Generally speaking, there were two versions of the Byrds – the early lineup featuring Roger (formerly Jim) McGuinn alongside David Crosby, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke, and the later, decidedly edgier band that was navigated by McGuinn, the lone “O.G. Byrd,” amid a sea of lineup changes.

And while that’s a gross oversimplification that leaves out a host of in-between lineups, one thing is certain: the band’s later variations featured an absolute ace of a guitar player named Clarence White.

Some even say that, despite the shimmering beauty of the band’s early singles and albums (consider 1965’s The Bells of Rhymney and 1966’s Wild Mountain Thyme), the later version of the Byrds created some of the band’s most striking music.

McGuinn, to a point, agrees, referring to the White-fortified lineup as “a hot performing band.”

“Clarence had been hired as a studio musician for some earlier sessions [including 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday and 1968’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo],” McGuinn says. “But when everybody else left the band, they left me holding the bag. Clarence wanted to be a Byrd all his life. He told me that he loved the fact that he got to be in the Byrds, along with [multi-instrumentalist] Gene Parsons.”

White (along with Parsons) became a full-on Byrd in the summer of 1968, and his unique phrasing added some serious sparkle – and undeniable spark – to a slew of later Byrds albums, including 1969’s Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, 1970’s (Untitled) and 1971’s Byrdmaniax and Farther Along.

However, White’s guitar work is particularly prominent on 1969’s Ballad of Easy Rider, an album named after the Byrds track that famously appears in Easy Rider, the 1969 counterculture film starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson.

“Peter Fonda and I had been friends since I worked with Bobby Darin,” McGuinn says. “We kept up a relationship over the years.” That relationship led to McGuinn recording the original version of Ballad of Easy Rider for the film’s soundtrack.

“The one for the soundtrack was where Peter and Dennis Hopper came into the studio,” McGuinn says. “Gene Parsons was there with the harmonica, and he did a great part. And it was just me and, I think, an acoustic 12-string guitar.

“I remember Dennis Hopper, who was a kind of wild man, said while leaving the studio, [quoting Ballad of Easy Rider] ‘All they wanted was to be free, and that’s the way it turned out to be. What’s that?’” I said, ‘Think about it, Dennis.’ And Dennis said, ‘Oh, wow, man. That’s cosmic!’” [Laughs]

Ballad of Easy Rider went on to be an essential part of Easy Rider’s soundtrack, although the tune’s co-writer, Bob Dylan distanced himself from the song and the film after watching it. He called McGuinn, asking that his name be removed from the credits.

But when the Byrds recorded Ballad of Easy Rider – an 11-song album that (beside its title and title track) had very little to do with Easy Rider – it included an updated cover of Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. Dylan didn’t have much to say about this development.

“I never heard from him about it, so I don’t know,” McGuinn says. “But, you know, with Bob, he doesn’t really give you a lot of feedback. He kind of runs hot and cold.”

Ballad of Easy Rider also includes a version of the Art Reynolds Singers’ Jesus Is Just Alright. Although the Byrds’ version – released as a single that December – was essentially overlooked, it became a hit for the Doobie Brothers three years later. Long story short? While Ballad of Easy Rider was packed with quality tunes and tied to an iconic movie, it wasn’t exactly a smash.

“It was like Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” McGuinn says. “It was a bomb when it came out, but it gradually elevated to [a level] higher on the Rolling Stone chart than any other Byrds album. Things take time to catch on. I guess we were a little ahead of our time. We were just doing what we liked doing. If people liked it, that was great. And if they didn’t, well, we’ll wait!”

Ballad of Easy Rider was the theme song for Easy Rider, the film. How did that come about?

The story goes that Peter Fonda put a couple of Byrds tracks on the soundtrack of Easy Rider, I think, as placeholders – or maybe his engineer did it for him. But they kept listening to it, and they were like, “Instead of putting some other kind of music on here…”

Peter got the idea that he wanted Bob Dylan to write him a theme song, so he flew up to New York and screened [the film] for Bob. Bob wrote some notes on a napkin and said, “Here, give this to McGuinn. He’ll know what to do with it.”

Peter got back on the plane and came to my house, and it was like the Holy Grail. He presented to me like, “Bob wants you to have this, man.” I looked at it, and it was the first verse, “The river flows,” and a chorus, but he didn’t have a tune. I got out my guitar, made up a tune for it, wrote the second verse, and that’s the way it came out.

When it came time to do the rest of the album, Terry Melcher – who had produced 1965’s Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn! – was behind the glass. How did he impact you and Clarence?

Before Clarence, Terry was instrumental in making me the kind of lead guitar player I was with the 12-string Rickenbacker. Then, in the studio, Ray Gerhardt, the engineer at Columbia Records, put us through two Pultec compressors, which really clamped down the sound and made it sustain for a long time.

The Rickenbacker, when it comes out of the factory, doesn’t sustain for very long. It’s got a good sound, but it needs that sustain to do the stuff like I did. So that was the first thing they did. I thought Terry was a good AM radio and mono-record producer. I don’t care what anybody says about him; he was really good at that.

I’ve read that Terry didn’t believe in stereo, yet Ballad of Easy Rider was the first Byrds album to be exclusively released in stereo.

I don’t think we had a choice. There are things beyond our control that went on at Columbia Records. They were highly union-oriented. I remember one time I touched the board and all the union guys got up and walked out.

But Terry didn’t believe in stereo. He thought it was a gimmick. Like four-track, the quadrophonic thing, he thought that was a gimmick. He was practical. Most people didn’t have stereos; they had AM radios in their cars, and that’s the market Terry was aiming at.

How did Terry like working with Clarence?

Terry worked well with Clarence. And then Clarence and I interacted quite a lot. Clarence had this amazing personality and was a great bluegrass picker. But then, on the Tele, once he got the B-bender, he went off into some other zone. It was like John Coltrane; it’s like improvising all the time, doing great counterpoint and things you wouldn’t believe – you know, wonderful stuff.

Of course, fellow Byrd Gene Parsons built that B-bender for Clarence.

Correct! Gene was the only guy I ever met who had a lathe in his garage. He’d make things on it, and the B-bender came out of that. I guess Clarence said, “Is there any way you can get the B string to bend?” Gene went to work and came up with the B-bender. It’s a great invention – I love it.

Did your guitar approach change once Clarence joined the band?

I played my normal leads that I’d been playing. Clarence just improvised around it. It was just his adaptation to what I was already doing.

What amps were you and Clarence using?

I’d go into the control room and plug into the board. That was my main thing. And Clarence, well, because Columbia Records bought Fender, we had Fender Dual Showmans. I think we also had a couple of Twin Reverbs. Basically, it was all Fender gear.

How did the cover of Jesus Is Just Alright come together?

That was Gene Parsons. He was a fan of the Art Reynolds Singers, the gospel group, and I guess he had that record. He brought it to us, and we learned it and did it like Art Reynolds. Then [in 1972], the Doobie Brothers did it like us and got a hit with it. It’s always sad when you get overlooked, but I was happy for them.

Initially, Ballad of Easy Rider received mixed reviews, but it’s become a cult favorite. How do you view it now?

It’s a good record. We were kind of winding down… I mean, the best performing band we ever had was with Clarence, Gene and Skip [Battin, bass – although John York plays bass on Ballad of Easy Rider].

That was a really hot performing band. People would go wild, and we’d get three or four encores. It was amazing, especially in Europe or somewhere like that. But as far as the recording goes, it kind of wound down to where it was all over.

• Ballad of Easy Rider is available via Sony Legacy.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

This month on Bought & Sold, we have a bona-fide legend who might always be remembered for popularising the 12-string guitar, but has also done his bit for the 7-string acoustic guitar, too.

It’s Mr Roger McGuinn, the co-founder and frontman of the Byrds, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, and icon of folk-rock. And he’s here to share his life in guitars…

What’s the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money?

I bought it from Lyon & Healy in Chicago. It was a Martin 00-21 acoustic six-string. It cost me, like, $165. At the time, I bought it because I was going to the Old Town School of Folk Music; [co-founder and folk musician] Frank Hamilton played one just like it, and so did Josh White [Jr]. I thought it was the quintessential folk guitar at the time, and I still have it! It’s hanging on my wall, still plays and sounds really good.

Tell us about the last guitar you bought and why you decided to buy it?

Well, I’ve got some signature models made up for Martin on both 12-string acoustic and seven-string acoustic, which I designed for them. And so, they give you half off on it, so I bought some of those. I guess that’s the last thing I bought… I haven’t bought any guitars for a while.

What’s the most incredible find or bargain that you’ve ever had when buying guitars?

Bargain? Well, I got a Rickenbacker 360/12 for around $600, which, as you know, is a pretty good price for those things!

I haven’t used it on any notable recordings, but I took it on the road when I opened for The Beach Boys some years ago. And Marty Stuart had a TV show a few years back and I played it on that. And now, I have it right here in my studio and I use it for practice.

What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse that you’ve had after buying a guitar?

It was an Ovation 12-string. Ovations had just come out at that time and Glen Campbell was playing one, so Clarence [White] and I bought Ovations. The thing fell apart! The struts came out of the inside, it rattled…

And besides that, the round back was hard to play because it gets in the way and you can’t put it on your knee like a regular guitar. I don’t remember what I did with it… I think I gave it away.

Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go?

No, I never really sold a guitar like that, but I’ve had them stolen from me. The one that was stolen was when I was playing with The Byrds, and we were at Fordham University [New York City] in 1965. We were in the dressing room and this guy walked in with a silver Rickenbacker case.

I thought, ‘Oh, it’s just a fellow musician, that’s fine,’ and then he walked out with the case. And when I went to get my guitar, it was gone. Years later, it went up for sale and was sold in Las Vegas for some enormous amount of money. I think it ended up at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

What’s your best buying tip for anyone looking to buy their ultimate guitar?

It depends on your price range. But make sure the action is good because the first guitar I had – and this is a common story – the action was too high and I couldn’t really play it at all. Some look good, but they don’t play.

So make sure the action is less than a quarter-inch and you can play chords on it. That’s my advice. And they make some really good inexpensive guitars, like Jasmine, a subsidiary of Takamine, which are made in Indonesia. It’s like a $100 guitar, but it plays really well.

When was the last time you stopped and looked in a guitar shop window or browsed online, and what were you looking at?

I really haven’t been shopping for guitars. I’ve got enough guitars [laughs]. But gear-wise, I’ve been looking at and I’ve got some little Roland amplifiers, which are good. And I’ve got a JangleBox, which is a good device for anybody who wants that Byrds kind of sound on a Rickenbacker.

If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap guitar amp, or a cheap electric guitar and a top-notch guitar amp?

Yeah, the guitar comes first. It’s kind of like the microphone and it’s the most important thing in the recording. It’s your instrument. And for amps, I love the Roland JC-120. It’s got a nice clean sound, the Rick just sounds really great through it, it’s got some reverb, and you push a pedal and record like a basic track and then play over it. So it’s got some cool things going for it.

If you could only use humbuckers or single coils for the rest of your career, which would you choose, and why?

Well, I like them both. They have different sounds, I think. And I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s the ‘toaster’ pickup on my signature model Rickenbacker that has a mellow sound, which I like. And then the humbuckers have a more powerful sound.

Roger’s go-to rig

I use a JangleBox when I’m home, but on the road you can’t use the JangleBox because it’ll pick up the 60-cycle hum from the lighting and different electrical interference that’s out there. So I go through the soundboard when I’m on stage.

And now, on stage, I carry my Rickenbacker 370/12 signature model, and I’ve got a Martin HD7 seven-string guitar that I helped design for Martin. Then I have the Martin D12-45 from 1970 that has a really good sound. And then I’ve a five-string longneck banjo.

• Sweetheart of The Rodeo-50th Anniversary Live is out now via Friday Rights Management.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Guitar thefts are, unfortunately, a negative side effect of being a guitarist, and the Byrds' Roger McGuinn learned that the hard way in 1965: his prized Rickenbacker was swiped from right under his nose during a rather nonchalant heist.

Rickenbacker electric guitars and 12-string acoustics have been McGuinn's instruments of choice throughout a career that has seen him record with Simon & Garfunkel, and collaborate with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. In 1991, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in recognition of his work in the Byrds – a band he co-founded a year before the fateful night he lost his favorite instrument.

“I was playing with The Byrds, and we were at Fordham University [New York City] in 1965,” he explains in the new issue of Guitarist. “We were in the dressing room, and this guy walked in with a silver Rickenbacker case. I thought, 'Oh, it's just a fellow musician, that's fine, and then he walked out with the case.”

McGuinn’s trust was misplaced. “When I went to get my guitar,” he continues, “it was gone.”

Instruments have been swiped from backstage countless times, and, in the case of Nuno Bettencourt’s double-neck Washburn N8, from the stage, too. But while the story of that high-stakes theft ended happily, with the Portuguese shredder getting his axe back in miraculous circumstances, McGuinn wasn’t quite so lucky.

“Years later, it went up for sale and was sold in Las Vegas for some enormous amount of money,” he states. “I think it ended up at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.”

McGuinn's relationship with Rickenbacker goes way back. He was one of the earliest owners of a 12-string Rickenbacker, and used one to cover Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man for the band's first single. That, he admits all these years later, could have failed drastically had they not taken precautionary measures.

“[David] Crosby said, ‘I don't like it, man.’ He said, ‘That folky 2/4 time never gonna play on the radio.’ And he was right,” he confessed back in April.

So, the song was redressed in 4/4 and given an electric rock feel, helping it better resonate with contemporary audiences, most of whom were hooked on the Beatles.

Elsewhere, McGuinn has explained why the band didn't follow the Kinks and the Who into the world of distorted guitars, while Christian Parker, who has released two Byrds covers albums, has reflected on the band's unsung legacy as folk-rock pioneers.

McGuinn’s full interview can be found in the latest issue of Guitarist. Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

“I don’t think of myself as a guitar hero,” Roger McGuinn tells Guitar World modestly. “I just like to play.” In fact, he suggests a little light-heartedly, his Rickenbacker-bred 12-string sound comes from a different instrument.

“I’m a banjo player,” he laughs. “I do fingerpicking on the banjo, like the three-fingered style. I definitely apply that to my electric and acoustic guitar playing.”

He didn’t work alone on Byrds albums like Mr. Tambourine Man (1965), The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968), and Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968). Initially he had help from David Crosby, and later the Tele-toting Clarence White.

“David played up and down strumming rhythm,” McGuinn remembers. “He was a great, great rhythm player. But Clarence played amazing, innovative, improvised leads. You never knew what he was going to come up with. He was improvising all the time – it was like having a loaded machine gun.”

The trio’s guitar chops influenced everything from folk to psych to country –something the 83-year-old could never have imagined. “I didn’t set out to do anything like that. I just wanted to play music. I’m really, really happy about how it all worked out. I’ve had a really good ride.”

We often hear about your 12-string guitar sound when it comes to The Byrds, but David Crosby was a big part of that sound too.

“David was great at harmony; he was into jazz and listened to a lot of intricate harmonies. Instead of singing a straight third, fourth or fifth harmony, he’d interplay them – he’d do a third here, a fourth there, a fifth there, and kind of mix them up. It made the music really interesting.”

How would you describe his approaches to guitar compared to your own?

“I came out of the old school of folk music. They taught me how to fingerpick like Merle Haggard, and the stuff that Chet Atkins did with his thumb, and two fingerpicks. I did a lot of Earl Scruggs-style playing on five-string banjo.

“So I was more of an arpeggio player, as opposed to strumming up and down like David did. He did it really, really fast and really good.”

Since David was into jazz, are there more jazz elements in The Byrds’ music than people realize?

