(Jawbone Press)

www.jawbonepress.com

The details are largely the nagging and niggling devil in this Byrds book, making it a decidedly mixed bag and a tough call. But at the center of it all is a story as dramatic and scenic as any in rock 'n' roll. Folkies coalesce to go electric and rock, match The Beatles in their heyday, and boost and parallel Dylan in creating folk-rock; then they start to splinter, help pioneer psychedelia, splinter more, and all but invent country-rock (these days called alt-country, for reasons this writer has yet to fathom).

They rise to fame through both the Hollywood record game and the L.A. kids who set the beat on the street, less a naturally grown band and more a concept/construct. Quite winning in the clubs, it's said, but too often shaky after they rise to concert tours until pivotal Byrd Roger McGuinn brings their live flights into consistently smooth wing at the tail end of their apogee. And on record, at their best - most often early on but with chimes of freedom and breathtaking brilliance flashing throughout - create some of the most beautiful, durable and utterly thrilling/soul-stirring popular music ever made. A hit band and an underground pulse for not just its day but all time.

But do you really care where they were on, say. April 7, 1969? (Playing Oshkosh High. So?) Some obsessive types do - witness how every minute if not fart of the Fab Four is found in a not-so-small library of Beatles book - and oh yeah, if that's your scene, every little detail, this one's for you, bud. The author gets wrong the college they played in my hometown - it was the community college, not the state one; when you assume you make... actually, you make small errors that make thinkers wonder if there's bigger ones. And who really needs entries like, "The Byrds play an undocumented concert in the vicinity of New York" (12/11/65). I mean, really....

But then again, being compleat, as it were, this coffee table-style paperback with lots of great pics (almost worth the price of admission alone) and value added content does draw from all the previous Byrds books and related works to really deliver the full story. And it's a no argument classic musical, personal, cultural and music career and business tale, as the title from the Byrds song rightly alludes. Plus, it's one as vivid as any of such peers as the Beatles, Stones, Who and others whose stories have threaded their way into more general mythology. And music to match those just cited and many more in its fineness, emotional resonance and influence - just McGuinn's (actually and metaphorically) electrified Rickenbacker 12-string alone is a thing of glorious wonder.

But, goldurn it, this reader prefers a thread to a patchwork of not-so-relevant to the heart-of-the-matter stuff that makes me skim, skip, and finally get a wee bit irked at having to sweat the small stuff to get to the larger and deeper matters that are, well, what matter, y'know? That said, you should read about The Byrds (assuming by the fact that you've read this far that you care about rock with some passion), and listen to them, or listen again. Or in my case listen more than again after forty years of listening and be as moved as ever.

Yeah, lifelong devoted fan here. But one who says spare me the mundane details but give me the dirty and germane ones. It's all here, as much as maybe can be known about The Byrds as well as what should be known. So it's as good a place as any to take flight or soar again into the musical stratosphere of the musical greatness that was The Byrds. ROB PATTERSON