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Were The Byrds As Revolutionary As The Velvet Underground? -- A Debate (1 Viewer)

Not the original McGuinn-Clark-Crosby band.

You could make a stronger case for the later McGuinn-White-Parsons crew who pioneered country rock but still no. 

 
Ilov80s said:
No. The Byrds probably did invent alt country but the electric folk sound they are most associated with was more of a next step on Dylan's sound imo.
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I'd probably agree with you. But what did the Velvets do other than rock n' roll? It's a pretty tight race, all things considered, IMO. The Velvets did tons with the genre, but did they invent a sub-genre?  In Eight Miles High, you hear the immediate alt-country strain and then onto the next. They're a pretty impressive band, maybe up on par.   

 
Lutherman2112 said:
rockation and tim are my only blocked posters. no matter the subject, all about them. I just noticed zero rockation activity and double Tim crap. 
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I'm glad to be blocked by you, Lutherman2112. Happy, actually. Until you start taking shots at me and then don't read the responses.

Oh well.  

 
rockaction said:
I'd probably agree with you. But what did the Velvets do other than rock n' roll? It's a pretty tight race, all things considered, IMO. The Velvets did tons with the genre, but did they invent a sub-genre?  In Eight Miles High, you hear the immediate alt-country strain and then onto the next. They're a pretty impressive band, maybe up on par.   
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Combined modern art and art rock with real old fashioned rock. Introduced an attitude into rock and rock as story telling: hookers, hard drugs, gender bending, etc.  They took rock into the modern age.

 
There are very few true revolutionaries in music.   Even the early jazz cats like Armstrong and King Oliver, electronica pioneers like Stockhausen and Kraftwerk, and the original hip hop DJs like Kool Herc combined some elements from their musical forebearers.

 
Velvet Underground is akin to NWA. They melded the grimy, tense realities of life in a decaying city with serious high level talent. Both probably blew the faces offf of suburban kids and angered parents like nothing ever before.

 
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Eephus said:
There are very few true revolutionaries in music.   Even the early jazz cats like Armstrong and King Oliver, electronica pioneers like Stockhausen and Kraftwerk, and the original hip hop DJs like Kool Herc combined some elements from their musical forebearers.
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Pythagoras might have been the true music revolutionary and everything after that is just dust, but I'm speaking colloquially.  

 
Ilov80s said:
Velvet Underground is akin to NWA. They melded the grimy, tense realities of life in a decaying city with serious high level talent. Both probably blew the faces of suburban kids and angered parents like nothing ever before.
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Let's not stretch the truth too much here - they both had attitude - musical talent is a reach

 
ffldrew said:
Let's not stretch the truth too much here - they both had attitude - musical talent is a reach
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Say what? Lou Reed is a great guitarist and one of the best songwriters in rock. John Cale was a talented multi instrumentalist. As rap goes, Eazy and Cube are all timers. Dre is arguably the best producer in rap history. 

 
Eephus said:
There are very few true revolutionaries in music.   Even the early jazz cats like Armstrong and King Oliver, electronica pioneers like Stockhausen and Kraftwerk, and the original hip hop DJs like Kool Herc combined some elements from their musical forebearers.
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Red Sovine comes to mind.

 
Ilov80s said:
Say what? Lou Reed is a great guitarist and one of the best songwriters in rock. John Cale was a talented multi instrumentalist. As rap goes, Eazy and Cube are all timers. Dre is arguably the best producer in rap history. 
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Reed is really underrated as a guitarist.  He doesn't play a lot of complex solos but his rhythm work is exceptional and influential.   He holds his own (in your right speaker) with the great Robert Quine (on the left) on The Blue Mask.

 
Ilov80s said:
No. The Byrds probably did invent alt country but the electric folk sound they are most associated with was more of a next step on Dylan's sound imo.
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I'd agree the "revolutionary" tag doesn't fit either of these bands, mostly just because it's a vague, ill-defined term that seems to set a pretty high bar, but have to disagree with the notion that the Byrds "invented" alt-country.  The term "alt-country" itself is pretty nebulous, but if we can agree it generally refers to country music acts who don't fit comfortably into the mainstream country music scene of their time, I think there are good arguments for many musicians that came well before the Byrds.

 
CletiusMaximus said:
I'd agree the "revolutionary" tag doesn't fit either of these bands, mostly just because it's a vague, ill-defined term that seems to set a pretty high bar, but have to disagree with the notion that the Byrds "invented" alt-country.  The term "alt-country" itself is pretty nebulous, but if we can agree it generally refers to country music acts who don't fit comfortably into the mainstream country music scene of their time, I think there are good arguments for many musicians that came well before the Byrds.
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I think VU were very revolutionary. You helped me prove my point about the Byrds at least.

 
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McGuinn/ and McGuire sure were getting higher...And no one's getting fat except Mama Cass. 