“Yeah! We actually recorded a version of Miles Davis’ Milestones once. We did it in a studio, but it never came out. You can probably find it on YouTube or something.”

Were The Byrds friendly with Miles?

“Yeah – he got us signed to Columbia Records. Benny Shapiro was Miles’ agent. We played an audition for Benny at his house. His 14-year-old daughter was upstairs and came running down, all excited. She said, ‘Daddy, who’s that?’ She thought The Beatles were in her living room!

“The next day, Benny told Miles about this story about these kids who’d came over and his daughter has freaked out. Miles called up Goddard Lieberson of Columbia and said, ‘You know that rock band you've been looking for? I think I got them for you.’ And Columbia, after hearing an audition tape, signed us on his recommendation.”

Miles Davis was no stranger to electric guitar players by the late ’60s, like John McLaughlin. Did he ever ask you or David to be on his records?

“No, that didn’t come up. But there’s a funny story where Miles recorded one of David Crosby’s songs. They were in New York, and Miles invited David to listen to a recording he’d made of Guinevere. And said, ‘Well, you can release it – just don't call it Guinevere or give me any credit!’”

Would you say The Byrds influenced Miles at all?

“I would imagine. He had his ears open to everything that was going on. But I wouldn’t say folk-rock was a big influence on him; he was already doing his own thing.”

You focused on clean, chiming tones when British bands like The Kinks and The Who leaned on distortion. Were you ever tempted to do the same?

“I think we used some feedback; but no, we didn’t want to do a lot of fuzz. We didn’t do a lot of phase shifting either. We just liked a clean sound.”

As The Byrds got into psychedelia and LSD, did it alter how you approached writing and playing?

“We’d all done LSD and smoked pot, you know – we were kind of there! I don’t think it had a real big impact on the songwriting or guitar playing… it was just that we saw brighter colors and got high!

“We didn’t really write drug songs on purpose. People called Eight Miles High a drug song, but it was really jazz. We were inspired by John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar; it was an amalgam of Indian music and modern jazz.”

Can you remember writing Eight Miles High?

“Gene Clark had the chords when we flew to England and did a tour over there, where we met The Beatles and The Stones. We had a great time hanging out with them, and flying back, we decided to write a song about the tour.

“Gene said, ‘How high do you think this plane is?’ I said, ‘Probably about 39,000 feet, maybe seven miles high.’ But The Beatles had a hit with Eight Days a Week, and Gene thought eight was a cooler number than seven.

“So I said, ‘We can change it to Eight Miles High’ – you know, poetic license. But later some radio stations did the math and said, ‘Airliners don’t fly eight miles high. They must be talking about some other kind of high!’”

The Byrds shifted more toward country rock when Clarence White joining the replaced David Crosby. Which era do you feel closer to?

“I love them both for different reasons. The recordings we did for the first couple of albums were the best; and then, the live onstage Byrds were the best with Clarence and those guys.”

Do you feel there’s one quintessential Byrds album?

“I like The Notorious Byrd Brothers. I think that it’s got a lot of good innovation on it, and some pretty songs. And Gary Usher was a good producer.

“We were all kind of listening to The Beatles so we included some sound effects and things like that. And I think by that point I did have a phase shifter, but I wasn’t using any different guitars or amps at that point.”

The Byrds were famously one of the first rock ’n’ roll band to be signed to Columbia Records – no mean feat considering the label's longstanding love affair with jazz and classical Broadway show tunes, especially at the time.

An audition tape that landed in the hands of Miles Davis' agent – plus a little coaxing from the jazz trumpeter himself – led the quintet to secure their first deal with Columbia – and guitarist (and frontman) Roger McGuinn's Rickenbacker 360 12-string would serve as the secret sauce that helped make their debut single stand out from the flurry of releases.

“Columbia was very conservative. They didn't like rock ’n’ roll,” McGuinn says in an interview with Pete Ganbarg on the Rock & Roll High School Podcast. “They thought it might tarnish their reputation as a quality label.

“So they gave us a record deal for one single, and if we didn’t get it hit with a single, we were out. So we needed a strong song, and that's where [Jim] Dickson [their manager at the time] came up with Mr. Tambourine Man. He knew Dylan, and he got a copy of it sent out from M. Witmark & Sons in New York, Dylan's publisher at the time, and we all sat around listening to it.”

However, not everyone in the band was as enthusiastic as Dickson about the song – which Dylan himself released in March 1965, roughly a month before the Byrds’ rolled out their own version.

“[David] Crosby said, ‘I don't like it, man.’ He said, ‘That folky 2/4 time never gonna play on the radio.’ And he was right. They were playing rock ’n’ roll.’” To make the song work for them, and more palatable to audiences, McGuinn changed the time signature to 4/4 time, and the band – along with Dickson – gave it the electric rock treatment, effectively creating the subgenre of folk rock.

A key part of the song's makeover was the addition of McGuinn's distinct jangly guitar playing – courtesy of his Rickenbacker. As the third-ever person to own a Rickenbacker – following a certain George Harrison – the Byrds' guitarist had big shoes to fill, but the left-field guitar eventually became his signature instrument.

"I've been listening to the Searchers and the Seekers, and they had these really cool 12-string intros,” he says of his initial inspiration to incorporate the Rickenbacker. “I found out later it wasn't a 12-string – it's two sixes in octaves – but they got to 12-strings later, and that sound for an intro was really captivating. I thought it'd be cool to do that with Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Speaking more about how he managed to achieve the “jingle-jangle” tone that continues to capture guitarists’ imagination to this day, McGuinn told Guitar World that his Rick was awash with compression – courtesy of Fairchild compressors and Pultec limiters.

“The technique was to run one compressor into another – piggyback them – just to get as much compression as possible to get as much sustain as possible. Because the Rickenbacker is a very short-sustain instrument. That’s good for rhythm, but it’s not good for lead.”

He continued, “The lead lines I was doing needed longer sustain. So we used compression. Originally, though, I think the reason why we started using compression wasn’t for the sustain. It was a by-product of the fact that [recording engineers] did it so that we wouldn’t blow up their equipment!”

The Byrds’ lasting impact can be epitomized in New York guitarist Christian Parker’s two albums’ worth of a love letter to the Byrds' repertoire – with Parker going as far as picking specific instruments and gear to match the era and the material.

The Byrds were a massively influential group whose legacy has faded somewhat over the years, at least in part due to a steady turnover of members and their exploration of a variety of styles.

But from their debut in 1965 until they broke up for good in 1973, the Byrds helped create and popularize folk-rock, starting with their reworking of Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man, the success of which helped push Dylan to go electric.

Three years later, they helped invent country-rock with Sweetheart of the Radio, which featured singer/songwriter Gram Parsons. His tenure was short-lived, however, as he was soon replaced by Clarence White, a blazing Telecaster player and all-around bluegrass legend who had worked with the band since 1967’s masterful Younger Than Yesterday.

White and late-period Byrds drummer/multi-instrumentalist Gene Parsons (no relation to Gram) invented the B-bender, a string-pulling device that helped White achieve otherwise-impossible sounds on his Tele.

And while CSN&Y legend David Crosby was a founding Byrd, Roger McGuinn – best known for his ringing 12-string Rickenbacker 360 sound – was the only member to be a part of every iteration of the band. His songs in particular had a huge impact on Tom Petty and R.E.M.

Upstate New York guitarist Christian Parker loves the Byrds’ music so much that he has now recorded two consecutive albums full of it: Sweethearts, a tribute to Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and Change Is Now: A Tribute to the Byrds, an all-encompassing salute to the band, focused more on the 12-string McGuinn sound.

The songs on the album, some of which were recorded with session musicians who played on the original versions of the songs, span the band’s entire career. His versions are true to the originals while being distinctly his own.

Why do the Byrds mean so much to you?

“I appreciated the Byrds’ musical diversity, starting with folk-rock and then country-rock. Their influence shaped my musical journey and guided my songwriting.”

When you did Sweethearts, did you plan on doing another volume?

“Originally, I was going to make one Byrds tribute album. I recorded Gene Clark’s She Don’t Care About Time when I started the project. We were thrilled to get Earl Poole Ball, the original piano player [from Sweetheart of the Rodeo], to track Life in Prison.

“After some time, we decided to record the entire Sweetheart of the Rodeo album after Earl suggested we do it in its entirety. We had many earlier songs completed for Change Is Now, so making it a two-volume set seemed fitting.”

The Byrds went through a lot of lineups and musical changes. Can you discuss how some of the various guitarists impacted you?

“The first member to leave was Gene Clark, an excellent songwriter whose songs are some of the Byrds’ best. Dave Crosby was next in line to leave and form Crosby, Stills & Nash. When Clarence White entered the band, it elevated their guitar work. White and Roger McGuinn were electrifying.

“Clarence introduced the B-bender Telecaster, which pulled the B string a whole step by using a mechanism installed by Gene Parsons. He wanted to emulate a pedal steel guitar and blended his bluegrass/fiddle style. He pioneered a style that’s heard even today in players like Brad Paisley.”

Are you playing the B-bender on this album?

“I play it on Ballad of Easy Rider, but Chris Larcombe of Manchester, England, plays on the other bender songs. He has White’s articulated sound down; he does it justice.”

Tell me about that and the other guitars on Change Is Now.

“I played the bender on Ballad of Easy Rider since it was my favorite song. Originally, [the Byrds] cut the bender solo out of the studio version, and I felt it needed to be there on my version – so I played it.

“As for other guitars on the album, I played a Gretsch Tennessee Rose, an Epiphone Casino and six- and 12-string Martins. Gary Jacob plays the majority of 12-string Rickenbacker electric, which was McGuinn’s signature sound. We both play 12-string Rickenbackers on the title track – almost like a double tracking.”

Do you carefully pick the instrument to match the era and the material?

“Yes; I did have some specific thoughts on the gear and the production. I tried to honor the songs and keep them close to the original while improving their sonic quality with modern recording techniques. Our main objective was to get a great vocal performance, then drums and bass guitar, and make the guitar work stand out in the mix.”

Can you tell me about the other musicians on the tracks? How many played on the Byrds’ albums? What did working with them bring you?

“We had Earl Poole Ball on piano and JayDee Maness on pedal steel guitar. They both were on Sweetheart of the Rodeo [Lloyd Green also plays pedal steel on the original album], and JayDee went on to play with Chris Hillman in the Desert Rose Band years later.

“I was honored to have them. I never thought I’d work with these gentlemen and record a classic album from start to finish. I learned a lot in the process, specifically that everyone needs to stay in their lane. Don’t play over top of each other; know your place.”

Is it hard to straddle the line of being true to the material while expressing yourself?

“Honestly, it didn’t seem too difficult to be me. I can only sing how I sing and play how I play. I love the material, so it made it a fun project.”

Can you talk a bit about your original music and how it has been impacted by the Byrds’ music?

I’ve been a songwriter for over 30 years, and the early Byrds’ 12-string sound was on all my earlier recordings in my 20s. I was drawn to McGuinn’s guitar work — and Tom Petty. In 1990, they recorded a song called King of the Hill [from McGuinn’s 1991 album, Back from Rio], which had every element I loved about the Byrds and Petty.

Describe what each of these Byrds members means to you. David Crosby.

“His open tunings and fingerpicking, as well as his beautiful harmonies.”

Roger McGuinn.

“His leadership in the Byrds, his banjo-style picking on the 12-string electric songs like Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season).”

Gene Clark.

“His songwriting and melodies. He’s one of my favorite songwriters.”

Clarence White.

“His genius on the guitar; he never played the same thing twice and kept getting better until his untimely death in 1973.”

Gene Parsons.

“His drumming was locked in with Clarence; he machined the B-bender and installed it in Clarence’s guitar, which Marty Stuart now owns.”

• Change Is Now: A Tribute to the Byrds and Sweethearts: A Tribute to the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo are out now via Edgewater Music Group.

Given his reputation as a mad scientist within the guitar world, it's funny to think that Gene Parsons – the co-inventor of the B-Bender – was actually a drummer by trade.

Of course, Parsons – a member of the Byrds from 1968-1972 and, later, the Flying Burrito Brothers – always harbored an interest in the guitar. Why else would he move to assemble seemingly arbitrary parts (to a non-believer) into a contraption that would change the face of country music and its adjacent genres forever?

"Tinkering with things and building instruments always intrigued me," Parsons tells Guitar World from his California Desert home. "And before the B-Bender, I actually manufactured a couple of banjos for Earl Scruggs. But doing that gave me all sorts of ideas, leading me – along with Clarence White – to mess around with string bending and things like that."

It was that sense of experimentation that pushed Parsons and White to invent the B-Bender, a device that allows guitarists to bend the B string up a whole step using an arm, palm or hip movement, typically using the guitar's strap.

"Clarence loved his Telecaster," Parsons recalls. "But he wanted to bend the strings in ways you simply couldn't. Before the B-Bender, Clarence would essentially pull the B string or the high E string over the nut to chime in or pull it over to raise it a full tone or a halftone. But that was a lot of work."

He continues, "And one day, we were in a session, and Clarence said, 'Boy… this is rough; I wish I had three hands.' So, I literally came over and pulled the string over the nut for him to get the sound we wanted. The whole thing was pretty crude and made us realize we needed to do something different.

"So, Clarence told me, 'Gene, you're a machinist… do you think you can figure out a way to do what we're trying to do without it being so much work?' I thought about it and said, 'Yeah... I bet I can.'"

He had a feeling it would be useful, but there was no way Parsons could have known that his radical invention would have such staying power.

"I had no idea," Parsons laughs. "After Clarence asked me to make something, I went home and rounded up some old steel guitar components, bicycle cables, and whatever else I could find. I sort of had an idea in my mind of how I'd do it, but I was in no position to say if it would actually work."

But work it did, and the Parsons/White B-Bender was born. Still, it needed several tweaks before settling on the initial configuration that would make the device famous.

"Clarence didn't want to play pedal steel," Parsons tells us. "He said to me, 'I want a guitar that I can put in the case, and it has everything on it when I pick it up.' See, Clarence didn't want to move his hands out of their normal position while playing, which was the problem in the first place. But he also didn't want to be sitting. That made the whole thing tricky."

Settling back with a wry smile, Parsons recalls the B-Bender's breakthrough moment: "So, what I did was I came up with the idea of using the shoulder strap to actuate a level. I presented that to Clarence, and boy, he loved it. So, I drew up a design, rounded up parts, and presented that to Clarence. It was at that point that he handed over his Tele and told me to install it."

Anyone who knows the legend of Clarence White's '56 Tele knows that the Byrds' guitarist loved his curio more than life itself. So, when Parsons presented the drastically altered guitar to White, it was something of a shock.

"Oh boy," Parsons recalls. "The morning after, we met for coffee, and I slid that Tele across the table, and Clarence was stunned. He said, 'I guess we're at the point of no return…' and I said, 'Yeah… we are.' But thankfully, after he tried it out, he loved how it came out. The B-Bender worked exactly as intended. It remained his main guitar for a long time."

"It's the same guitar that Marty Stuart plays to this day. Save for a few repairs over the years, it's unchanged and has all the original parts. The issue with that guitar is I made it before we started recessing the parts into the guitar's body. So, it has everything outside the body and can be a bit cumbersome. I've offered to service it for Marty, but he won't let me touch it – he feels it might lose the magic."

The B-Bender was a success. In the ensuing years, notable players including Ricky Skaggs, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and Charlie Starr have deployed the invention in various six-string endeavors. But for the most part, 45 years on from its 1968 inception, the heart and soul of what makes the B-Bender tick remains. Still, Parsons, ever the technician, has streamlined the process and device for better fit and form.

