Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Getting to Dave's question about folk-rock vocals, really it's hard to
say what a folk-rock vocal is and isn't. But I'll put forth a few
general characteristics that I've heard in many though by no means all
folk-rock vocals.

First, when we're talking about folk-rock vocals, we're also talking
about two different kinds of vocals: leads and harmonies. Starting with
the Byrds as a useful central point, I think the best folk-rock
harmonies yielded rich blends and overtones in which individual parts
that wouldn't have been so striking on their own combined into a very
pleasing whole. That's true of a lot of pop vocal styles, of course,
like doo wop as one example. Folk-rock harmonies, though, seemed to
have a more bittersweet, yearning, densely choral quality than other
pop-rock vocal harmony styles. There was a big influence from the
Beatles/British Invasion harmonies in groups like the Byrds and Buffalo
Springfield, of course, but there was a certain heart-on-the-sleeve
troubadour quality to folk-rock harmonies that was different. This is
not to say that the harmonies of Byrds-like groups were better or more
sincere than, say, those of the Beatles, who were at least as good and
emotional in their harmony arrangements. But it was a different mix,
and one that lent itself very well to layers of different voices.

I also think it's true that folk-rock harmonies allowed singers that
wouldn't have been that great as solo vocalists to blend in ways that
might them really shine. The Byrds, again, are a great example. As I
wrote in the book, if the individual Byrds had tried to make it as solo
artists (which in fact they sometimes performed as in their pre-rock
folk days), they would have been at a disadvantage, commercially and in
some senses artistically. Roger McGuinn's voice, though I love it, was
too reedy for commercial success, pre-1965 anyway. David Crosby is a
great high harmony singer, but lacked optimum fullness and power as a
lead vocalist, in my opinion. Gene Clark has a sobbing quality that's
very fetching, yet has a little too much vibrato to carry an entire
repertoire. Put them into various harmonic combinations, though, and
they sound magnificent. I think this is also true, in a different way,
of the Mamas and the Papas, none of whom I'm enamored of as a lead
singer, but who interacted great with each other, whether doing unison
harmonies or counterpointing off a nominal lead vocalist. Simon &
Garfunkel were also very good at bringing out the best in each other; I
never think of Art Garunkel as a great lead singer, but his high parts
on the S&G records do a great deal to add to their quality and
importance.

As discussed a little earlier in this topic, there were also great
male-female harmonies/lead tradeoffs in several important folk-rock
groups. Ian & Sylvia did much to pave the way for this, and the We Five
were a little underrated in helping bring it to a mass audience with
"You Were on My Mind" (a cover of an Ian & Sylvia song). It was best
realized, though, by the Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas & the Papas,
Richard & Mimi Farina, and in England, Fairport Convention. Also worthy
of note is Blackburn & Snow, referred to earlier in the topic, who
only released a couple of singles but had a very interesting duo blend
(20 of their recordings from the era are now available on the
"Something Good for Your Head" CD). As Sherry Snow (now known as
Halimah Collingwood) told me, "Because of the kind of melodies that
[Jeff Blackburn] wrote, I could hear all this harmony everywhere. It's
much more dissonant than, I think, any of the other groups. I liked to
stretch notes, so I was stretching the sound, going up and coming back,
dissonant and then resolving it. The harmonics, when you get those
sounds so close together, they create all these overtones and
undertones. That's what I was always listening for, that kind of
resonating energy."

For lead vocals, I think folk-rock gave artists whose voices were
higher on character than conventional prettiness a license to enter the
pop market. Bob Dylan gets the lion's share of credit for this, but
I'm also thinking here of Neil Young, Stephen Stills (though Stills has
a more conventionally attractive voice than Young's), John Sebastian,
Phil Ochs, Richie Havens, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Melanie. In a less
critically respected mode, it also opened a door for gravelly singers
-- Barry McGuire, Sonny Bono, even Tim Rose -- who might have been
dismissed as barely or unable to carry a tune. For those that *did*
have more conventionally pretty voices -- Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell,
Jesse Colin Young, Richie Furay, Iain Matthews, Donovan, and Sandy
Denny are some examples -- folk-rock gave them the license to be more
personally expressive and idiosyncratic, whether they did or didn't
write their own material, than pop singers often were. This didn't have
to always be in rough gutsiness, as Dylan often mined. It could also
be in an inimitable gentle yet quirky phrasing and cadence, which I
think Donovan at his best excelled at.