 
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Nice little touch in the NYT obit from Tom Petty: Mr. Petty grew up a student of the Beatles and the Byrds, and was also conversant in Southern rock, new wave and punk. That flexibility allowed Mr. Petty, who had first joined bands in his hometown, Gainesville, Fla., before moving to Los Angeles, to calmly float between eras, never owing too much to any one idea.

 
V.U. broke ground on taboo subjects in their lyrics, quite remarkable at that.

they helped pioneer a few movements themselves, we all know the Punx owed a huge debt to the aforementioned lyric gymnastics, and This is groundbreaking Goth 101, and one of the most incredible songs i've ever heard.    

for the genres i loved and marinated in, the Velvets are/were about as heavyweight as one could get.  

oh, and i really dig the Byrd's when the spirit moves ... and agree with Eephus about the Parsons era being especially tasty. 

 
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rockaction said:
Nice little touch in the NYT obit from Tom Petty: Mr. Petty grew up a student of the Beatles and the Byrds, and was also conversant in Southern rock, new wave and punk. That flexibility allowed Mr. Petty, who had first joined bands in his hometown, Gainesville, Fla., before moving to Los Angeles, to calmly float between eras, never owing too much to any one idea.
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From The Rolling Stones top 100 artists about The Byrds (#45)

By Tom Petty

The Byrds are immortal because they flew so high. For me, they're still way, way up there. They left a huge mark. First off, the Byrds were the first credible American answer to the British Invasion. All of folk rock — for lack of a better term — descends directly from the music the Byrds made. They were certainly the first to introduce any sort of country element into rock music. As if all that wasn't enough, the Byrds spurred on a good degree of Bob Dylan's popularity, too. And not to be too shallow, but they also were just the best-dressed band around. They had those great clothes and hairdos. That counted for something even then.

I'll never forget hearing "Mr. Tambourine Man" for the first time on the radio -- the feeling of that Rickenbacker twelve-string guitar and those incredible harmonies. Roger McGuinn told me he took that guitar sound from A Hard Day's Night, but McGuinn was a banjo player, and he played the Rickenbacker in this rolling, fingerpicking style — no one had really tried it before. George Harrison admitted that "If I Needed Someone" was his take on the Byrds' "The Bells of Rhymney." The Byrds were the only American group that the Beatles were friendly with and had a dialogue with. Those original Byrds really changed the world in that short time they were together.

In some ways, they were an unlikely group to become rock & roll stars. Chris Hillman was from the bluegrass world. McGuinn had been in folk groups like the Limelighters and the Chad Mitchell Trio, as well as playing with Bobby Darin. David Crosby came out of the coffeehouse scene, too. Gene Clark played with the New Christy Minstrels. McGuinn once told me that the Byrds had to get together and really learn how to play rock & roll as a group. That was their first quest. Imagine a bunch of recovering folkies trying to learn how to make people dance.

The Byrds represented Los Angeles as much as the Beach Boys, except that the Byrds were the other side of the coin — they were L.A.'s whacked-out beatnik rock group. They're part of what drew me to Los Angeles and made me want to be in a band. I got to see the Byrds once at the West Palm Beach pop festival on the same bill with the Rolling Stones. In the beginning, that was the original blueprint for the Heartbreakers — we wanted to be a mix of the Byrds and the Stones. We figured, "What could be cooler than that?"
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Yeah, I'm more Velvets, too, but the Byrds sound so far ahead in their guitar playing. I'm a dilettante; what do I know? I just know I love 'em.  

 
From the same Rolling Stone countdown. I can't believe they're only number 19: 

19. The Velvet Underground

By Julian Casablancas (edit: Strokes's lead singer)

When you listen to a classic-rock station today, why don't they play the Velvet Underground? Why is it always Boston and Led Zeppelin? And why are the Rolling Stones so much more popular than the Velvets? OK, I understand why the Stones are more popular. But there is also a part of me that has always felt that it should have been the other way around. The Velvet Underground were way ahead of their time. And their music was weird. But it also made so much sense to me. I couldn't believe this wasn't the most popular music ever made.

Listening to those four studio albums now is like reading a good book that takes place in a distant time. When I hear The Velvet Underground and Nico or Loaded, I feel like I'm in Andy Warhol's Factory in the 1960s or hanging out at Max's Kansas City. The way Lou Reed wrote and sang about drugs and sex, about the people around him — it was so matter-of-fact. I believed every word of "Heroin." Reed could be romantic in the way he portrayed these crazy situations, but he was also intensely real. It was poetry and journalism.