"Today's design is way smoother," Parsons says with pride. "It's quieter, lighter, and more compact. What I made now fits right into the guitar. And over the years, I came to find that it needed a robust set of bearings because they need to stand up to the wear and tear. Now it's designed to live with the player for the entire life of the guitar. I could do that by using bigger bearings and more sturdy shafts while manufacturing it so that it doesn't alter the guitar's overall weight too much. It's a nuanced thing."

When asked if he's changed the atheistic side of the B-Bender, Parsons added: "I used to use an all-aluminum backplate that had to be polished all the time. But they weren't satisfactory because they would get tarnished too easily. So, I started making chrome-plated brass plates, but those were too heavy."

"So, the way I got around that was just using high-quality plexiglass," Parsons reveals. "I still have people ask for metal plates, and I oblige them. I have a few left in stock from years ago, but that only happens every five or so years with people who want it to be as close to the original idea as possible. But I feel the plexiglass is attractive because it lets you see all the components at work, which is cool because I polish the stainless parts now."

Fit and finish aside, at its core, the B-Bender was bred through ingenuity and utility – it was always meant to serve a specific purpose regardless of its satisfying looks. And Parsons, certainly more than anyone, knows this. It's for this reason that to this day, even though he's on the doorstep of 79 years of age, Parsons builds each Parsons/White B-Bender by hand in his small Mojave Desert workshop.

Parsons has an unmistakable pride when he talks about his invention, but remains modest regarding its impact: "I have no idea how to measure the importance of it. It's an interesting question, though. I guess it's become an important and integral part of that style of guitar playing, right?"

"It's certainly important within country music," he says. "But I've heard people use it in jazz and even Brazilian music. But honestly, I have no clue how to measure it. But I can tell you that I'm still slammed with orders. Even though other people have tried to make their own B-Benders, mine are still more robust."

He concludes, "I take great care when making these. I want people to know that I still make these all by myself. There are no chintzy parts, and each B-Bender is made with care and love, just like I did with the first one for Clarence. So, I have no clue how to measure the importance, but I know how I do it has to count for something."

• For more information on the B-Bender, head to StringBender.com.

In November 1990, I sat in the control room at Capitol Records’ Studio B in Hollywood and watched Roger McGuinn record 12-string electric guitar overdubs for Someone To Love, the lead track from his Back From Rio album, released in ’91. 

The room was awash in that glorious, plangent Rickenbacker jangle that is McGuinn's greatest gift to the rich lexicon of rock guitar styles. 

I was both impressed and inspired by his nuanced command of the signature model Rick 370/12 he was playing at that time - trying out subtle variations in phrasing, punching in a pull-off trill to end a line more gracefully.

There was something familiar in the song’s ascent from E minor to G major, via a D passing chord with F# in the bass. Producer David Cole called out, “Hey, how does Eight Miles High go?” Without missing a beat, McGuinn played the entire iconic solo that he’d recorded nearly a quarter of a century earlier, note-for-note, flawlessly.

Because I’d started playing guitar in the mid '60s, McGuinn had always been a major hero. Not just for his playing and singing, but also the aura of serene cool he emanated back when he was still called Jim McGuinn. 

In junior high school, I’d had my McGuinn-style “granny” sunglasses confiscated by the school’s Dean of Discipline. Lots of kids wore them. Factories started mass producing the things when McGuinn’s band, the Byrds, became one of the biggest rock groups on the planet with the 1965 release of their debut single, an electrified cover of Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man.

At the vanguard of the folk rock phenomenon, the Byrds were the bridge that led from the British invasion into the psychedelic era. They’re the pied pipers who transported us from “yeah yeah yeah” to Purple Haze, basically. 

George Harrison proclaimed the Byrds “The American Beatles.” Like Bob Dylan himself, the Byrds were, for the most part, seasoned folk musicians who’d become fascinated by the new style of electric guitar rock and roll that the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Yardbirds, Animals and other British groups had brought to the fore.

“We were already a band and we were rehearsing and working with acoustic instruments,” McGuinn told me. “We saw A Hard Day’s Night and realized the Beatles were playing a Gretsch electric six-string, Ludwig drums and a Hofner bass. 

And George Harrison switched between the Gretsch and this Rickenbacker 12-string that didn’t look like a 12-string at first, because the peghead concealed six of the tuners. 

But when he turned sideways, I went, ‘Oh that’s a 12-string!’ I was playing a Gibson acoustic 12 with a pickup in it, but it didn’t have the kind of sound George was getting. I liked his sound better, so I went out and got a Rickenbacker 360 12-string.” 

While McGuinn and his bandmates had the same gear as the Beatles, they used it to produce a distinctly different sound and overall aesthetic. What McGuinn brought to electric 12-string rock guitar was a solid grounding in folk picking - something that Harrison and other Rick-playing Brits, such as Pete Townshend, didn’t have. 

As a teenager in Chicago, McGuinn had studied guitar and five-string banjo at the Old Town School of Folk Music, a pioneering institution at a time when formal instruction in vernacular musical styles like folk was unheard of.

“They started around 1957,” McGuinn recalled, “and that’s when I enrolled. I was there from ’57 to 1960. I learned a lot there. I studied with [seasoned folk musician and Old Town founder] Frank Hamilton. 

"There would be about twelve people in a class, and it was really fast learning. He’d give you a picking assignment every day. I’d go home and work on it, and we’d get another one the next day. Gradually, I got all these picking styles.”

From there, McGuinn went on to work with several prominent acts in the early-'60s folk music boom - the Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Judy Collins and even pop crooner Bobby Darin during his brief attempt to get down with the folk thing. 

McGuinn had sufficient traction on the folk scene to be included on the 1963 compilation album Anthology of the 12-String Guitar, along with legendary players like Joe Maphis, Glen Campbell, Mason Williams and Howard Roberts.

Because he was a fairly seasoned pro, and able to read music, McGuinn was the only member of the Byrds allowed to play on Mr. Tambourine Man. All other parts were played by members of the Wrecking Crew, L.A.’s famed coterie of session musicians. 

But McGuinn’s fellow Byrds David Crosby and Gene Clark were allowed into the studio to sing the track’s majestic, three-part vocal harmonies. All subsequent Byrds recordings, however, were played and sung by the full group, which at the time also included bassist Chris Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke.

The electric 12-string guitar was a brand-new innovation in 1964, when the Rickenbacker 360/12 became the first commercially successful model of that type. 

The one Harrison received from the company in February of ’64 was only the second ever made. So the field was wide open for players like McGuinn and Harrison to forge a place for this new instrument in rock music.

McGuinn’s guitar work on Mr. Tambourine Man says it all. Dylan’s song is a masterpiece in its own right - an imagistic, dreamscape lyric that transported the listener to another realm of consciousness. And Dylan’s own recording of his composition has a wistful, intimate quality that is deeply affecting.

But McGuinn and the Byrds made rock ‘n’ roll of it. That much is clear from the first notes of the chiming, devastatingly infectious guitar hook McGuinn crafted as the intro to the Byrds’ interpretation of the song. 

This was a musical singularity moment. As a rock and roll group, the Byrds had the ability to reach teenage listeners who might have still found Dylan a little too “out there.” 

It was the Byrds, not Dylan, who played on youth-oriented pop music TV shows like Shindig and Hullabaloo. Like the Beatles, the Byrds had an ultra-cool image, with Crosby’s leather capes and McGuinn’s rectangular shades perched on the end of his slender nose. 

Added to this, they sang beautiful harmonies and knew how to lay down a groove.

“David [Crosby] learned to play rhythm guitar like John Lennon,” McGuinn recalled, “and I tried to learn to pick and keep a beat. That was a major concern, because we came from folk music, where the beat wasn’t very important. You could skip a beat, speed up or slow down. It didn’t make any difference, as long as you got the story across. 

But now we were playing in places where people were dancing to our music, and what we were concentrating on the most was trying to keep a beat.”

For McGuinn, this meant modifying some of the folk picking techniques he’d learned earlier on. “I’m a two-finger kind of player,” he said. “Mostly, I played with the thumb and two finger picks. Then, when I joined the Byrds, I had to use a plectrum to play leads, so I switched my style from thumb and two fingers to a flat pick between my thumb and forefinger and two finger picks on my middle and third fingers. I switched the same kind of rolling style over to that.”

What McGuinn did, in essence, was bring the grand, 12-string acoustic folk tradition of Leadbelly and Pete Seeger into the rock arena. The Byrds notably covered two of Seeger’s compositions, Turn! Turn! Turn! and The Bells of Rhymney. 

These songs, along with Dylan covers like Chimes of Freedom, The Times They Are A’ Changin’ and My Back Pages, helped bring a political sensibility and sense of social consciousness into rock music. This was the great, mid-'60s era of protest music, aligning the power of rock and roll with folk music’s long, outspoken tradition of championing the oppressed and decrying the brutal insanity of war. 

It’s amazing to reflect on how much of this came about because McGuinn attended a screening of A Hard Day’s Night when it first came out.

The other thing that distinguished McGuinn’s Rick 12 sound from Harrison’s was loads of compression, provided by analog processing gear at Columbia Studios and other facilities where the Byrds recorded.

“We used to use Fairchild compressors and Pultec limiters,” McGuinn elaborated. “The technique was to run one compressor into another - piggyback them - just to get as much compression as possible to get as much sustain as possible. Because the Rickenbacker is a very short-sustain instrument. That’s good for rhythm, but it’s not good for lead. 

"The lead lines I was doing needed longer sustain. So we used compression. Originally, though, I think the reason why we started using compression wasn’t for the sustain. It was a by-product of the fact that [recording engineers] did it so that we wouldn’t blow up their equipment.

They always limited everything as a matter of course. We said, ‘Hey that sounds pretty good!’ So we used more of it and we got that sound accidentally.”

McGuinn took that sustained Rickenbacker sound, and the Byrds’ music, in a new direction with the group’s 1966 recording Eight Miles High, the lead single from their Fifth Dimension album, released that same year. 

The track’s beginning, middle and end feature frenetic flights of modal riffing and improvisation on McGuinn’s electric 12-string. It’s one of those pioneering mid-'60s tracks where, for the first time, the guitar soloing carries as equal weight as the lyric and vocal performance.

The genealogy of Eight Miles High is a bit complex. It was directly influenced by the work of the groundbreaking avant-garde jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. But Coltrane, in turn, had fallen under the spell of Indian classical music in the early '60s. 

A few short years later, the Indian influence started filtering into rock music as well, spearheaded largely - but not exclusively by the Beatles. So there’s a tangled and fascinating tide of musical cross-currents driving McGuinn’s landmark 12-string electric guitar work on Eight Miles High. 

His tone is markedly different from the chiming cadences of the Byrds’ previous two albums. It’s harder, edgier, more ragged, although forged from much the same basic ingredients - a super-compressed Rick 12.

“There’s quite a bit of sustain on the solo,” McGuinn explained to me. “It’s just that there’s no reverb. It’s kind of dry. But there is sustain, and I’m just playing soft notes. The sustain is what allowed me to do the saxophone emulation I was doing. 

The continuous flow of air in a saxophone with the valves cutting it off is what I was doing with the sustain, and making short, clicking kind of notes on the break.” Eight Miles High was a key track in the emergence of psychedelic rock in ’66, and particularly the Indian-inflected psychedelic subgenre known as raga rock. 

Owing to the word “high” in the lyric and some of the imagery, it was perceived as a “drug song” at the time, and was banned as such by several radio networks. 

The song’s subject was actually a plane flight the group took to London. Soon enough, though, San Francisco bands like Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger service would show us what a real psychedelic drug song sounds like.

Of course, McGuinn and the Byrds weren’t the exclusive progenitors of all this trippy, Indian-flavored bliss. Jeff Beck had adorned the Yardbirds’ single Heart Full of Soul with a droning, sitar-like riff in the summer of ’65, some nine months before the release of Eight Miles High. 

The Beatles, of course, had introduced the sound of the sitar to rock music, played by George Harrison, on Norwegian Wood as early as December of ’65. And some five months after the release of Eight Miles High, the Beatles unleashed their own mystical and hypnotic raga rock masterpieces, Tomorrow Never Knows and Love You To, both from Revolver.

It’s all part of the heady transatlantic, transglobal exchange between British and American rock groups that made the mid-to-late Sixties a time of blindingly rapid evolution in rock music. 

By today’s standards, every year back then was like a decade. And it was very much the Byrds who had commenced this Anglo-American dialog.

Their relationship with the Beatles was a particularly close one. George Harrison was quick to acknowledge McGuinn’s influence on his own playing, publicly admitting that his Beatles composition If I Needed Someone had been inspired by McGuinn’s guitar work on the Byrds’ recording of The Bells of Rhymney. 

The two groups famously hung out together as part of L.A.’s Laurel Canyon rockstar enclave during the summer of ’65, tripping on LSD, talking music and strumming guitars together. 

According to some accounts, this is where Harrison first discovered Indian music and sitar master Ravi Shankar. David Crosby had been hanging out at World Pacific Studios in L.A., where Shankar had made some albums. He soon had all the guitar-playing Byrds riffing ersatz ragas on open-tuned 12-string acoustics.

“So one day we went over to the Beatles’,” McGuinn recounted. “Once we became friends with them, they would send a limo over to get us and bring us to their house in the hills when they were in town. 

"One day we’re up there and we all took acid. We were sitting around on the bathroom floor playing guitars, and Crosby started playing all this Indian stuff on his 12-string. George was very interested in it. He’d never heard it before. He went out wild with that stuff.”

So why isn’t McGuinn’s name intoned today with the same awed reverence that attends any mention of names like Clapton, Hendrix or even Harrison for that matter? A lot of it has to do with the fact that, by the late '60s, distorted, blues-based riffing had become the normative mode of rock guitar playing. 

This perception was reinforced in the early '70s when the Lee Abrams format narrowed the FM rock radio playlist so that stations could attract a larger listenership and bigger ad revenues. 

A lot of what was weird and wonderful - from folk to many African-American musical idioms - fell by the wayside.

Blues-based riffing through big Marshall amps is a vital part of rock music, to be sure. But it’s not the whole story. And it was never McGuinn’s thing. For one, it isn’t particularly easy to bend notes on a Rick 12.

“It’s a hard one to bend,” McGuinn explained to us. “We did a couple of bending kind of things. There was a song called Captain Soul on Fifth Dimension. But the Byrds weren’t a blues-inspired band.

"We were more of an Appalachian traditional folk-inspired and English/Irish folk music-inspired band. Although David Crosby was a little more blues-inspired than the rest of us.

“Although, as a funny kind of footnote, when I went to the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, Mike Bloomfield was there at the same time. I’d been in the school for about a year before he got there. I was one of the first people to enroll at the school and I had progressed up to the advanced classes. 

So one day Mike came up to me. He poked me and said, ‘I’m gonna get better than you.’ And then he said, ‘You know that sound - that mmmmmm?’ And he emulated bending a string.

‘How do you get that?’ And I showed him how to do that. It’s funny - I taught Mike Bloomfield how to bend a string.” McGuinn’s visage certainly deserves to be emblazoned up there on the Mount Rushmore of Important Guitarists. 

But, truth to tell, the Byrds’ career went into a bit of a tailspin after their 1967 album Younger Than Yesterday, which featured the ironic, iconic classic So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star. Gene Clark and David Crosby - two key songwriting contributors - both left the band, followed shortly thereafter by Michael Clarke. 

The lineup fluctuated as McGuinn and Hillman worked on the followup, The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Given that Hillman had a very solid background in bluegrass music, the musical direction started steering more toward country music.

Helping solidify this new impetus was the arrival of celebrated country/bluegrass guitarist Clarence White in the Byrds’ orbit. The inventor, along with drummer Gene Parsons, of the Parsons/White B-Bender for the Fender Telecaster, White first entered the picture as a session player on the Byrds’ Younger Than Yesterday album and would become a full-time member in 1968. 

