Roger McGuinn performs at the Stagecoach Country Music Festival on Friday, April 26. (Vanessa Franko/Staff Photo)
With the Byrds, McGuinn merged folk and rock into a California sound.
He told the story of buying his first 12-string guitar and how he had to learn a Leadbelly song because Leadbelly inspired Pete Seeger, who inspired so many others.
Before playing “Ballad of Easy Rider,” McGuinn said that his friend Peter Fonda wanted one original song for the movie “Easy Rider” and he approached Bob Dylan, who wrote some ideas on a napkin in New York and told Fonda to take it to to McGuinn because he would know what to do.
McGuinn described the napkin as the Holy Grail when Fonda presented it to him and it became the song “Ballad of the Easy Rider”
He told the story of how the band’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin Nowhere” was supposed to be the single of “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” but when they took it to a DJ in Nashville, he refused to play it.
Later, McGuinn and Parsons were in London, trying to think of something to write a song about and they thought of that DJ and wrote “Drug Store Truck Driving Man.”
At one point he played the theme song to “The Twilight Zone” while introducing “5D (Fifth Dimension.”
McGuinn told stories of working for Bobby Darin and moving to California. David Crosby heard McGuinn and Gene Clark writing songs in the front of the Troubadour and started singing harmony and wanted to join the band.
They let him in because he knew a place where they could record.
After solidifying the lineup, the band as a whole went to see “A Hard Day’s Night” and took notes about what the Beatles were playing.
The band’s name came from Thanksgiving and decided on the spelling with a y as to not be confused for the British slang for girls.
The Byrds auditioned for an agent And his daughter flipped out thinking the Beatles were at her house. When the agent told Miles Davis the story, he said kids had a way of knowing. Then, the band ended up with a record deal for one single from Columbia, which turned out to be “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
Other highlights of the set included “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Mr. Spaceman” and “Chimes of Freedom, ” in addition to iconic classics “8 Miles High” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!”