It's hard to say what does or doesn't separate a folk-rock vocal from
a pop-rock or blues-rock approach, particularly since pop and blues
often spilled over into folk-rock vocals as slight-to-strong
influences. I think it might get on the verge of overanalysis to try
and break it down like that. Dylan was obviously extremely influenced
by blues singing, for instance; the Mamas & the Papas had quite a bit
of jazz and pop influences to their vocals, as filtered through '50s
groups like the Hi-Los.

But I think it's true that even at its most electric and wildest, you
could often hear echoes of the coffeehouse roots of solo and harmony
folk-rock vocals, from the times when these performers were trying to
be young galloping harmonizing troubadours and/or rending their hearts
by singing over a solitary acoustic guitar. In that sense, a frequent
ingredient of folk-rock vocals is the mimicking of an intense and
intimate communication with a small, attentive audience -- the
difference being that folk-rock and commercial recording expanded that
audience exponentially, beyond the wildest dreams the performers had
entertained when they began their professional careers.
  

    
What a great analysis, Richie. Thanks. Folk-rock certainly opened the
door for singers with unique vocal characteristics. Thankfully,
producers such as Paul Rothchild, Terry Melcher, Tom Wilson, and
others, knew how to work with artists in the recording studio and
enhance rather than bury the distinctive natures of their voices. What
'60s folk-rock recordings come to mind where a producer did not succeed
in capturing the artists' vocal strengths, instead using, for example,
excessive over-dubs or ill-advised arrangements?
  

    

> Sherry Snow (now known as
>  Halimah Collingwood) 

Richie: is that another Subud name change? 
  

    
oh no! richie ran out of words!!
  

    
Before I get to Dave's question about producers: yes, Sherry Snow's
name change to Halimah was sparked by her involvement with the Subud
spiritual organization.

The most famous name change of those in Subud was of Roger McGuinn,
from Jim McGuinn (as he was known prior to 1967) to Roger McGuinn. It's
funny, he's been Roger McGuinn so long that it's never been necessary
for me to clarify that he was once known as Jim McGuinn -- in writing
about his pre-1967 work (which of course I did extensively in my book),
I always referred to him as Roger McGuinn, noting in one or two places
that he'd changed his name shortly into his career as a Byrd.

When Halimah was Sherry Snow, she was friendly with the Byrds, and had
lived in a semi-communal house with David Crosby, Paul Kantner, and
David Freiberg in Venice, California before the Byrds, Jefferson
Airplane, or Quicksilver Messenger Service had formed.
  

    
No, I didn't run out of words; I had to go out and get some food. You
can't get rid of me that easily...

That's a pretty interesting question, which folk-rock records and
artists were *worst* served by production. Generally, though not
always, folk-rock artists were less pliable than many of the popular
musicians of other styles, and than much of the previous generations
that had recorded. There weren't really that many egregious instances
of a good artist and material getting ruined by ill-suited production.

Here, though, are some interesting less-than-optimum matches to
ponder.

Phil Ochs's late-1960s albums for A&M are the source of considerable
controversy and varied opinion among his fans. He went from folk not
just to folk-rock, but often to quite extravagant orchestral
arrangements. Personally, I feel that the highs of such experiments
were extremely high, and the lows low, in an unintentional reflection
of Ochs's own struggle with manic depression. For instance, I think the
western saloon-like arrangement of his "Outside of a Small Circle of
Friends" is perfect, a great counterpoint to a deadpan ironic lyric. I
also really like the lounge-soundtrack-type arrangement of his "The
Party," an almost cinematic narrative of a high-society party, and the
jaunty patriotic rhythms of "The War Is Over," which again are a
striking counterpoint to the decidedly non-pro-war sentiments of the
lyric. But there are several tracks on his first two A&M albums
("Pleasures of the Harbor" and "Tape from California") that have flat
L.A. session rock backing. Worse, there are some tracks where the
mock-baroque-rococo orchestration really grates on me, like the endless
"When in Rome." And Joseph Byrd's arrangement of "The Crucifixion,"
which wound agonizing musique concrete-like effects throughout the
track, seem to be disliked by the vast majority of Ochs's fans. (Joseph
Byrd would become leader of the United States of America, who did a
fine 1968 album of psychedelic rock with futuristic electronics; their
story is a chapter in my book "Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll".)
Fortunately, an acoustic version of the track is available on the
posthumous Ochs release "There & Now: Live in Vancouver, 1968."

