The Byrds were blessed twice by Bob Dylan, once with “Mr. Tambourine Man” and once with “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” two great demos given to us. “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” has really been a solid winner for five decades. Bob wrote that when he was laid up after his motorcycle accident. He wrote all these songs in Woodstock, and we were lucky enough to get hold of that.
RM: I think [the album] was very well played; the instrumentation was great and our vocals were OK. We were really sincere; it wasn’t like we’re putting on this music.
“Nothing Was Delivered” was from the same pool of Dylan’s basement tapes.
CH: Yeah. That’s a funny song. I never knew the meaning of that song until about a month ago when Roger was talking about it. I never even thought about it; that’s a great, funny song.
Does Gram Parsons get enough credit for his role in Sweetheart of the Rodeo, or too much credit?
CH: He was a good part of the project and he brought two great songs to it. Is he the king of country rock? No, not really. But he was a joy to work with then and into the first Burrito Brothers album. He was an integral part of the whole thing.
Why did the band fall apart so quickly? Gram was gone by the time the album hit the stores.
RM: Gram developed an affection for Keith Richards and wanted to hang out with him, so we asked him to leave. Also, Crosby had left and Michael [Clarke] left and finally, after Sweetheart, Chris left. I was the only one left in the band. Bands are pretty tough. Even the Beatles broke up. It was very sad. And the Beatles had been like the four Musketeers. I mean, they were all for one and one for all. I remember I asked George Harrison about God and he said, “We don’t know about that.” It was like a group mind. I compare the Byrds to a pirate ship: every man for himself. Walk the plank.
Why didn’t the Byrds’ country phase last longer than it did?
RM: I kept doing it. We got Clarence in the band. We were doing a lot of country-rock; we were doing stuff from Sweetheart of the Rodeo, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and so on.
The album was released in 1968, which was a very volatile year, with the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Dr. King, and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Was the album a reaction to all of that?
RM: I think it was a reaction to the chaos that was going on both in the war and everything else, and also after the psychedelic music movement. It was just crazy, madness. So this was a way to simplify things and do kind of soothing music.
David Crosby has said that he’d love to do something with you and Chris again. Now that you’re doing this tour, do you think that’s a possibility?
RM: This is not really a Byrds reunion; it’s more of a celebration of the Sweetheart album. I’m kind of reluctant to do a Byrds reunion. It’s so commercial, a bunch of old guys doing it for the money. This is not for the money. This is a labor of love.
CH: I dearly love David and I worked with him two weeks ago in Massachusetts. I opened two shows for him and we had a great time. And of course, we sang together on stage. And I love Roger, but I don’t think that’ll happen. There’s three of us left and we are all good friends and I just don’t think this is something that’s ever going to happen. And that’s OK. It’s best left as a wonderful memory and that you see and hear what the Byrds were. It’ll never quite be the same without Gene [Clark] and Michael [Clarke]. And David’s fine with Roger and me doing this because he wasn’t really in the band and he had nothing to do with this record. He’s very supportive of it. I think we’re closer friends now than we were 40, 50, 55 years ago.
The shows have been selling out. That must feel like a validation of the album’s legacy.
RM: I’m surprised, really. I thought we’d just do a couple of shows and be done with it. But people are asking for more.