McGuinn was gracious about sharing the guitar limelight, as happy to learn as to teach.

“I tried to learn some things from Clarence,” he told me, “but I couldn’t touch him. He was miles and miles ahead of me as far as the techniques he perfected - like that bending thing he did. And his flat-picking, his bluegrass stuff, I couldn’t touch that. 

"He was so fast and so clean. He tried to teach me to do [traditional string-band standard] Soldier’s Joy, but I couldn’t get near it.”

From Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins onward, country had never not been a part of rock and roll music. It is an essential part of rock’s DNA. The Beatles had covered Buck Owens’ Act Naturally in 1965. 

The Lovin’ Spoonful had scored the 1966 hit, Nashville Cats, with some stone country licks from guitarist Zal Yanovsky.

McGuinn himself had gone full twang with the Byrds, with songs like his inspired 1966 sci-fi country track Mr. Spaceman.

But in 1968 America was a very polarized country - with racial violence mounting in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and resistance to the Vietnam War growing militant under a President, Richard Nixon, headed for impeachment.

And among the counterculture crowd that had been the Byrds’ main audience, country music had become somewhat stigmatized as right wing conservative music - a soundtrack for the Ku Klux Klan. 

That’s why it was incredibly brave and daring for McGuinn and the Byrds to release an album like Sweetheart of the Rodeo at that particular moment.

Now recognized as a classic, it was a tough sell back in the tumult of 1968. Many a hippie head was scratched, wondering what to make of the Byrds doing songs like the Louvin Brothers’ The Christian Life. Was it ironic? A joke, right? Had to be. 

McGuinn had recently begun using a new name - Roger - rather than his given name, James. It was part of his embrace of the Subud spiritual tradition. The whole thing was almost like some proto-Bowie-esque shift in persona.

But the music’s beauty and originality eventually won the day. Legendary players abound on Sweetheart, including pedal steel masters Lloyd Green and JayDee Maness, and fiddle/banjo/guitar ace John Hartford.

McGuinn plays five-string banjo on some tracks and Hillman plays mandolin. Along with songs by iconic tunesmiths like Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and Merle Haggard, the album bears the stamp of another new arrival to the Byrds camp, soon-to-be country rock legend Gram Parsons. 

A brilliant songwriter, Parsons was a conflicted Catholic rich boy from Florida. He was deeply steeped in country tradition but brought an edgy new sensibility to the music. 

Sweetheart of the Rodeo introduced listeners to the classic Parson songs Hickory Wind and One Hundred Years from Now. McGuinn wound up splitting lead vocal duties fairly evenly with Parsons and Hillman on Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

“Gram was a strong musical force,” McGuinn said. “I just kind of let him go and went along with it - because it was fun. I really got into the country thing. We went to Nudie’s, the Western tailor, and got some country clothes and cowboy hats. I got a Cadillac, started listening to country radio and talking in a Southern accent.”

McGuinn’s total assimilation of the country songwriting idiom can be heard on his sardonic co-write with Parsons, Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man. It helped launch a whole subgenre of “hippie goes country” tracks like the Fraternity of Man’s Don’t Bogart Me (a.k.a., Don’t Bogart That Joint) and the Holy Modal Rounders’ If You Want to Be a Bird. 

Both of those songs were featured on the soundtrack to the 1969 counterculture cult classic film, Easy Rider. McGuinn himself is all over the film soundtrack album, with a Byrds track, Wasn’t Born to Follow, and solo acoustic performances of Dylan’s It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) and a new song which he co-wrote with Dylan himself, Ballad of Easy Rider.

But McGuinn had no intention of spending the rest of his career in a Nudie suit. He began to clash with Parsons, who wanted to change the group’s name to Gram Parsons and the Byrds, among other things. 

Parsons and Hillman exited the Byrds to found the seminal country rock group the Flying Burrito Brothers. 

“To me, Sweetheart of the Rodeo was a one-time adventure,” McGuinn said. “I had no idea of getting permanently into country music. Chris and Gram wanted to do another country album and I was going, ‘No, no, no! Wait a minute. That’s enough.’

"They were so upset that Chris left, and he and Gram started the Flying Burrito Brothers. I wasn’t into it. I mean, I like the Flying Burrito Brothers. I was amazed at the quality of the first album that materialized. 

"But it wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in. I wanted to play rock and roll.” But McGuinn kept Clarence White in the ever-changing Byrds lineup from that point until just before all five original band members recorded a reunion album - Byrds - in 1973. 

McGuinn and White’s dual guitar work garnered some critical recognition, but the commercial success of the Byrds’ early days had become a thing of the past.

“The Byrds’ attitude had been - and this was another Beatles influence - to keep changing directions,” McGuinn said. “So you couldn’t be categorized as a country group or a rock and roll group, or ‘they play folk music’ or ‘they play folk-rock.’ 

"First of all, we hated those labels. Didn’t want to be any one of those things. So we kept moving around in hopes that we would escape the labeling system. As it turns out, they just made up new labels as we went along. But our intent was to keep moving. A moving target is harder to shoot.” 

The same restless creative spirit has pervaded McGuinn’s solo career. There’s been more work with Dylan, as well as Chris Hillman and Gene Clark, plenty of one-man shows and even a brief flirtation with electronic music.

“Actually, I did go through a period in the mid '70s when I was kind of lost,” he admitted in 1990. “I wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go in. And it wasn’t until the late '80s, I guess, that I decided I wanted to get back to what I was originally into, which was my 12-string electric guitar, my vocal sound and just doing what I do.”

By that point, the punk/new wave scene had long opened up a fresh space for such historically conscious, back-to-basics rock groups as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and R.E.M., who seemed to bring the McGuinn 12-string sound and overall sensibility back into the foreground. 

He is the godfather of the entire jangle pop genre and a key figure in the range of styles known today as Americana.

In general, Roger McGuinn has gotten more love from the rock critic fraternity than from the guitar community. Maybe it’s time to turn that perception around. There are guitar heroes who are esteemed for their technical flash. But there are others - like Pete Townshend, for example - whose sterling guitar work is sometimes upstaged by their contributions as songwriters, singers, trendsetters and tastemakers. 

Guitarists whose sound is so inextricably woven into the fabric of rock music that the whole thing would be unthinkable without them. That’s the kind of guitar hero that Roger McGuinn is.

What makes for a great 12-string guitar song as opposed to a great song that just happens to have a 12-string guitar somewhere on it? Let's face it, if Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven had a ukulele on it, it would immediately be in the running for Greatest Ukulele Song of All Time.

That being said, we looked at not only the legacy of the song but how prevalent 12-string guitar is in the song and how influential the song would be in inspiring others to pick up their 12-strings.

Without the 1964 Beatles film A Hard Day's Night, the Byrds might not have existed as you now know them (assuming you know them - and you should know them), and without Stairway to Heaven, the double-neck guitar might be sitting in a museum as a one-time oddity produced by Gibson. So what song will we crown as the best 12-string guitar song of all time?

Read on ... (And yes, we threw in an extra song; our math isn't too good. Enjoy our top 31!).

Also, before we get started, we're presenting an "honorable mention" award for Tom Petty's Somewhere Under Heaven, his standalone 2015 single, which proves artists are still writing and recording great 12-string guitar songs in the modern era. The song, which was written by Petty and Mike Campbell, was featured in the Entourage soundtrack in 2015 (but don't hold that against it). It's actually an unreleased song from Petty's Wildflowers sessions.

31. Pantera - Suicide Note, Part 1

Album: The Great Southern Trendkill (1996) 

This song marked one of the most experimental moments in Pantera's catalog, with Dimebag Darrell's dark 12-string guitar part perfectly echoing the song's somber subject matter.

30. John Butler Trio - Ocean

Album: John Butler (1998) 

The newest song to make the cut, John Butler's instrumental masterpiece Ocean stands as a fine example of the timeless sound of the 12-string. Keep an ear out for Butler's use of two-hand tapping ala Satriani in Midnight.

29. America - A Horse with No Name

Album: America (1971) 

Although the 12-string acoustic guitar plays only a supporting role in this ubiquitous folk-rock tune about a nameless equine, it actually plays a major part in its overall sound.

When A Horse With No Name was released, a lot of people thought it was a Neil Young song, which is ironic because it replaced Young's Heart of Gold at the Number 1 spot on the U.S. pop chart.

28. Bob Dylan - Hurricane

Album: Desire (1976) 

Most assume it was Dylan himself who played the 12-string here, but it was actually session guitarist Vinnie Bell manning the Danelectro Bellzouki 12-string guitar on this classic cut.

27. Gordon Lightfoot - Early Morning Rain

Album: Gord's Gold (1975) 

Gordon Lightfoot re-recorded this old Gordon Lightfoot tune for his 1975 compilation album, Gord's Gold, and it's this lush, radio-friendly version that became the hit. While 12-string electric guitars were all the rage in the '60s, 12-string acoustics had taken their place in the '70s; this song is a prime example of that shift.

26. Alice In Chains - I Stay Away

Album: Jar of Flies (1994) 

If ever there was a rock band who had an equally strong handle on menacing drop-D riffs and menacing, introspective acoustic music, it was most certainly Alice In Chains. I Stay Away from Jar of Flies is not only the band's best 12-string moment, but it marks the first track Jerry Cantrell wrote with then-new Alice in Chains bassist Mike Inez.

25. The Hollies - Look Through Any Window

Album: Hollies (1965) 

As you'll see, 1965 was a huge year for the electric 12-string guitar. It was big like synthesizers and skinny black ties were big in 1982. You had your Byrds, of course, your Beatles - and your Hollies, who rode the 12-string bandwagon to great heights with this song written by Graham Gouldman and Charles Silverman. That's Tony Hicks on the 12-string, by the way.

24. Queen - 39

Album: A Night at the Opera (1975) 

Brian May's massive-sounding 12-string acoustic is an integral part of this sci-fi masterpiece, the B-side of You're My Best Friend. It's about a group of astronauts who set out on what they think is a one-year journey, but when they get back, they realize they've been gone for 100 years. They simply don't write Einstein allusions like this anymore.

23. Mahavishnu Orchestra - You Know You Know

Album: The Inner Mounting Flame (1971) 

It's undeniable that Mahavishnu Orchestra had many fine 12-string moments in their career, but You Know You Know off their first album, The Inner Mounting Flame, stands out as guitarist John McLaughlin's shining moment with the instrument. Fun fact: This song was later sampled by both Mos Def and Massive Attack.

22. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Breaking the Girl

Album: Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991) 

One of only two Chili Peppers songs in 3/4 time, John Frusciante's main 12-string riff in this song was inspired by none other than Jimmy Page.

21. Jimi Hendrix - Hear My Train a Comin'

Album: Blues (1969) 

Jimi Hendrix sitting alone playing blues on a 12-string acoustic guitar is a reminder that, despite all of his distortion and psychedelia, he always felt a strong connection to his roots, including Delta blues. Although he performed and recorded electric, full-band versions of this song (as heard on the Valleys of Neptune album), this version is more stark and disarming.

20. Supertramp - Give a Little Bit

Album: Even in the Quietest Moments... (1977) 

This international hit for Supertramp is a pop masterpiece in the key of D, which, as the Byrds proved a decade-plus earlier, is the 12-stringiest of all the keys. It was written by Roger Hodgson, and a solo Hodgson performance is featured in the video below.

19. David Bowie - Space Oddity

Album: David Bowie/Space Oddity (1969) 

Long before working with the likes of Adrian Belew, Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bowie himself manned the 12-string for his 1969 ballad of Maj. Tom. The song was so well-received, the album it appeared on, David Bowie, was renamed after the song before its 1972 reissue.

18. The Who - Substitute

Single (1966) 

When Pete Townshend wanted a riff to one-up the Rolling Stones' (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, he reached for his 12-string. "Substitute" was a top ten hit twice in the U.K., once in 1966 when it was originally released an again 10 years later when it was re-issued. The track found unlikely supporters in the punk rock movement, being covered by both the Sex Pistols and the Ramones.

17. The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night

Album: A Hard Day's Night (1964) 

Although the Byrds were the band that was most associated with the 12-string Rickenbacker in the '60s, their inspiration came from the Beatles. "We went as a group to see A Hard Day’s Night multiple times and were totally taken with the Beatles," said Roger (formerly Jim) McGuinn. 

"I liked George Harrison’s Rickenbacker 12, but I couldn’t find one that looked like his with the pointy cutaways, so I bought the blonde 360 model." For a clear, crisp example of the beauty of the guitar's sound, check out the 12-string riff as the song fades.

16. Rod Stewart - Maggie May

Album: Every Picture Tells a Story (1971) 

Maggie May, Rod's Stewart's first hit as a solo performer, starred a striking combination of 12-string acoustic guitar and mandolin. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked the song at No. 130 on its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. We like it too.

15. Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead or Alive

Album: Slippery When Wet (1986) 

Half-inspired by Old West Outlaws and half by Bob Seger's Turn the Page, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora managed to craft arguably the most recognizable acoustic guitar riff of a ballad-heavy era in rock music.

14. The Rolling Stones - As Tears Go By

Album: December's Children (And Everybody's) (1965) 

This was one of the first Jagger/Richards compositions - although producer Andrew Loog Oldham is also credited as a writer. Legend has it that ol' Loog Locked Mick and Keith in a room and told them to come out with an original song, period. This is what they came up with, and they gave it to Marianne Faithfull in 1964 before taking a stab at it a year later.

13. The Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man

Album: Mr. Tambourine Man (1965) 

Even though George Harrison had been recording with his 12-string Rickenbacker for a while, with this song, Jim (later Roger) McGuinn showed the world exactly how cool a 12-string guitar could be. Its jangly sound was the perfect partner to Bob Dylan's ethereal lyrics. The 12-string Rick would be an integral part of the Byrds' sound until they disbanded in 1973.

12. Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven

Album: Led Zeppelin IV (1971) 

With this song, Jimmy Page did for the doubleneck guitar what Roger McGuinn of the Byrds did for the 12-string electric. Or perhaps more fitting, Page did for the doubleneck what Henry Ford did for the horseless carriage.

11. Rush - Closer to the Heart

Album: A Farewell to Kings (1977) 

Taken from Rush's 1977 album A Farewell to Kings, Closer to the Heart begins with a majestic-sounding arpeggio picking pattern played by guitarist Alex Lifeson on a 12-string guitar. This song was also Rush's first hit in the U.K. and has been a staple of their live show ever since.

10. Ozzy Osbourne - Mama I’m Coming Home

Album: No More Tears (1991) 

Zakk Wylde's obvious Southern-rock homage in the opening bar gives way to beautiful, descending riff, which anchored Ozzy Osbourne's only solo Top 40 hit. Rest assured there are plenty of Zakk's patented pinch harmonics to go around, but the sound of the 12-string intro is what makes this song instantly recognizable.

9. Boston - More Than a Feeling

Album: Boston (1976) 

A classic rock radio mainstay and one of the most recognizable 12-string guitar intros in all of rock, More Than a Feeling reportedly took Tom Sholz five years to write.

8. Tom Petty - Free Falling

Album: Full Moon Fever (1989) 

Back when the Traveling Wilburys ruled the airwaves, Tom Petty, a Wilbury himself, adopted the band's thick, acoustic sound for Full Moon Fever, his first solo outing. He also took fellow Wilbury Jeff Lynne along for the ride as co-producer. 

This one features 12-string acoustic on the rhythm and a touch of 12-string Rickenbacker on the mini-solo.