Ian & Sylvia's first folk-rock albums were kind of awkward and
inconsistent, not so much in that a producer was overlaying things on
them against their resistance, but because the duo themselves were a
little uncomfortable with expanding their arrangements. Rick Turner,
who was an accompanist to Ian & Sylvia around this time, told me:
"I think some of it has to do with the issue of giving up control of
the sound of the music to other people. And perhaps, with the exception
of Felix [Pappalardi], not having collaborators who had a clear
appreciation of their talent, their sound, and where they were coming
from. There was a sort of cookie-cutter-stamped overlay that happened
on top of their music.

"I think there might have been an awkwardness. Ian [Tyson] liked to be
in charge, and had pretty good instincts with the smaller ensemble
stuff. And I think when it got to that point where you're having to
hire arrangers, and  you've got a studio full of studio players, violin
players who were playing poker in between takes, literally, that was
the attitude of the New York studio guys. For them, it was just another
call. And that was not the case for Ian nor Sylvia. They were trying
to differentiate from Peter, Paul & Mary. Who were so successful.
Personally, I probably would have preferred to see them add a dobro
player, add a mandolin player, something like that. Maybe not quite
take it into full-blown bluegrass, but keep it a little on the acoustic
folky side. But expand instrumentation a little bit. That could have
been amazing."

There was also the peculiar sub-genre of old acoustic tapes, sometimes
never intended for release, getting overdubbed with electric
instruments without the artist's knowledge or permission in the early
days of folk-rock. In one famous case, this worked spectacularly: Tom
Wilson overdubbed electric instruments onto Simon & Garfunkel's
acoustic version of "The Sounds of Silence" (which had already been
officially released on their first LP), apparently with the permission
of Garfunkel at least (Simon was away in England working on a solo
career), and got a great #1 hit that launched their career.

But in other cases, the results were rather gruesome or at least
severely disrespectful of the artist's integrity. Verve/Folkways' "The
Elusive Bob Lind" overdubbed parts that were woefully out of sync with
Lind's voice and guitar, and did *not* contain his hit single "Elusive
Butterfly" despite the title. Lind had this to say about it to me:
"It's unconscionable what they did. It was just such a piece of shit
that I just cringe every time I see it." After Richie Havens's first LP
came out (on Verve, as it happens), producer Alan Douglas overdubbed
old Havens demos, mostly of traditional folk songs, with a full
electric band accompaniment that was sometimes out of sync. Douglas
went on to cause enormous controversy with his insensitive handling of
posthumous Jimi Hendrix releases, some of which also featured overdubs
many feel to be inappropriate.

There was also the unusual instance of Eric Andersen's "'Bout Changes
& Things" album getting released again as "'Bout Changes & Things Take
Two," with the same songs, but in electric versions. Andersen told me,
"The original album hadn't been released in Europe, so they were gonna
release this one instead. Then it got released everywhere, and it got
totally confusing. They just got greedy. They thought they could make
money."

There's another interesting sub-genre of approaches that the artists
virtually disowned, even if the records were sometimes good. Arlo
Guthrie was very unhappy that his second album, "Arlo," was recorded
live, because he really wanted to work on a studio record. In our
interview, he remembered being (falsely) told that the studio tapes he
was working on had been erased because Haley's comet had passed
overhead! Then he was told an album had to come out in two weeks and
there was no alternative but to record live at New York's Bitter End,
and he wasn't happy with the shows that were recorded and used for
release. In fact he recorded his next album in Los Angeles to get away
from the management/producer pressure that had led to the second album
being rush-recorded in that way.

