"Ballad of Easy Rider": The Byrds' album

There was certainly no shortage of end-of- decade angst when Easy Rider arrived in July ’69, and the shadows were about to get darker. Shortly after its release came the Manson murders, ordered by a charismatic psychopath who had haunted the LA music scene. As Easy Rider's box office receipts soared over the winter months, the film’s bleak mood seemed prescient.

Ballad Of Easy Rider traded heavily on Roger McGuinn’s association with the film and his theme tune. McGuinn and Fonda were close, having first met in 1962, during McGuinn’s Brill Building stint with Bobby Darin, whose wife, Sandra Dee, had starred with Fonda in a Tinseltown romcom. Later, Fonda hired the fledgling Byrds to play his sister Jane’s birthday party, leaving their famous father unimpressed.

Nonetheless, Fonda had originally recruited Crosby, Stills and Nash for Rider's score, a deal scuppered by Hopper after he was played some offerings in Stills’ limo. “Anyone who rides in a limo can’t comprehend my movie,” snapped the director. “Find The Cost of Freedom”, intended for Rider, became the B-side of CSNY’s “Ohio” several months later.

Instead, Fonda kept the temporary assemblage to which Easy Rider had been cut - a medley of North American psychedelia from his own collection - creating one of the first movies powered by a rock soundtrack, one that sat easily with Easy Rider's nouvelle vague jump cuts. One of ER's most lyrical, freewheeling moments, with the bikers cruising through spectacular desert scenery, was framed entirely by The Byrds’ “Goin’Back”.

However, Dylan’s “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” had been a defining song for Fonda and Hopper. Perhaps Dylan would also write them a theme tune? A New York screening for the singer left their hopes dashed, with Dylan hostile to a downbeat finale that left its heroes dead on a Louisiana highway. Dylan nonetheless scribbled some lines on a cocktail napkin: “The river flows/It flows to the sea/ Wherever that river goes/That’s where I want to be", handing it to Fonda with the instruction “Give this to McGuinn, he’ll know what to do with it.”

McGuinn knew. He expanded Dylan’s lines into an elegant lament delivered in his best folky tones, his spare acoustic guitar filled out by Gene Parsons’ mouth harp. The song was perfect, lamenting the death of an era but with an undimmed spirit of yearning. Dylan had the co-composing credit that McGuinn gave him removed; whether he didn’t like the movie, the ending, the hype or the song is unclear. Maybe Bobby had just had enough of motorcycles.

McGuinn also covered “It’s Alright, Ma”, a task he handled decently enough and, alive to the building excitement around Easy Rider, commenced work on The Byrds’ new album with Terry Melcher back in the producer’s seat. They quickly cut a band version of “Ballad...”, taken at a faster pace with tinkling guitars and drifting strings that were redolent of Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’”, a massive hit at the time.

The album came with a cover snap of Gene Parsons’ father astride a 1928 Harley, a goofy sleevenote by Fonda, and a Columbia slogan that read “The movie gave you the facts, The Ballad interprets them”, though the record did no such thing, being principally a set of well-played covers of Americana old and new. There was just the one McGuinn composition on the album - deep into his Peer Gynt project, the lead Byrd just didn’t have juice to spare.

Instead, group members were asked to contribute their favourite songs, the stuff that the band played after hours. Both Clarence White and Gene Parsons, for example, had sung the Baptist hymn “Oil In My Lamp” on the high-school bus. The pair also loved “There Must Be Someone (I Can Turn To)” by their friend Vern Gosdin, who had penned the song after being abandoned by his wife and kids. York brought Pamela Polland’s “Tulsa Country Blue” (though McGuinn sung it), and McGuinn himself indulged his taste for sea shanties with “Jack Tarr The Sailor”, sung in a risible Irish accent but otherwise shimmering. Standouts were “Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)”, Woody Guthrie’s poignant homage to migrant fruit pickers lost in an air crash, and “Jesus Is Just Alright”, a 1966 gospel song by The Art Reynolds Singers, introduced by Gene Parsons, who had watched it being recorded. It had quickly become both a band and audience favourite.

For ballast there was another, almost routine Dylan cover, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, York’s quirky blues “Fido”(with drum solo), and Parsons’ mournful “GungaDin”, again given the “Everybody’s Talkin’” treatment by Melcher. The closer of “Armstrong, Aldrin And Collins” paid homage to the American astronauts who had made the first moon landing during the album’s making. It was a fine piece of cosmic country, and a reminder that if you were a Byrd, you flew.

Easy Rider made its creators (and Jack Nicholson) famous, and its executives, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, into Hollywood players. By comparison, The Byrds’ commercial fortunes were only modestly boosted, though the album’s lukewarm reception would be outlasted by the joy and verve of its best moments. It remains highly playable.