7. The Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn!

Album: Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965) 

Yes, it's the Byrds again. This song is higher up on the list than Mr. Tambourine Man because of its beautiful 12-string Rickenbacker solo and the fact that the Byrds are actually playing on it (which is not entirely true for Mr. Tambourine Man).

6. The Beatles - Ticket to Ride

Album: Help! (1965) 

Yet another one from '65. This tune, with its crisp 12-string Rickenbacker intro, is one of the many highlights from the Beatles' second feature film, Help! Just play an A on the G string, an open E string, a C sharp on the B string, that A again and then an open B string, and you're on your way.

5. Stevie Ray Vaughan - Rude Mood

Album: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble (Box Set) (1990) 

It was a little surprising when SRV turned up on MTV's Unplugged in 1990 with a Guild 12-string, tearing through a slew of Texas Flood tunes, including Pride and Joy, Testify and Rude Mood. 

Then again, that's also the year he recorded Life by the Drop on a 12-string. Perhaps he'd stumbled upon something new that he could've put to greater use in the future.

4. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

Album: Wish You Were Here (1975)

Recorded to sound like it was being played through an old transistor radio, the 12-string intro of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here never fails to evoke a sense of nostalgia. 

When David Gilmour plays the overdubbed six-string solo, sounding like a lonely old man playing along with the radio, you get one of the most timeless songs in the back catalog of one of the most timeless bands of all time.

3. Led Zeppelin - Over the Hills and Far Away

Album: Houses of the Holy (1973)

Stairway might be the most revered song on this list, but there's no denying Over The Hills and Far Away as the quintessential 12-string guitar song in Led Zeppelin's catalog. Yes, that Davey Graham was a great guitar player...

2. The Byrds - Eight Miles High

Album: Fifth Dimension (1966)

Hey, we love big, sloppy guitar solos played on Rickenbacker 360s. This is Jim (later Roger) McGuinn at his, well, 12-stringiest.

1. The Eagles - Hotel California

Album: Hotel California (1976)

Yes, it's Hotel California. What a nice surprise! Admit it: Don Felder's 12-string acoustic guitar intro (and every other note and chord he plays on this song) is, at this point, a part of our collective consciousness. 

This song, the ubiquitous soundtrack to 37 trillion barbecues, elevator rides and long trips through Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley, California, at 3 a.m., has never gone away - and probably never will.

I’ve always loved secret weapons—those clever little modifications, alterations, gadgets, whatever, that expand a guitar’s versatility or functionality without drastically altering its appearance. I’m talking about anything from an EVH D-Tuna to a four-way switch on a Telecaster to aftermarket titanium blocks in a tremolo.

For my money, however, the ultimate secret weapon is a B-bender. For the uninitiated, a B-bender is a device that lives in- or outside your guitar and allows you to pull—usually with some sort of arm, palm or hip movement—your guitar’s B string up a perfect whole step. So, an open B would become an open C#, a C (first fret on the B string) would become a D and so on—until, of course, you “release” the bender.

Although this simple explanation might not convey the magic and wonder of a B-bender, suffice it to say the bender allows guitarists to create super-sweet, otherwise-impossible licks and chord voicings (including my favorite, sus2 to major), the kind that make you close your eyes and smile—while you’re playing guitar. And, oh yeah, it sounds cool as hell.

It’s fitting to call the B-bender a secret weapon because, even though it’s been around for more than 50 years, it’s still something of an albino deer—a rarity, mystery, a curiosity—to a surprisingly large segment of the guitar-playing population, especially rockers. When guitarists see my B-benders at my bands’ New York–area gigs, their reactions run the gamut from “What the hell is that?” to “My cousin’s college roommate’s daughter-in-law saw one of these once!” Only twice in my 20 years of B-bending has someone said, “I have one too.”

The B-bender’s relative obscurity is mind-boggling—and it really needs to stop. Maybe the bender is too strongly associated only with country-style guitar. After all, B-benders have graced the axes of Clarence White, Marty Stuart, Brent Mason, Albert Lee, Ricky Skaggs, Will Ray, Steve Wariner and Diamond Rio’s Jimmy Olander, to name just a few. But let’s not forget that undisputed rock gods—not to mention Guitar World cover stars—Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend and James Hetfield (check out Metallica’s “The Unforgiven II”) have recorded with B-benders; Page even made the bender a vital part of his sound for a few years. And is there anyone out there who hasn’t heard the B-bender solo on the Eagles’ “Peaceful Easy Feeling” 47 billion times?

In other words, despite reputations, implications and associations, B-benders get around, and they can be used by anyone, anywhere.

Bending the rules with a B-Bender

Why play a bender?

“The simplest answer is that it enables the player to do things that are simply impossible otherwise,” says Gene Parsons, who invented and patented the original B-bender—also known as the Parsons/White StringBender—in 1967. “It allows the guitarist to play with a very characteristic and pleasing sound, and it just adds a whole new dimension of possibilities.”

The idea for the bender kicked in after Parsons’ friend and collaborator, guitarist Clarence White, complained that he needed “a third hand” to play a chiming harmonic lick—and then bend the string—at a Gosdin Brothers recording session. That day, Parsons literally provided the extra hand required to play the lick (bending the string behind the nut, à la Jimmy Page on “Heartbreaker” or John 5 on “Behind the Nut Love”); after the session, however, Parsons started working on the device that became the Parsons/White bender.

Since then, Parsons—a multi-instrumentalist and former member of Nashville West, the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers—has gone on to install benders for Page, Hetfield, Richards, Townshend, Stuart, Ronnie Wood and, well, way too many people to list here. He even installed a long-stroke B-bender in my Palir Titan this past October, as in, he still does the bulk of the work himself at his northern California shop.

The Parsons/White bending method involves pulling your guitar’s neck downward, toward the floor, while playing a lick or chord that incorporates the B string, and letting your guitar strap—and a beautiful, lightweight system of rods, springs, levers and spindles—do the rest.

Bob Warford—probably the second person, ever, to play a B-bender (after White)—agrees with Parsons. “The bender adds fluidity to your playing that simply cannot be done by hand—not to mention licks that seem impossible when heard, even though some of those licks aren’t speedy, but relaxed,” says the guitarist, who—along with his father, a quality assurance engineer—designed and built a one-of-a-kind B-bender, a modified version of Parsons’ design, in 1968.

Warford, who occasionally filled in for White at recording sessions, has worked with Linda Ronstadt, the Everly Brothers (check out the video below), Roy Orbison, Gib Guilbeau, Herb Pedersen and many more. “I’ve always said the idea is not to sound like a cheap one-pedal steel guitar, but to use the effect—and to try not to over-use it—for that fluidity.”

Charlie Starr, frontman of Southern rock powerhouse Blackberry Smoke, is hooked on the B-bender’s truly one-of-a-kind sound. “I love it because it really sounds like an instrument all its own,” he says. “Even though it’s a guitar, it takes on the vibe of a different animal.”

These days, Starr, whose main bender influences include White and Stuart, is rocking a late-Nineties Fender Telecaster with a Parsons/Green B-bender, one of the few production-model B-bender guitars in history (now discontinued). Gibson’s take on the B-bender, an ash-bodied Music City Jr. with a Joe Glaser bender, enjoyed a limited run in 2013. Washburn offered the Forrest Lee Bender—an acoustic guitar—in 2012.

Mind you, it can take some time to get used to the bender and to adapt it to your playing style.

“[My] Telecaster has the StringBender mechanism that took me about two years to come to terms with,” joked Page in the July 1986 issue of Guitar World. “No, not really, but I’d say it took a year, honestly. Considering it’s only moving two frets or whatever, you can see how slow it is for me to get things together. [laughs] To be truthful, it was difficult to work through it—up the neck, so to speak. But it came to the point that as it was such a good thing to cheat with.”

Of course, back then, there weren’t any YouTube B-bender lessons for Page to watch!

In terms of approach, Warford and Parsons recommend a cool head and a steady hand. “Don’t be in a hurry to apply or release the bender,” Warford says. “Be a little lazy, even behind the beat. Fast actuating and release sounds frantic.”

Parsons adds: “For beginners, the initial impulse is to jerk the neck down and up, but a slow, gentle approach is the ticket. Where the real music is found is in the journey from one note to another—not so much the destination. This is why the long-stroke StringBender has gained such popularity in recent years.”

Of course, too much of a good thing can be horrible, and that applies to B-bender licks. “Beginners might get so wrapped up in using the String-Bender that they’ll forget the cool stuff they did before they got it,” Parsons says. “I’ve heard new players using the bender almost exclusively. That’s not good. Use the bender to augment, not to replace what you did before.”

Starr has a slightly modified take on the topic: “Don’t over-do it—a little bit of B-bending goes a long way, so use it to serve the song,” he says. “Or, if ‘less is more’ isn’t your style, just go apeshit with it. You can’t go wrong either way!”

Simply put, playing a B-bender can help set you apart from the pack—unless you’re Brad Paisley, that is. “A B-bender has a very distinctive sound that is awesome, but it says ‘B-bender guitar’ the minute I hear one,” Paisley told Guitar World in 2013.

“Most of my live guitars have G-benders in them. I don’t know whether a G-bender allows you to do a whole lot more than what you can already do with your finger, but it’s neat to use it when you’re out of ideas. That’s why I used it with the slide on ‘Beat This Summer,’ which feels like a song by the Eagles. I thought, What would Don Felder do? What would be my version of that? You can’t really tell what I’m doing on the record, but I know that as soon as I play it on television that kids will be ordering their slides and G-benders.”

I’m actually about to convert my Gibson Music City Jr. from a B-bender to a G-bender—an easy adjustment—just to see what Paisley is talking about. It’s always wise to shake things up!

Feeling the pull of the Bender

Parsons offers these examples of “otherwise impossible” licks you can “pull off” with a B-bender:

● Bending two strings at the same time. You bend the G string (the normal way, with your fingers) up a full tone and simultaneously “pull” the B string up a full tone. Or one bend can go up as the other goes down, resulting in contrapuntal bending notes. [Note: There also are G-benders, not to mention double-benders, that could bend that G for you.]

● Bending a string out of a chord.

● Playing pedal steel–style licks.

● Manually bending the B string, then adding a “pull” to achieve a two-tone raise for expressive blues licks.

A B-bender also can be used to replicate slide guitar sounds in some instances; I use it when playing the intro and solo to George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” (below).

Bending on a budget

B-benders come in all shapes and sizes, and there’s one for just about every budget. A Parsons/White StringBender installation starts at $1,402; Evans Pull String installations start at $1,195 and McVay Benders (Paisley’s bender of choice) will run you around $1,000. Of course, you can go the Reverb/eBay route and find a used ax with a bender already installed—or get yourself a Joe Glaser bender, as installed by Glaser and his team at Glaser Instruments in Nashville; Glaser’s many fans include Jimmy Olander and Brent Mason.

By the way, Parsons also custom-builds his own high-quality Gene Parsons Custom Shop StringBender Guitars in collaboration with Lee Rider; besides being U.S.-made, the guitars feature hand-wound pickups, benders (of course) and a distinctive headstock logo—Gene Parsons' face! Head here and here for more information.

Of course, not all benders live inside your guitar; there are plenty of “external” benders, including palm benders, the B-Blender, the Rolling Bender, several cool Hipshot products and more—all of which cost less than “internal” benders, which involve a good deal of routing (not that there’s anything wrong with that). While Tele-style guitars are probably the most common bender “hosts,” benders also can be found on or in Les Paul–style bodies, acoustic guitars, custom Ernie Ball Music Man models, Strats and, well, let’s just say almost anything is possible.

14 mind-bending songs

Here's some recommended bender listening for you. While you're at it, be sure to subscribe to The Jimmy O Show, Jimmy Olander’s YouTube Channel, where you’ll find B- and G-bending aplenty, not to mention some fine guitar playing.

● The Byrds, “Tulsa County”—Ballad of Easy Rider (1969)
● The Everly Brothers, “Cuckoo Bird”—Walk Right Back: The Everly Brothers on Warner Brothers, 1960-1969 (1993)
● The Byrds, "Buckaroo"—Live at the Fillmore 1969 (2000)
GUITARIST: Clarence White

There are so many White performances to choose from—he recorded ceaselessly with the B-bender from the moment it was installed in his Tele until his death in July 1973; however, there’s no denying the brilliance of these three 1969 performances.

In terms of full Byrds albums to explore, check out Untitled and the rest of Live at the Fillmore 1969 and Ballad of Easy Rider, all of which feature Gene Parsons on drums, vocals, backing vocals and more (Parsons also appears on "Cuckoo Bird"). For some visuals to go with the "Tulsa County" guitar solo, head here; it's a brief clip of me playing it on my Fender Parsons/Green Tele.

● Dave Edmunds, “Sweet Little Lisa”—Repeat When Necessary (1979)
GUITARIST: Albert Lee

As Lee told me in 2014, “I was mesmerized in the late Sixties listening to Clarence White bend strings, thinking, How did he do that? It’s too perfect to be a regular string bend!” Since we’re recommending a Dave Edmunds song, be sure to also check out “Born Fighter” by Nick Lowe, Edmunds’ Rockpile bandmate.

● The Rolling Stones, “One Hit (to the Body)”—Dirty Work (1986)
● The Honeydrippers, “Sea of Love”—Volume One (1984)
GUITARIST: Jimmy Page

Although Page used his Parsons/White bender in Led Zeppelin’s later years and with the Firm, these two mid-Eighties guitar solos showcase some serious creativity and arguably represent the yin and yang of his B-bender playing. That said, it’s still bizarre to hear Page playing with the Stones! (For more about this interesting mid-Eighties classic-rock pairing, head here.)

● Eagles, “Peaceful Easy Feeling”—Eagles (1972)
GUITARIST: Bernie Leadon

Omitting this song would be like forgetting to include the iPhone on a list of “popular handheld communication devices of the early 21st century.”

● Linda Ronstadt, “Dark End of the Street”—Heart Like a Wheel (1974)
● Herb Pedersen, “Easy Ride”—Lonesome Feeling (1984)
GUITARIST: Bob Warford

“Dark End” is basically a master class on how to play “relaxed” yet powerful B-bender guitar at a slow tempo. As for the Pedersen track, “It was pretty restrained—but it seemed to fit well,” Warford says.

● Blackberry Smoke, “Pretty Little Lie”—The Whippoorwill (2012)
GUITARIST: Charlie Starr

“The main riff is based on a movement from Em to G, which is very ‘bender friendly’—lots of open strings and a minor-to-major change,” Starr says. “If memory serves, that was my Nineties [Parsons/Green] Tele through a Plexi.”

● Marty Stuart, “Hummingbyrd”—Ghost Train: The Studio B Sessions (2010)
● Marty Stuart, “Wait for the Morning”—Way Out West (2017)
GUITARIST: Marty Stuart

Stuart, playing “Clarence” (White’s original B-bender-equipped Tele), shifts from the feisty to the sublime on these two tracks, the first of which is actually a tribute to White. Stuart considers “Clarence” his most prized musical possession. “I think I’d be a bit lost without that guitar after all this time,” he told me last year.

● Will Ray, “Invisible Birds”—Invisible Birds (1996)
GUITARIST: Will Ray

This frantic and insanely fun song answers the age-old question: Do guitarists ever get attacked by invisible birds? Alfred Hitchcock would be proud.

● Emmylou Harris, “Luxury Liner” live (1984)
GUITARIST: Frank Reckard

Disclaimer: Installing a B-bender in your guitar does not guarantee you’ll be able to shred like Reckard!

For more information

Here are some online resources—manufacturers, installers, etc.—to get you started. We repeat, here are some resources, not all. Feel free to explore—and enjoy the journey!