A lot of people associate the Velvets with feedback and noise. White Light/White Heat is the kind of record you have to be in the mood for. You have to be in a ####ty bar, in a really ####ty mood. But the Velvets created some very beautiful music, too: "Sunday Morning," with John Cale's viola; "Candy Says"; "All Tomorrow's Parties" — I can't imagine that song without Nico singing it, although I thought Maureen Tucker had a cool voice, as well as being a really cool drummer. She had a femininity. I thought she sounded hotter than Nico.

In the beginning, the Strokes definitely drew from the vibe of the Velvets. I listened to Loaded all the time when we started the band, while I was writing my first songs. For four solid months, it was just Loaded and this Beach Boys greatest-hits record, Made in the U.S.A. A lot of our guitar tones are based on what Reed and Sterling Morrison did. I honestly wish we could have copied them more. We didn't come close enough. But that was cool, because it became more of our own thing. Which is something else I got from the Velvets. They taught me just to be myself.

 
rockaction said:
Yeah, I'm more Velvets, too, but the Byrds sound so far ahead in their guitar playing. I'm a dilettante; what do I know? I just know I love 'em.  
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I think the Byrds made better records, sang better, and had better players (regardless of whether their faces were shown on album covers or not). They also changed, something VU never did.

I'm not discounting VU's influence - it was huge - but there's no doubt about whose records I'd rather listen to. 

To answer the original question as it's worded (and it's loaded to slant one way), though, it would be the VU.

 
Uruk-Hai said:
I think the Byrds made better records, sang better, and had better players (regardless of whether their faces were shown on album covers or not). They also changed, something VU never did.

I'm not discounting VU's influence - it was huge - but there's no doubt about whose records I'd rather listen to. 

To answer the original question as it's worded (and it's loaded to slant one way), though, it would be the VU.
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Uruk, what's up? :D

Yeah, The Byrds made such great records. It wasn't loaded like a question that I wanted to hear the answer to; it just occurred to me one day while listening. I have no skin in the game, really. If the Byrds were more revolutionary, then that's all fine by me. Partially Don McLean had a bit to do with it with his lyrics. "Eight miles high and falling fast..."

But I will raise one contentious point: I think VU changed dramatically from the banana album to their other self-titled, almost Grateful Dead-sounding album. That was only in the span of two or three years. 

 
rockaction said:
But I will raise one contentious point: I think VU changed dramatically from the banana album to their other self-titled, almost Grateful Dead-sounding album. That was only in the span of two or three years. 
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I'll defer. I honestly couldn't tell you which album a particular VU song came from. Everything I've heard from them sounds kinda similar.

Whereas, the Gram Parsons era of the Byrds sounds like a completely different band than the "Mr Tambourine" Byrds.

Maybe it's just because I've heard them more :shrug:

 
Uruk-Hai said:
I'll defer. I honestly couldn't tell you which album a particular VU song came from. Everything I've heard from them sounds kinda similar.

Whereas, the Gram Parsons era of the Byrds sounds like a completely different band than the "Mr Tambourine" Byrds.

Maybe it's just because I've heard them more :shrug:
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Regarding the bolded, yes they do. I'm actually talking about the psych-rock Byrds; unlike Eephus's contention, I'm thinking they actually were revolutionary. 

Same here in return regarding the italicized. I couldn't tell you what album a Byrds song came from other than the Greatest Hits. 

 
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Eephus said:
There are very few true revolutionaries in music.   Even the early jazz cats like Armstrong and King Oliver, electronica pioneers like Stockhausen and Kraftwerk, and the original hip hop DJs like Kool Herc combined some elements from their musical forebearers.
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You've obviously never heard of Florida-Georgia Line.

 
When I hear people talk about VU, the first question that comes into my mind is “which one?”  Each iteration of the group (and each album) brought a little something different.  

In my opinion, John Cale was the revolutionary for VU more than Lou Reed.  Cale brought the avant-garde sound, which was likely what caught Warhol’s ear (and let’s be honest, without Warhol, nobody outside of New York would have heard of VU).

Cale studied under Aaron Copeland, but gravitated to (and worked with) a guy named John Cage who is a fascinating character that started a lot of this in the 30’s and 40’s.  If you haven’t heard of him, you owe it to yourself to research for music history.  One of those crazy/genius types that deserves his own movie.

 
....and I enjoy the Byrds much more as well.  Where VU succeeded is opening up people’s minds to what music CAN be.  Music can be different to each artist, and doesn’t need to be put into a commercially convenient box.  Does that make them a great band? Not necessarily.  But they were likely in the right place at the right time - when avant-garde went mainstream for about 30 seconds - and they were certainly influential.

 
rockaction said:
Nice little touch in the NYT obit from Tom Petty: Mr. Petty grew up a student of the Beatles and the Byrds, and was also conversant in Southern rock, new wave and punk. That flexibility allowed Mr. Petty, who had first joined bands in his hometown, Gainesville, Fla., before moving to Los Angeles, to calmly float between eras, never owing too much to any one idea.
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