Joan Baez was working on a rock album produced by Richard Farina that
was going to include songs by Bacharach-David, Lennon-McCartney,
Farina, and Paul Simon. Some of those songs did come out (Farina's
"Pack Up Your Sorrows" was a Baez single), but Baez scrapped the album
herself after Farina's death. She told Sunday Ramparts at the time, "I
listened to all the tapes for two or three months. They just didn't
make me happy. I read something Gandhi wrote, something I was thinking,
about how art should elevate the spirit. That decided me. It's hard to
tell what's going to make me feel good. Good rock'n'roll at its best
makes me feel good, but there is a whole other level of being which
rock doesn't come close to. That involves eliminating, not adding to,
what's in your head."

Tim Hardin totally ragged on the production of "Tim Hardin 2," his
second album, saying that strings were overdubbed without his
permission. Actually I think the string arrangements were understated
and enhanced the material rather than diluting it. Producer Erik
Jacobsen told me, "He knew all about that. He never came to me and
said, 'I don't want you to put those on.' He liked those things, as far
as I knew. [It made] a nice musical effect. They were kind of
classy-sounding songs, they had the beautiful chords, and the strings
sounded great on them. And they were sentimental songs, very
sentimental. I don't doubt that later on he was high and said, 'I never
should have put the fucking strings on.'"

Also on Verve, Nico was very unhappy with the production of "Chelsea
Girl," once commenting, "I cried because of the flute...There should be
a button on record players, a 'No Flute' button." Actually I liked
this album (produced by Tom Wilson) very much, baroque-folk
orchestration and all. Nico's thought of more as a goth-rock singer or
for her songs on the first Velvet Underground album, but "Chelsea Girl"
is almost avant-folk-rock (though there are no drums), with obscure
songs by a teenage Jackson Browne, Tim Hardin, Lou Reed, and John Cale.

As far as other inappropriately produced folk-rock...hmmm. Some people
really like the folk-rockish albums Bobby Darin did around the time he
had a hit with Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter," and though that
single's okay, I really don't like the albums, which sound gloppily
over-arranged and turgid to me. John Stewart apparently doesn't like
his first solo album, "Signals Through the Glass" (co-credited to
additional vocalist and Stewart's wife, Buffy Ford). It was arranged
and conducted by John Andrew Tartaglia, known for jingles, soundtracks,
and his work with the easy listening Mystic Moods Orchestra. Actually,
though, I kind of like the arrangements; I think it makes it sound
more interesting than the songs would have with bare-bones
acoustic-oriented ones.

The Beau Brummels were forced to record an entire album of Top 40
covers in 1966, right after their contract was bought by Warner
Brothers. This was one of the most bone-headed record company moves of
the entire 1960s, considering that the group's strongest assets were
their Ron Elliott-penned originals. Warners did rectify this to some
degree by giving the group their artistic control back for two
subsequent respectable albums, "Triangle" and "Bradley's Barn."

I don't know whether the singer or the label was more responsible, but
Buffy Sainte-Marie made some failed folk-rock tracks, particularly
1967's "Hey, Little Bird," which has some unbelievable (deliberate?)
off-keyisms in the orchestration, which seems more suited for 
incidental cartoon soundtrack music than an adult rock record. I'm a
Buffy Sainte-Marie fan, but I found this track in particular
excruciating.

Others...Al Stewart's first album seems like a British attempt to
mimic some of Judy Collins's baroque-folk settings, but it sounds so
stiff and stuff-shirted. Judy Henske, as mentioned a few posts back,
did some albums for Mercury and Reprise in which it sounds like they
were trying too hard to make her a nightclub singer in spots.

Mary Hopkin actually started as a folk singer, doing some obscure EPs
of Welsh folk songs before signing with Apple and getting a huge #1 hit
with "Those Were the Days." She actually much preferred folk or at
least folk-pop songs to the pop songs that gave her the most success;
she did a number of Donovan covers, and put "Turn! Turn! Turn!" on the
flipside of "Those Were the Days" (thus probably earning Pete Seeger as
many royalties as the Byrds' #1 cover had). Her final Apple album in
the early 1970s, "Earth Music," had instumental support from respected
British folk-rock figures Ralph McTell, Dave Cousins, Danny Thompson,
and David Bowie producer (and, for a while, Hopkin's husband) Tony
Visconti. Paul McCartney and others involved in her records steered her
in more of a pop direction than she might have chosen on her own.
  