● StringBender, stringbender.com
● McVay Benders, mcvaybenders.com
● Forrest Custom Guitars, forrestcustomguitars.com
● Timara String Benders, timarastringbenders.com
● Evans Pull String B-Benders, evanspullstring.com
● Hipshot, hipshotproducts.com
● Glaser Instruments, via Facebook
● Matney USA Custom Bender Guitars, via Facebook
● Pitch Pilot, pitchpilot.com
● Rolling Bender, rollingbender.com
● B-Blender, b-blender.com
● Timara Custom Shop, timarastringbenders.com
● Bowden B Benders, bowdenbbenders.com
● Higgins Peg Benders

Damian Fanelli can be reached at damian@guitarworld.com.

Clarence White was a genuine double threat. His brilliant, Doc Watson-inspired acoustic flatpicking, which incorporated lightning-fast fiddle lines played on a vintage Martin D-28, helped the bluegrass world recognize the guitar as a lead instrument. Several masters of the genre, including Tony Rice and Norman Blake, cite him as a key influence. 

As an electric guitarist, White built the bridge between country and rock in the late Sixties. His work with the Parsons/White StringBender—an ingenious B-string-pulling device invented and installed in White's 1954 Fender Telecaster (or former Esquire; the jury is still out) by fellow Byrd, multi-instrumentalist and machinist Gene Parsons—is legendary. Whether employing a crisp, bell-like, out-of-phase tone (the Byrds' "Tulsa County") or a touch of fuzz (the Flying Burrito Brothers' "The Train Song"), White inserted his dancing, whimsical runs into songs with confidence, knowing that a little can often go a long way.

White, a member of the Byrds, Nashville West, Muleskinner and the Kentucky Colonels (and the New Kentucky Colonels), also was an in-demand session player who recorded with Arlo Guthrie, Wynn Stewart, Wayne Moore, Gary Paxton, the Monkees, Joe Cocker and Jackson Browne, to name just a few. He was killed by a drunk driver after a gig in California on July 14, 1973, never getting to fully grasp the influence he'd have on bluegrass, country and rock. He was only 29 when he died.

There really aren't that many "Clarence White in action" videos to be found on YouTube, but I hope I've collected a decent sampling of clips that represent his skills. Before we get started, if you want to know more about White—before, during and after the Byrds—check out this well-researched and well-compiled site, burritobrother.com.

Also, be sure to check out the top video, which stars Marty Stuart, who bought White's Tele from his widow around 1980. As Guitar World's Damian Fanelli puts it, it's as if she donated a part of White—just as a grieving family would donate a heart or another precious organ—to someone who could make the best possible use of it. As a result, Clarence White's "heart" still beats loud and clear today.

Stuart explains how he came to own the guitar, and he shows off (and explains) every little detail of the space-age axe. Nice job by the Reverb.com video crew!

• Here are some clips—audio and video—of White in action.

"You Ain't Going Nowhere," the Byrds

Because the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo version of this Bob Dylan tune highlights pedal steel guitar (courtesy of Lloyd Green), we suggest you check out a slightly later live rendition instead, like this one from a 1968 TV appearance. It puts the emphasis on White, his still-Nudie-sticker-free Fender Telecaster and his Parsons/White StringBender.

"I Am a Pilgrim" / "Soldier's Joy," Clarence White, Roland White and Bob Baxter

Here's White (on the left, with the beard) on the Bob Baxter Guitar Workshop, an LA-area TV show from 1973, performing a—what I consider—mind-blowing medley of "I Am a Pilgrim" and "Soldier's Joy" with his brother, Roland, on mandolin and the show's host, Bob Baxter, on second guitar (later joined by Byron Berline on fiddle and Alan Munde on banjo). What I can say about this video?

First of all, it's rare in that it shows White's fingering and fretwork up close. Second, there's White unusual sense of timing in the first tune ("I Am a Pilgrim"); it's as if he's throwing in chord substitutions like a jazzer, while Roland plays it straight on mandolin. It can be disconcerting and confusing, but I love it. To hear White playing more bluegrass, check out the Flatpick album on Amazon.com.

"Nashville West," Nashville West

No Clarence White playlist would be complete without what some would consider his signature song. Although White recorded the official studio version with the Byrds (plus an earlier studio version under his own name), here's a stripped-down 1968 (several sources say 1967) El Monte, California, club-date version by another of White's bands, Nashville West, which featured Gene Parsons on drums.

"Buckaroo," the Byrds

Feel free to argue, but if you had to choose one Byrds album that best demonstrates White's electric-guitar prowess, it'd be Live at the Fillmore—February 1969. The musicians on the album are McGuinn on his 12-string Rickenbacker 360, Gene Parsons on drums, John York on bass and White on his B-Bender Tele. He never puts it down, so there's no escaping it.

The most impressive guitar track on the album is the band's cover of Buck Owens' killer-catchy instrumental, "Buckaroo." White rips open his bag of B-bender licks—and never closes it. Even his mistakes sound good, like the random open G string he hits at :32. Play this one good and loud, people.

"Dark Hollow," Muleskinner

Did I mention White could sing? He was actually a fine vocalist with a distinctive, deep voice that was just right for bluegrass and the spaced-out-Americana material the Byrds were recording from 1969 to 1972. Here's another live appearance by White, this time with Muleskinner, one of his few post-Byrds bands, in 1973, the year he died. There are a few songs in this clip; "Dark Hollow," which features White on vocals, starts at 1:57.

"Sing Me Back Home," the Byrds

If you read the "Buckaroo" entry above, you already know about Live at the Fillmore—February 1969, which gets my vote as White's go-to "guitar album" (in terms of his electric-guitar playing). It even made Guitar World's list of the 30 best shred-guitar albums of all time.

Although I don't think of White as a "shredder" (except when he played bluegrass), he certainly works his way toward "shred country" on the Fillmore version of this Merle Haggard tune, which also was a favorite of former Byrd Gram Parsons. It's another B-bender masterpiece that shows off White's bouncy, psychedelic-cowboy style, complete with a brilliant turnaround at 1:24. It's cool to hear the Fillmore crowd show their appreciation after the solo at 1:43, while McGuinn is already singing the next verse.

"Hummingbyrd," Marty Stuart

As noted earlier, White's B-Bender-equipped Tele is still in action, courtesy of Marty Stuart, who bought it from White's widow several decades ago. Check out this live performance of "Hummingbyrd," an instrumental B-bending piece Stuart wrote—and titled—as a tribute to White. The studio version of "Hummingbyrd" can be found on Stuart's 2010 album, Ghost Train: The Studio B Sessions. "I always felt a little guilty about not having a recital piece for that guitar," Stuart told Guitar Player in 2010. "With 'Hummingbyrd,' I feel like I finally recorded a song that honors that guitar properly." White's Tele is heavily featured on Stuart's latest album, 2017's Way Out West.

Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Jakob Dylan, Beck, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Brian Wilson and others are featured in a new documentary, Echo in the Canyon, which celebrates the fertile mid-Sixties music scene in the storied L.A. neighborhood of Laurel Canyon.

The doc, produced and directed by former music journalist, record producer and label executive Andrew Slater, traces the music that “shaped the second half of the 20th century.” Among the artists lauded in the film are Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, the Beach Boys and the Mamas and the Papas.

Echo in the Canyon will open in L.A. on May 24 at Arclight’s Cinerama Dome and the Landmark, and in New York at the Angelika and the Landmark at 57 West in New York on May 31. Both the L.A. and New York showings will also feature performances by artists who appear in the film. More dates throughout the U.S., as well as a companion soundtrack, are scheduled for June.

For more information on Echo in the Canyon, head here. 

He’s a co-founder of Sixties pop-rock titans the Byrds, and his distinctive 12-string Rickenbacker jangle is one of the most influential and imitated guitar sounds of the past 53 years. Oh, his playing also inspired a Beatles song and he helped invent country rock. But what Guitar World readers really want to know is…

I always thought it was brilliant that you inserted a bit of J.S. Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” into the guitar solo for The Byrds’ “She Don’t Care About Time” in 1965. what inspired that? —Harry Falstaff

I was always a fan of Pete Seeger, and he put out an album called Goofing-Off Suite [1955] where he played “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” on the banjo. So I learned to play that on the banjo too. And then when I got to the studio to record “She Don’t Care About Time,” I remembered it and just threw it in there. George Harrison was in the studio that day; I think George and Paul had come to watch us record. George liked that a lot [laughs]. 

You and former Byrd Chris Hillman are teaming up with Marty Stuart for a U.S. tour that pays tribute to the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, which turns 50 this fall. What about the tour are you looking forward to most? —Jules Santorelli

First of all, it’s great to get back together with Chris; I haven’t done that in many years. But we’re playing with Marty Stuart and his band, the Fabulous Superlatives, and they’re excellent. And, of course, Marty’s got Clarence White’s Telecaster, and he knows all of Clarence’s licks. So it’s really like getting back together with Clarence and playing those songs. 

What can you tell me about your brand-new studio album, Sweet Memories? —John MacDonald

It’s a lot of fun to listen to! We’ve been driving cross-country, and it’s really good driving music. I rerecorded “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” plus a new version of “Chestnut Mare” called “Chestnut Mare Christmas” with Marty Stuart on guitar. I actually played all the instruments on the album except for that one song. Then we added seven other songs we’d written, plus another one that’s really funny called “Friday,” which has an interesting back story. 

There’s this girl named Rebecca Black. Around 2011, her mother bought her a recording and video session from this company in California. They had two songs pre-written, and she could take her pick, so she picked a song about Fridays — you know, everybody’s looking forward to the weekend and so on. So she recorded this video and it went viral; she got more than 100 million views on You-Tube. This guy Nate Herman from Second City in Chicago — he’s an actor and musician — he decided to make a spoof of the video, and I ran across it a few years ago. In the spoof video, he’s in a record shop talking about a song Bob Dylan had written called “Friday,” but the tape had been erased and lost and so on. But they found a video of it by the Byrds in a thrift shop in Venice, California, that was labeled “head cleaner.” You can find the Nate Herman video on YouTube if you search for the Byrds’ “Friday.” Anyway, I thought it was so funny, so I recorded it.  

In my opinion, the late Clarence White of the Byrds was one of the greatest guitarists of all time. What was he like as a person? —Damien Linotte

He was a delight to play with. He was a brilliant guitar player, probably the best one I’ve ever worked with. I compare him to Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton. He was excellent, and he also was a very good friend. The night before he was killed by a drunk driver [July 15, 1973], he came to my birthday party. He said we should get together and work together some more. It doesn’t have to be the Byrds or anything, but it would be great to work together. I said sure, and I was ready to do that. Then he got hit by a car.

What was it about Clarence White’s playing style that you appreciated the most? —Zakk Kyle Jr.

Clarence had a way of syncopating things, and he was unpredictable. He never played the same licks twice, really. He’d just go into it and improvise every time. He was almost like a jazz guy.

Besides the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, what other songs will you be playing on the Sweetheart of the Rodeo 50th Anniversary tour? —Midge Lessons

We’re gonna do Byrds songs that led up to the recording of Sweetheart of the Rodeo — songs that we did back on Turn! Turn Turn! like “Satisfied Mind,” and then onto “Girl with No Name” from Younger Than Yesterday and “Old John Robertson” from The Notorious Byrd Brothers, plus “Mr. Spaceman.” Pretty much anything the Byrds did that was country-ish before we went to Nashville to record Sweetheart of the Rodeo. 

It’s well known that seeing George Harrison in the Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s Night, inspired you to get a 12-string Rickenbacker. Two years later, your 12-string playing style was the main influence behind Harrison’s “If I Needed Someone.” Did you guys eventually become friends? —Fred Freelancer

We were friends, and we did hang out together from time to time. Interestingly, the first thing he ever learned to play on the guitar was the first thing I’d learned to play on guitar. It was the lead break from Gene Vincent’s Woman Love, the flipside of “Be-Bop-A-Lula.” He was in Liverpool and I was in Chicago, and we both learned how to play the same song.

I’ve always been a fan of your [1991] Back from Rio album, which featured appearances by Elvis Costello, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and more. I know how and why you met Tom, but how’d you get hooked up with Elvis? —Stephen Longo

I met Elvis Costello at Storyville New Orleans probably around 30 years ago — before Jimmy Buffet bought it and turned it into Margaritaville. It was a famous old club. Elvis showed up. He was at my gig and came backstage after the show. He asked me if he could play my Rickenbacker, and I said sure. He started to play it and went, “Wow, this is hard to play!” So we got to be friends, and we bump into each other at airports and everything. I did a gig in Boston and he showed up — stuff like that. Anyway, I asked him if he’d like to be involved with Back from Rio, so he wrote “You Bowed Down.”

What’s up with your signature seven-string Martin guitar? What’s the extra string — and why? —Kristi Branford

It’s got a high G string. What I did was try to get the best part of a 12-string on a six-string. I was on the Concord from Paris to New York, and they promised they’d treat our guitars really well. But I got to New York, took my guitar out and it was all smashed. I thought, man, it’s not a good idea to carry a six-string and a 12-string acoustic; I’d like to get the best of both on one guitar. So I went to Dick Boak at Martin Guitar. We had lunch together and drew out the plans on a napkin. He made a seven-string prototype in the custom shop. But before he could send it to me, a couple of guitarists came and played it and they said they wanted one too. So they made a whole run of them. I think they made about 260 HD7’s, which are around $5,000. The European market said they wanted one that wasn’t quite so expensive, so they made the D7 and took out the mother-of-pearl abalone. It’s pretty much the same guitar. Basically, it’s got the best part of a 12-string — you can play leads up and down the neck like George Harrison used to do.

What’s your favorite amp to use with your Rickenbacker? —Gib Dumoulin

I don’t really use an amp with the Rickenbacker much, but when I do, I use a Roland JC-120. I have a Roland Cube 80 that I carry with me, but I prefer to go through the board, which is what I did at the Columbia Records studio.

Which Byrds lineup was your favorite? —Phil Wall

Well, I’ll divide it into recording and performing. The first band was better in the studio, but then, by the time it evolved to where we had Clarence White on guitar, we were better on the road than in the studio. It was a really hot performing band. There were good things about both versions — or of the many versions of the Byrds. The first one was great. We had hits with “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” right off the bat, but then we eventually got Clarence, who I’ve compared to Jimi Hendrix, so that was a great band.  

Sweetheart of the Rodeo wasn’t exactly a hit when it came out in 1968. What did you think of it at the time, and are you surprised by the legendary status it’s achieved all these years later? —Andy Winters

Well, we loved it. We wouldn’t have recorded it if we didn’t love it [laughs]. But obviously we weren’t doing it for commercial reasons; we were doing it just out of the love of the music. I was quite surprised that it didn’t go over better than it did when it came out because we loved it so much, so we thought everybody would pick up on that. But there was a misunderstanding. The country people thought we were interlopers and the rock-and-roll people thought we’d sold out to the country crowd. It took about 40 years for it to catch on, but gradually it became more and more revered. It’s probably the most-respected Byrds album of all time, which is weird.

What’s the real reason you recorded over Gram Parsons’ lead vocals on “The Christian Life” on Sweetheart of the Rodeo? —Brian Cancemi

It was because [singer-songwriter-producer] Lee Hazlewood had a contract with Gram at the time. They resolved that, but I had already overdubbed a few vocals at that point. It wasn’t a personal thing.

What’s your favorite Byrds album from the Clarence White era? —Hank Brennan

I guess it'd be Untitled [1970].

What happened to your original Byrds-era 12-string Rickenbacker 360? I heard it was stolen at some point. —Gary Owen

Yeah, it got stolen, and it resurfaced maybe 20 years ago for a lot of money — and then it kind of disappeared. I haven’t seen it lately. 

Sweetheart of the Rodeo, the Byrds’ understated country-rock masterpiece, turns 50 this fall. To celebrate, band co-founders and Sweetheart masterminds Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman are teaming up for a tour dedicated to the landmark disc. Some Byrds fans might consider that enough of a reason to rejoice (these guys haven’t toured together in ages)—but there’s more. McGuinn and Hillman will be backed by trad-country champion Marty Stuart and his band, the Fabulous Superlatives. As every Tele-lovin’, string-bendin’ maniac knows, Stuart owns the sunburst 1954 Fender Telecaster that once belonged to the late Clarence White, another Sweetheart performer (White actually played a white Fifties Tele on the album, a guitar he traded to Bob Warford, who still owns it).

“On March 9, 1968, Roger McGuinn and I, along with many fantastic musicians, began recording Sweetheart of the Rodeo at Columbia Studios in Nashville,” Hillman says. “It was a pivotal moment in our lives, taking a turn toward the music we always felt a strong kinship with. We’re honored it has left a strong, long-lasting impression on country and rock.”

Adds McGuinn: “We’re looking forward to taking fans through the back pages of the recording. The concerts will include songs that led up to that trip to Nashville and all the songs from the album.”

Check out qprime.com/artist/sweetheart-of-the-rodeo/ for tour dates and more information.

From 1965 until their breakup in 1973, the Byrds were a bona-fide electric-guitar powerhouse. During the Southern California band's initial—and most popular—incarnation, Jim McGuinn turned the 12-string Rickenbacker 360 guitar into an institution.

Its glorious trademark "chiming" sound actually became the band's trademark sound—a sound that even influenced the almighty Beatles (who had initially inspired McGuinn to pick up a 12-string Rickenbacker in the first place).

As the years went by and the hits piled up—"Turn! Turn! Turn!," "Eight Miles High," "My Back Pages" and "Chestnut Mare" among them—the band's original lineup—Jim McGuinn,David Crosby,Gene Clark,Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke—went their separate ways, leaving McGuinn to carry on the Byrds experience with a host of new musicians.

Luckily, a guitar legend was waiting in the wings: Clarence White. A master of chops-busting bluegrass guitar, White, who initially recorded with the band as a session guitarist but became a full band member in mid-1968, intertwined his formidable fingerpicking, flatpicking and hybrid-picking technique on his Tele with the use of a device he helped invent (with Gene Parsons), the Parsons-White StringBender (also known as a B-bender), which allowed him to recreate certain aspects of pedal steel guitar licks with stunning accuracy.

It also should be noted that three members of the Byrds—White, McGuinn and Hillman—have (or have had) their own signature-model guitars or basses (Hillman has two—the Martin Guitars OM Chris Hillman Custom Artist Edition and the Guild Chris Hillman Signature Byrds Bass; McGuinn's signature Rickenbacker has been discontinued, but don't forget his signature Martin seven-string model). This, I assure you, is uncommon.

If you'd like to find out more about White, who was killed by a drunk driver in 1973, be sure to check out Ode to the Original B-Bender, Clarence White of The Byrds and Kentucky Colonels.

Below, we revisit 10 of the band's greatest guitar moments, taking their entire official output—including recently released archival live albums—into consideration. The songs are presented in no particular order.

For more about the Byrds, visit their official website. To catch up with McGuinn, Crosby and Hillman, visit mcguinn.com,davidcrosby.com and chrishillman.com.

Editor's Note: Even though Roger McGuinn went by his birth name, Jim McGuinn, prior to 1967, we will refer to him as Roger for the remainder of this story.

"Chestnut Mare"
(Untitled) | 1970 | Main Guitarists: Roger McGuinn, Clarence White

Although it's not the first track that comes to mind when considering a list of the Byrds' finest guitar tracks, "Chestnut Mare," an epic song about one tenacious man's quest to capture a very special horse (so special that "she'll be just like a wife"), is actually a perfect choice. It combines McGuinn's trademark electric 12-string picking with White's top-notch acoustic work—with a bit of White's electric B-bender Tele thrown in for good measure.

The guitars, which—let's face it—are everywhere on this track, are the canvas on which the song's story is so vibrantly painted; perhaps the guitar high point is the fine interplay between McGuinn's Rickenbacker and White's Martin during the song's emotional breakdown section.

"Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)"
Turn! Turn! Turn! | 1965 | Main Guitarist: Roger McGuinnNo other song—including "Mr. Tambourine Man" (which did not make this list)—sums up the Byrds' early, "America's Answer to the Beatles" period quite like "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)." McGuinn's playing on the track is—for lack of a better word—sublime.

Note that he's hybrid picking, playing the melody with downstrokes while providing his own rhythm part in the form of ringing or droning notes and banjo rolls. As always, his 12-string Rickenbacker is front and center. Since you've probably heard the original Byrds version of this song 43,747 times, we've decided to include a more recent video that shows McGuinn playing the song alone, complete with close-up shots of his fingering, finger picks and all. It's from an instructional video McGuinn made several years ago. Enjoy!

"Buckaroo"
Live at the Fillmore—February 1969 | 2000 | Main Guitarist: Clarence WhiteFeel free to argue, but if you had to choose one Byrds album that best demonstrates White's electric-guitar prowess, it'd be Live at the Fillmore—February 1969. The musicians on the album are McGuinn on his 12-string Rickenbacker 360, Gene Parsons on drums, John York on bass and White on his B-Bender Tele. He never puts it down, so there's no escaping it.

The most impressive guitar track on the album is the band's cover of Buck Owens' killer-catchy instrumental, "Buckaroo," which finally exists on YouTube. White rips open his bag of B-bender licks—and never closes it. Even his mistakes sound good, like the random open G string he hits at :32.

"The Bells of Rhymney"
Mr. Tambourine Man | 1965 | Main Guitarist: Roger McGuinn

Although the Beatles were rock’s foremost trendsetters, they still were influenced by other artists. Case in point: George Harrison’s 12-string riff on “If I Needed Someone.” Played in a second-position D-chord shape with a capo on the seventh fret, the line was based on McGuinn’s shimmering guitar work in the mesmerizing 1965 track “The Bells of Rhymney,” which you can hear below.

All McGuinn really had to go on was Pete Seeger's acoustic version of the song, which was based on a poem by Welshman Idris Davies. While Seeger also played the song on a 12-string, and even embellished the solo portion with a brilliant, out-of-nowhere chord or two, McGuinn and the Byrds simply took it to new heights—something they did often, especially when it came to Bob Dylan songs.

In the mid-Sixties, Harrison and McGuinn had formed a mutual-admiration society: “If I Needed Someone” featured Harrison’s second Rickenbacker 360/12, a rounded-off 1965 model that resembled McGuinn’s 1964 Rickenbacker 360/12, which McGuinn bought after seeing Harrison’s first Rick in A Hard Day’s Night.

"You Ain't Goin' Nowhere"
Sweetheart of the Rodeo | 1968 | Main Guitarists: Lloyd Green, Clarence White

Yes, we're bending (that's a play on words, folks) the rules and including a pedal steel guitar performance on this list. The studio version of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," a cover of a Basement Tapes-era Dylan tune, features a stunning performance by Nashville pedal steel legend Lloyd Green.

His tone is actually a bit confusing because it sounds like a guitar (I thought it was a guitar for years when I was a young'n). Listen to Green's note choices; it's a lesson on guitar solo composition, regardless of what instrument he's playing.

“I was young and open to any new music if the steel fit, and [the Byrds] were gonna let me be a part of it," Green told Vintage Guitar in 2008. "I thought it was the most wonderful thing. The first song was gonna be ‘You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,’ the Bob Dylan song. I said, ‘Where do you guys want me to fill?’ And they said, almost in unison, ‘Everywhere!’ I said, ‘Say no more!’ And if you listen to that song, almost from the first note to the end there’s steel guitar. I play too much, in retrospect—certainly not the way I would play it today."

We've also included a live version of the song (second video) featuring White's B-bender spin on Green's original pedal steel guitar part. This 1968 TV appearance puts the emphasis on White, his still-Nudie-sticker-free Telecaster and his Parsons/White StringBender. Random side note: Be sure to check out Green's pedal steel playing on Paul McCartney and Wings' 1974 tune, "Sally G."

"Black Mountain Rag"/"Soldier's Joy"
Live at Royal Albert Hall 1971 | 2008 | Main Guitarist: Clarence White

Meet Clarence White, the bluegrass shredder. Before joining the Byrds, White was blowing minds (including the mind of the great Doc Watson) as a member of the Kentucky Colonels. His brilliant acoustic flatpicking, which incorporated lightning-fast fiddle lines played on a vintage Martin D-28, helped the bluegrass world recognize the guitar as a lead instrument.

Several masters of the genre, including Tony Rice and Norman Blake, even site him as a key influence. After the Colonels, White became a session player in Los Angeles (even playing on several Byrds albums before officially joining the band). Through his time with the Byrds, this high-octane bluegrass medley stood out as a high point of the band's live shows.

Note that the version below is not the recommended Live at Royal Albert Hall 1971 performance (which isn't available on YouTube), but it's pretty much just as good—and it even shows White and the gang in action, which is a rarity.

"Lover of the Bayou"
(Untitled) | 1970 | Main Guitarist: Clarence White

This live selection sums up the best of White's rare "fuzzed out" guitar attacks. Kudos to White—a former bluegrass picker (as we've mentioned 40 times already)—for coming up with creative and unique rock solos in a time when Eric Clapton, Alvin Lee and Jimi Hendrix were competing for the listening public's attention (and money). Honorable mention to McGuinn, who continued to showcase his Rickenbacker 360 in 1970 and beyond, even though its jingly-jangly "season" (1965 to '66) had temporarily passed.

"Eight Miles High"
Fifth Dimension | 1966 | Main Guitarist: Roger McGuinn"Eight Miles High" starts off like a train—a massive, chugging steam locomotive that stops for absolutely no one. Its cargo? McGuinn's relentless jumble of dark and spider-like notes—all furiously played on his 12-string Rick. The song, which strikes modern ears as an early stab at psychedelia, is actually nothing of the sort.

"We started out with the folky thing, mixing Dylan and Pete Seeger with the Beatles, then we dabbled in a bit of jazz fusion with 'Eight Miles High,' which was misconstrued as psychedelic." McGuinn recently told Uncut. "It wasn’t meant to be, but it was branded that way."

"'Eight Miles High' is out there," McGuinn adds. "It’s spatial. I was trying to emulate Coltrane’s saxophone with my Rickenbacker. It’s got a lot of what Coltrane was going for on India, which was to capture the elephants in India with his wails, and there’s that tabla beat. He was trying to incorporate Indian music into jazz, and we were trying to incorporate his attempts to do that into a rock’n’roll song. So there’s a lot of things going on."

"Sing Me Back Home"
Live at the Fillmore—February 1969 | 2000 | Main Guitarist: Clarence White

If you read the "Buckaroo" entry above, you already know about Live at the Fillmore—February 1969, which gets my vote as White's go-to "guitar album" (in terms of his electric-guitar playing). A few years ago, it even made Guitar World's list of the 30 best shred-guitar albums of all time.

Although I don't think of White as a shredder (except for when he played bluegrass), he certainly works his way toward "shred country" on the Fillmore version of this beautiful Merle Haggard tune, which also was a favorite of former Byrd Gram Parsons. It's another B-bender masterpiece that shows off White's bouncy, psychedelic-cowboy style, complete with a brilliant turnaround at 1:24. It's cool to hear the Fillmore crowd show their appreciation after the solo at 1:43, while McGuinn is already singing the song's next verse.

"She Don't Care About Time"
Non-album B-side of "Turn! Turn! Turn!," now included on Turn! Turn! Turn! | 1965 | Main Guitarist: Roger McGuinn

"She Don't Care About Time," one of many brilliant compositions by the Byrds' Gene Clark, is known for its very early incorporation of classical music into popular music (Take that, Yngwie Malmsteen). Notice how McGuinn cleverly inserts a heaping helping of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" into his 12-string Rickenbacker guitar solo.

Damian Fanelli is the online managing editor at Guitar World and Guitar Aficionado. His New York-based band, the Blue Meanies, has toured the world and elsewhere. Fanelli, a former member of Brooklyn jump-blues/swing/rockabilly band the Gas House Gorillas and New York City instrumental surf-rock band Mister Neutron, also composes and records film soundtracks. He writes GuitarWorld.com's The Next Bend column, which is dedicated to B-bender guitars and guitarists. His latest liner notes can be found in Sony/Legacy's Stevie Ray Vaughan: The Complete Epic Recordings Collection. Follow him on Facebook,Twitter and/or Instagram. Or not; either way is fine.

Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman have announced a tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Byrds' seminal country-rock album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

For the tour, the duo will be joined by Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives. You can check out the group's itinerary below.

"On March 9, 1968, Roger McGuinn and I along with many fantastic musicians began recording the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album at Columbia Studios in Nashville," Hillman said in a statement. "It was truly a pivotal moment in our lives taking a turn toward the music we always felt a strong kinship with. We are honored that it has left a strong, long lasting impression on country and rock music."

"We're all looking forward to taking the fans through the back pages of the recording," McGuinn added. "The concert will include songs that led up to that ground breaking trip to Nashville and all the songs from the album."

Stuart usually performs with a 1954 Fender Telecaster that used to be owned by Clarence White, who himself played on Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

"I think I’d be a bit lost without that guitar after all this time," Stuart told Guitar World about the instrument in a 2017 interview. "It’s about like playing a banjo. These days, when I pick up a regular Telecaster, it feels too light."

Organizers have only announced the first five dates of the tour as of right now, but more dates will be announced soon.

Roger McGuinn/Chris Hillman —Sweetheart of the Rodeo 2018 Tour Dates:

• July 24 – Los Angeles, CA @ Ace Hotel
• July 29 – Saratoga, CA @ Mountain Winery
• September 18 – Albany, NY @ Hart Theater
• September 20 – Hopewell, VA @ Beacon Theatre
• October 3 – Akron, OH @ Akron Civic

In 1968, the Byrds—a Southern California rock band that had enjoyed a series of mega-hits since 1965—set out on an ambitious path to more deeply explore country music, a genre they'd merely flirted with on their previous albums. The disc they came up with, the now legendary Sweetheart of the Rodeo, has gone down in music history as the first country-rock album to be recorded by an established rock act.

The shift was brought on in large part by the entrance of country-music aficionado Gram Parsons, who joined the group just prior to Sweetheart. Parsons gave the Byrds a creative shot in the arm and, in turn, his association with the band would introduce his twang and songwriting genius to a much larger audience.

Though not initially a commercial success, Sweetheart was a groundbreaking record; for the first time, a major pop act was seamlessly fusing country with rock and roll. All these decades later, the album is still hailed as a classic, and it continues to open the eyes of new generations of fans to country music.

"I think it’s undeniable. When you listen to contemporary country on the radio, you can almost trace it all back to the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo," country music legend Marty Stuart told Guitar World last year.

The album was recorded in March and April 1968 in Nashville and Los Angeles. The band at that time included founding members Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, plus newcomer Parsons and drummer Kevin Kelley, who happened to be Hillman's cousin.

"[Sweetheart] did open up people to country music, and consequently the floodgates swung back, creating the West Coast 'country rock' sound," Hillman told us in 2016. "We had some wonderful people playing with us on the album."

That's an understatement. The sessions were augmented by the B-bending mastery of guitarist Clarence White, plus John Hartford on banjo and fiddle, Roy Huskey Jr. on double bass and Earl P. Ball and Barry Goldberg on piano. However, it can be argued that the true stars of the album—at least in terms of its beautifully recorded and mixed "guitar" solos—were pedal steel masters Lloyd Green and Jay Dee Maness. The freshness of their playing lended some serious authenticity to the sessions and introduced a rocking audience to the sweet sounds of the pedal steel guitar.