    
<As one who will always remember him as Jim, I'm really glad you 
explained the McGuinn name change. My pals who spent their lives
hanging out on Sunset insisted that he actually changed it to
Roger Wilco Over-and-Out McGuinn, but I don't know how closely they
checked their sources.>
  

    
Here's a little more about the Jim-Roger McGuinn name change and his
involvement with Subud, for the curious. This information is taken from
Johnny Rogan's exhaustive Byrds biography, "The Byrds: Timeless Flight
Revisited: The Sequel."

McGuinn was actually initiated into Subud on January 10, 1965, ten
days before the Byrds recorded "Mr. Tambourine Man," and about a couple
of years before he changed his name. McGuinn told Hit Parader in
September 1968, "When we [he and his then-wife Dolores] had our son I
named him James IV. Then we decided to send to Indonesia to find out
what his real name was, and it came back Patrick McGuinn. I thought,
'Wow, what a groovy name. That's a better name than I would have
thought of.' So I was curious to see what mine was, and my wife and I
both sent for our names. We got them, and she was Ianthe and I was
Roger...you get a letter back that suggests the first letter of your
name and suggests that you make up 10 names that you might like to
have. So I made up weirfd names like Retro and Rex and others. I put
down nine ridiculous ones and Roger, sort of picking my own. I liked it
because it was airplane talk, you know, 'Roger.' It had a very right,
positive sound."

The "Roger Wilco Over-and-Out McGuinn" name might not have ever been
used by McGuinn, but it fits in well with his general love of gadgetry,
science, and aeronautics. Around this time he told Flip magazine that
his ambition was to plug his Rickenbacker 12-string into a color TV and
watch the patterns change, and he demonstrated his voice-activated
one-foot home robot for one inquisitive reporter. Back in 1965, when an
NME writer had asked about a slide rule in McGuinn's jacket pocket, he
responded "I always carry it, just in case."

McGuinn has not been involved with Subud for several decades now, but
retained the name Roger.
  

    
Speaking of McGuinn, I was fascinated by a quote from him in "Turn!
Turn! Turn!." Referring to Sonny & Cher's cover of Dylan's "All I
Really Want to Do" being released before the Byrds' version, McGuinn
said: "What really got to me most was Dylan coming up to me and saying,
'They beat you, man,' and he lost faith in me. He was shattered. His
material had been bastardized. There we were, the defenders and
protectors of his music, and we'd let Sonny & Cher get away with it." 

I must admit I didn't think Sonny & Cher's version of "All I Really
Want to Do" was that horrible, and am surprised Dylan was that upset
(since he would reap the publishing rewards). Do you think Dylan saw
the Byrds as "the defenders and protectors of his music?" 
  

    
I think a lot of what Dylan says and does has to be taken with a grain
of salt. As I noted in "Turn! Turn! Turn!," Sonny Bono had been
inspired to arrange "All I Really Want to Do" for Cher after seeing the
Byrds do it live. It seems kind of ridiculous for Dylan to blame the
Byrds for someone else taking their arrangement and for Cher
outperforming the Byrds' single in the marketplace. It wasn't like the
Byrds and Cher were setting out to compete with each other with the
single; the Byrds recorded it as an album track for their first album,
"Mr. Tambourine Man," and Columbia rushed it out as a single when they
got wind that Cher was doing it on a single of her own.

In Cher's autobiography, she said Dylan complimented her on her
version of "All I Really Want to Do." So it seems like Dylan was
playing some mind games, games that some of his fans seem to find a lot
more entertaining and amusing than I do.