Now, 50 years later, Green and Maness have teamed up to record Journey to the Beginning: A Steel Guitar Tribute to the Byrds, an instrumental tribute to Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The album, which was recorded at Cinderella Sound in Nashville, captures the spirit of Sweetheart while adding the refinement and seasoning of 50 years of reflection on the project.

It also features a rousing vocal version of the album's opening track and first single, Bob Dylan's “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,” featuring Jim Lauderdale, Herb Pedersen, Richie Furay and Jeff Hanna.

The new record showcases the song-serving chops of Green and Maness as they transform 11 Sweetheart classics into lush, imaginative steel-guitar instrumentals. And with producer/engineer John Macy having the two veteran musicians hard-panned in the mix (Maness in the left channel and Green on the right), it’s easy to pick out each player’s unique and masterful pedal-steel contributions.

The album will be released on Record Store Day (April 21), and Lloyd and Maness will celebrate with a performance at Grimey's in Nashville the same day. See below for details.

April 21: Grimey's (Nashville), with full band at 3 p.m.
April 22: Station Inn (Nashville); release show at 4 p.m.

When we spoke to Chris Hillman in the spring of 2016, we asked if he had a new album in the works. "I do have material," he said at the time. "I’m just lazy. But I think a new album will start to happen in June or July."

It turns out Hillman isn't so lazy after all. The former member and/or co-founder of the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas and the Desert Rose Band is releasing a new album, Bidin' My Time, September 22 via Rounder Records.

The album—his first studio effort since 2005's The Other Side—was produced by Tom Petty and executive produced by Herb Pedersen, Hillman's longtime collaborator and co-founder of the Desert Rose Band.

Best of all, the disc features a list of guest appearances that have longtime fans seriously champing at the bit. These include former ByrdsDavid Crosby and Roger McGuinn; Desert Rose Band alumni Pedersen, John Jorgenson and Jay Dee Maness (who played pedal steel guitar on the Byrds' classic 1968 album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo); Petty and fellow Heartbreakers Mike Campbell, Steve Ferrone and Benmont Tench, plus Mark Fain, Josh Jové and Gabe Witcher.

The album kicks off with a new version of Pete Seeger’s and Idris Davies’ “The Bells of Rhymney,” which the Byrds recorded in 1965. Crosby and Pedersen contribute otherworldly harmonies to the tune, which swells from stripped-down folk into a layered rock-and-roll cry.

“I decided to cut it again because I wanted to sing with David and Herb, two great tenors,” Hillman says. “David just loves Herb’s singing, and at 75 years old, David is still a powerful singer—one of the best I’ve ever worked with or been around.”

“Here She Comes Again” was written by Hillman and McGuinn, and until now, could be found only on a live album in Australia. Hillman plays bass on the track—the instrument he played with the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers but hadn’t picked up in more than three decades. “She Don’t Care About Time” (which you can hear above) was written by Byrds co-founder Gene Clark, who died in 1991, and originally recorded by the Byrds in 1965.

Hillman also reworked “Old John Robertson,” which originally was featured on The Notorious Byrd Brothers in 1968. The new recording, dubbed “New Old John Robertson,” is about a kind old man who lived in Hillman’s hometown. The album also includes interpretations of the Everly Brothers’ “Walk Right Back,” Petty’s “Wildflowers” and “When I Get a Little Money,” which was written by family friend Nathan Barrow.

Of course, the album features several new Hillman compositions. There's album standout "Restless" and “Such Is the World We Live In,” a front-porch jam session that imagines what Hillman’s great-grandfather would say about current events. “Given All That I Can See” is a call for mercy and grace in an era beleaguered by hate and fear.

“I did everything I felt was right in the moment,” Hillman says about Bidin' My Time. “I did my very best. That’s all any of us can do.”

To preorder Bidin' My Time, head here. For more about Hillman, visit chrishillman.com. Be sure to check out Hillman and Pedersen's just-announced tour dates below.

Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen on Tour
9/21 Sellersville, PA Sellersville Theatre
9/22 New York, NY City Winery
9/23 Fall River, MA Narrows Center for the Arts
9/24 Boston, MA City Winery
9/26 Alexandria, VA The Birchmere
9/29 Duluth, GA The Red Clay Theatre
10/1 Nashville, TN City Winery
10/4 Newport, KY Southgate House Revival
10/5 Kent, OH Kent Stage
10/6 Chicago, IL Old Town School of Folk Music
10/7 Edwardsville, IL The Wildey Theatre
10/12 Bakersfield, CA Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace
10/13 Berkeley, CA Freight & Salvage
10/16 West Hollywood, CA The Troubadour
10/26-28 Park City, UT The Egyptian Theatre
11/8 Baton Rouge, LA Red Dragon Listening Room
11/9 The Woodlands, TX Dosey Doe Barn
11/10 Austin, TX Texas Union Theater
1/27/18 Thousand Oaks, Ca. Scherr Theatre

He was a founding member of the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Desert Rose Band. His late-Sixties work with Gram Parsons has influenced generations of country, rock and Americana musicians. But what Guitar World readers really want to know is…

Your songwriting debut—those five songs on the Byrds’ 1967 Younger Than Yesterday album—was pretty impressive. How did you come up with them, especially “Time Between” and “The Girl with No Name”? —Shell Levine
I had come home after playing a session for Hugh Masekela. David Crosby was also on the date. The session was for a South African singer named Letta Mbulu. I had such a great time working with all these wonderful South African jazz players that I think it was the key that unlocked the door. I came home and wrote “Time Between” and had a good rest of the week with song ideas.

How and when did you meet guitarist Clarence White? Also, what was he like to work with in the studio? Was he a “first take” guy? —Richard Roma
I met Clarence when we were both 16. He was playing in the [popular bluegrass band] Kentucky Colonels and I drove up to Los Angeles to hear them. We became close friends. Years later when Clarence switched to electric guitar, I had him come in and play on my songs [with the Byrds]. One of his finest solos was on “Time Between,” which is a favorite of Dwight Yoakam. Clarence usually captured it within one or two takes; he was a total professional in the studio and one of the finest musicians I had the honor of working with.

How did Guild’s new Chris Hillman Signature Byrds bass come to be? —George Aaranow
Chris Middaugh, who was at Guild Guitars at the time, approached me about doing a reissue of my old Guild Starfire bass. I used my Starfire on so many Byrds hits, so I was immediately up for the idea. Tracy Longo, who works on my instruments, and [guitarist] John Jorgenson were very helpful in putting it together. Guild did a great job. It’s a fantastic instrument.

How do you feel about newer country music? I feel there are rock/Americana bands playing "country" better than so-called country artists. Examples include the Avett Brothers and Ryan Adams. They seem to better capture the honesty of country. —David Moss
New country music is, as Tom Petty put it so well, “bad Seventies rock with a fiddle.” There are some interesting bands like the Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons and so many under-the-radar bands and singer/songwriters that are very good. There’s just no music business model anymore. This is why concerts have become such grand affairs; you need to break through and establish a huge following. Artists can’t rely solely on record sales anymore. It’s a real catch-22.

What’s your favorite cover (of someone else’s song) that you’ve recorded, and what’s your favorite cover of a Hillman-penned (or co-written) tune? —Jimmy Lingk
I’d say the acoustic version of Buck Owens’ “Together Again” by Herb Pedersen and me [available on 2010’s At Edwards Barn]. I think we nailed it, and I know Buck loved it when he heard us sing it. Emmylou Harris did a great job on “Wheels” and “Sin City” [Flying Burrito Brothers songs composed by Hillman and Gram Parsons].

What bass players inspired you when it came time to play bass in the Byrds? I know you started out as a mandolin player. —John Williamson
I loved Paul McCartney’s playing, his sense of counter melody—and what he got out of that Hofner using a flat pick was nothing short of amazing. The Who’s John Entwistle was quite possibly the best bass player in rock for that time period. Later I liked Jack Bruce in Cream. These innovative musicians approached the bass from such an interesting angle. I loved all the Sixties Motown bass playing too.

What was it about “Time Between” [from the Byrds’ Younger Than Yesterday] that inspired you to revisit it with the Desert Rose Band in the Eighties? —Larry Spannel
I have no idea, other than I probably sang it better. In hindsight, the Desert Rose Band version was way too fast and was just a nice way for John [Jorgenson] to show off his cross-picking chops on his mandolin solo. But the song was never meant to be that fast.

What gear do you bring to a Chris Hillman-Herb Pederson show? —Alec Blake
I usually play my “Red Diamond Crusher” mandolin that was built by my friend Don Macrostie. I happen to think he builds the best mandolins in the world. I play my Martin OM Chris Hillman Custom Artist Edition guitar and occasionally use my Santa Cruz guitar.

Who was the most inspiring (and/or jaw-dropping) guitarist you’ve ever worked with? —Jude Ciccolella
Other than Clarence White, I’d say Stephen Stills. When we worked together in Manassas, I felt he was at the top of his game. I never worked with Mike Bloomfield, but I knew him and we did work with the Butterfield Blues band for a week in 1966. I still hold him up as one of the very best guitarists to ever hold a Les Paul. His solos with Paul Butterfield just moved the universe.

Do you have anything in the works—a new album, perhaps? —Jon Pryce
I do have material; I’m just lazy. But I think a new album will start to happen in June or July.

Did you ever meet Jimi Hendrix? —Bruce Altman
The first time I met Jimi Hendrix was at Ciro’s, the club on the Sunset Strip where the Byrds got their start. Little Richard was playing there for a week in 1965 and [Byrds drummer] Michael Clarke and I went down to see him. Hendrix was Little Richard’s guitar player. He stood on the end of the stage with his short hair, wearing a “band suit.” There were no theatrics, just playing, but you couldn’t help but notice how good he was, even in that reduced role. It was a little over a year and a half later that he became so famous. He was a nice man and a fantastic musician who could play any kind of music, even country.

The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968), which started out as a fairly unsuccessful album, has gone on to be an important piece of musical history, a work that has influenced several generations of musicians, possibly even launching the Americana movement. What does the album mean to you? —Barry Rossen
It wasn’t my favorite Byrds album. It did open up people to country music, and consequently the floodgates swung back, creating the West Coast “country rock” sound. We had some wonderful people playing with us on the album.

What do you consider Gram Parsons’ finest recorded moments as a songwriter, vocalist or both? Also, what did you take away from your time together in the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers? Any lessons learned or anything you found inspiring? —Sergei Zubov
Gram was very talented but also very unfocused at times. I think his best vocals on record were “Hot Burrito #1” and “Hot Burrito #2” from the Flying Burrito Brothers’ first album [1969’s], The Gilded Palace of Sin. Those are two very soulful vocals. He was a great songwriter and we wrote some wonderful tunes together. He brought two classic songs to the Sweetheart of the Rodeo project—“Hickory Wind,” which he wrote with Bob Buchanan, and “One Hundred Years from Now.”

He also wrote the two “Hot Burrito” songs with Chris Ethridge, along with a later song written with Chris, “She.” That’s a great song. Gram was a very bright and extremely funny man. I loved him dearly, and it was not pleasant when he started to drift into a dark place with the drugs and alcohol. He had so much to offer.

Which instrument brings you the most joy to play—guitar, mandolin or bass? —Kevin Spacinger
Mandolin and guitar. I don’t have the opportunity to play bass that much anymore.

Which Chris Hillman composition (written alone or with someone else) are you most proud of? —Sinclair Stevens
“Heaven’s Lullaby,” which was written with Steve Hill [from Like a Hurricane and At Edwards Barn].

Do you still own that blue Nudie suit from your Flying Burritos Brothers days? —Sully Mulvaney
No, I donated it to the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles.

You once said you felt the Desert Rose Band was the “highly evolved Flying Burrito Brothers.” What did you mean by that? —Gus Pepper
It was a great band whose members were all very professional, and our live shows had a 95-percent consistency level. I felt my “apprenticeship” ended when we formed the Desert Rose Band. I had learned how to sing and write with much more depth and, having learned from the best over the preceding years, I was able to take over the leadership position and lead the group to a successful eight-year run. It’s the longest time I had spent in one band.

How’s your relationship with former Byrds Roger McGuinn and David Crosby these days? —Gil Christof
I love them both. I see David more often than Roger, only because David lives a lot closer and Roger lives across the country. I was very blessed to be able to work with them, let alone be a part of an unbelievable band like the Byrds. Roger and David, along with the late Gene Clark, were such good singers, songwriters and musicians. I learned so much from all of them.

How did you choose “Blue Canadian Rockies,” one of the tracks you sing on Sweetheart of the Rodeo? —Annie Hallman
That’s an old Gene Autry song. I can’t remember where I first heard it. Great song.

I know Clarence White was LA-based. Is it safe to assume that the Sweetheart of the Rodeo tracks that feature him on guitar were recorded in LA, or did he overdub his parts onto the Sweetheart songs that were recorded in Nashville? —Damien Linotte
I think Clarence did all his recording on that record with us in LA.

What do you remember about the Flying Burrito Brothers’ high-energy performance of “Six Days on the Road” from The David Frost Show in 1971? —Cindy Moorhead
We just jumped into it “live” and it rocked out pretty good. Rick Roberts locked in the harmony with me. He was a good, solid singer.

Feel free to argue, but if you had to choose one Byrds album that best demonstrates Clarence White's electric-guitar prowess, it'd be Live at the Fillmore—February 1969. The musicians on the album are McGuinn on his 12-string Rickenbacker 360, Gene Parsons on drums, John York on bass and White on his B-Bender Tele. He never puts it down, so there's no escaping it.

The most impressive guitar track on the album is the band's cover of Buck Owens' killer-catchy instrumental, "Buckaroo," which finally exists on YouTube. White rips open his bag of B-bender licks—and never closes it. Even his mistakes sound good, like the random open G string he hits at :32. Play this one good and loud, people.

Guild Guitars has announced the release of the Chris Hillman Signature Byrds Bass, a tribute to the Byrds’ breakthrough success in the mid-1960s.

Faithful to the original Guild Starfire Bass used by Hillman on recordings like “Turn, Turn, Turn!,” “Eight Miles High” and “The Times They Are A-Changing,” this new “Byrds Bass” features a semi-hollow all-maple body, rosewood fingerboard, three-piece mahogany neck and single BS-1 BiSonic pickup.

“I didn’t think you needed two pickups for what I did, [and] I never thought you needed more than four strings,” Hillman said during a recent visit to Guild’s new California headquarters. The Guild Starfire was Hillman’s go-to bass for much of the mid-1960s due to its “ease of playing,” he said.

Chris Middaugh, a former associate at Guild, had begun the initial concept of the reissue as a Guild Starfire I Bass, but the project changed course with the involvement of two key players in Hillman’s circle. Tracy Longo, longtime luthier to Hillman, assisted as a liaison to the factory. John Jorgenson, a former bandmate and frequent collaborator of Hillman’s, was integral to the engineering and refinement of the instrument's custom tone circuit.

Another feature that was integral to Hillman’s sound was the use of flatwound strings, which were the industry standard at the time, and remain Hillman’s preferred choice for their mellow, smooth tone. The Byrds Bass features the Byrds’ logo inlaid in the 12th fret, Hillman’s signature on the truss rod cover, and a vintage sunburst finish that matches his original. Every bass includes a hardshell case, and a numbered certificate of authenticity personally signed by Chris Hillman.

“I loved playing the stuff we did in the Byrds,” Hillman said. “It was a good band. I was lucky to be in it.”

Street Price: $1,499.99

For more information on this bass, visit its page at guildguitars.com.