But as to the larger question of whether Dylan saw the Byrds as "the
defenders and protectors of his music," I think he admired the Byrds
but was guarded about making his admiration too public. In a December
1965 press conference in San Francisco, he named Manfred Mann as his
favorite interpreters of his material, which some aficionados have
taken as a dig against the Byrds, since surely everyone was expecting
him to name the Byrds as his favorite interpreters. (At that point
Manfred Mann had only even done two Dylan covers, "With God on Our
Side" and "If You Gotta Go, Go Now," though those were very good.) It's
hard to know without asking Dylan (and I didn't have the opportunity
to do so), and even if you asked Dylan you might well not get a
straight answer. But I think he simultaneously appreciated what the
Byrds had done for him and music in general by breaking his songs into
a wider pop marketplace and making room for Dylan himself to enter that
wider pop marketplace with his own recordings. At the same time,
perhaps he was a little envious or jealous that the Byrds had gotten
there first (if only by a little) and had prettied up his songs in ways
that he couldn't do himself, getting people to hear those songs, but
first in other versions than his own.

In a now-obscure 1973 book called simply "Rock" by Mike Jahn, McGuinn
had this to say about the Byrds' influence on Dylan: "I think he got
his inspiration from us. We had taken one of his songs and done it
without sacrificing too much of the aesthetic value, and this confirmed
his suspicions that rock was possible for him." Mike Bloomfield, who
played on Dylan's 1965 album "Highway 61 Revisited," once said Dylan
"had heard records by the Byrds that knocked him out. He wanted me to
play like McGuinn. That's what he was shooting for. It was even
discussed...the Byrds' sound was what he wanted to get in his
sessions."

Just to keep everyone on their toes, McGuinn told Byrds biographer
Johnny Rogan that "It was 'Lay Down Your Weary Tune' that finally
convinced Dylan that we were really something. [The Byrds covered that
Dylan song on their second album; they'd already done a bunch of Dylan
songs on their first album that had met with great success, including
"Mr. Tambourine Man" and "All I Really Want to Do."] I was at this
apartment in New York and Dylan came up to me and said, 'Up until I
heard this I thought you were just another imitator and didn't like
what you were doing. But this has got real feeling to it.' That was the
first time he'd realized that I could do something different with his
material."
  

    

I remember an interview with David Crosby (possibly the one in Rolling
Stone in late '70 or thereabouts) in which he expressed disenchantment
with some of the Byrds' Dylan covers later in his tenure in the band --
he felt they took on a formulaic quality -- like, "the obligatory Dylan
song" -- and he rebelled against playing them, while lobbying for more
adventurous original material. I don't remember exactly which songs he
was referring to, though.

Croz also used to tell a great story about the Byrds, before they hit it
big, playing some place with topless go-go dancers, and how distracting
it was to have to sing "...we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing"
while gazing upon the boobs of freedom bouncing!
  

    
Boy, Gary, it's tough to find a neat sequeway from that great Croz
story. So I won't even try!  

Richie, looking at key live concerts that occurred during the early
rumblings of folk-rock and the eventual boom, what role did the live
setting play in the growth of the genre? Also, you devote quite a bit
of text to Dylan's famous Newpart appearance (providing an excellent
series of views from all corners about reaction to his "going
electric"), but I'm wondering if this particular concert appearance was
really that pivotal to folk-rock as a coming sound or if Newport was
more of a public turning point specific to Dylan's career?   
  

    
From Antonio:

Richie, during your impressive comments about the vocal presence in the 
folk-rock, I think you forgot to say something about two capital singers 
: 
Fred Neil and Tim Buckley.

By the way, as both of them, besides, were two special 12 string acoustic
guitar players that enjoyed to play those raga excursions -Neil with the
Seventh Sons live and some Capitol albums sections and Buckley in some
songs through his 1967-1969 period career ("I Never Asked To Be Your
Mountain", "Who Do You Love" (the medley from Dream Letter Live In
London), might you tell us how do you think that could born that
eastern-like sound (ie.  Richard & Mimi Fariña, Sandy Bull, Richie
Havens, The Seventh Sons, Neil, Buckley) in the middle of folk music.
  

    
The last chapter of "Eight Miles High," my sequel to "Turn! Turn!
Turn!," looks at how the live presentation of folk-rock changed over
the last half of the 1960s, and how it affected popular music concerts
in general. That's not exactly the same as discussing what role the
live setting played in the growth of folk-rock itself, but it touches
on some of those issues.

It might come as a surprise to some listeners, but I kind of think
that there was more innovation in folk-rock in the studio than outside
of the studio. This was because many performers, particularly solo
ones, who went from folk to electric rock continued to tour with sparer
arrangements, or sometimes even continue to play acoustic although
their records were electric folk-rock. Part of this was economics; it
was hard, or at least much more expensive, to have a touring band than
it was to play with just your guitar, or maybe just your guitar and one
or two accompanists on guitar and bass. Simon & Garfunkel,
surprisingly, usually played acoustic in concert (they certainly could
have afforded to take a band or even an orchestra on the road if they
had wanted to). Other noted folk-rock acts, like the Mamas & the Papas,
didn't play much live and really sounded better on records than on
stage, if the footage I've seen of the Mamas & the Papas is an accurate
indication. The Byrds spent months and months honing their sound by
taping their rehearsals in a studio before they played live.

But as with many rock bands of different styles and eras, live gigging
was often important to both building a sound and repertoire, and
cultivating a following. Although the Byrds did not have a good
reputation as a live band circa 1966-67, their residency at Ciro's on
Sunset Strip in early 1965 was immensely important to building a
grassroots following in L.A. before "Mr. Tambourine Man" was released,
and indeed in helping to start the whole hippie counterculture.
Everyone I talked to who saw them then was ecstatic in remembering
those early performances; it was kind of like talking to people who'd
seen the Beatles at the Cavern in Liverpool around 1962-63. Ditto, to a
lesser extent, when the Lovin' Spoonful's residency at the Night Owl
Cafe in Greenwich Village is recalled.

Generally, the live setting was important in that it helped musicians
get acclimated to playing instruments that were far louder (in most
cases) than the ones they were used to. One of the things that
surprised me the most in my research (and which I forgot to note in an
earlier question about what surprised me the most) were eyewitness
accounts of just how loud the Byrds were at Ciro's in early 1965. Kenny
Edwards (later of the Stone Poneys with Linda Ronstadt) told me, "I
remember going into Ciro's and it was, like, deafening in there. But it
was so good that it wasn't irritating. I remember being disappointed
when I heard their records, actually. The production sound ... they'd
sound more like the Lettermen or the Beach Boys. It was all very air
conditioner-smooth. It didn't have nearly the grinding sort of
Zeppelin-esque power that they had really displayed when I heard 'em
live. There was more of the heavy-metal quality to what they were doing
than probably anybody thought at the time, than you might think by
listening to the records. 'Turn! Turn! Turn!,' you crank it up loud,
and you get a sense of some of that. Their first record was a lot
smoother?sounding than their subsequent records."

Jim Pons of the Leaves confirmed,"And the music was loud. Ciro's was a
large club, the amplifiers were a very visible and integral part of
the experience, and they were turned up all the way. The Byrds weren't
always musically precise with the playing of their songs, but they
generated a wall of noise which seemed to kind of envelop you and add
to the experience."

It's also sometimes forgotten that Bob Dylan's 1966 world tour with
the Hawks (later to become the Band) were extremely loud; some people
think they were the loudest rock band in the world at that time. In
fact, some people who were at his British concerts that year maintain
that some of the dissatisfaction among some of the crowd was not wholly
due to anger over his having gone rock per se, but because it was so
loud (and the sound systems of the era so unable to process it) that it
was hard to understand the words and even difficult to listen to
because of the extreme volume.

As far as the transition of folk-rock to psychedelia in many cases,
this was directly motivated in part by the need to accommodate to
changing venues that were holding bigger, louder, and more drugged-out
audiences than coffeehouses could hold. Barry Melton of Country Joe &
the Fish told me, "If I had stepped on that stage in 1967 and tried to
play acoustic guitar, you wouldn't have hardly been able to hear it.
The sound system just couldn't deal with it. So the only way you were
going to impress anybody is to have a stack of amplifiers, and then you
could make the place rock. The only way that you could propel music to
a really big crowd, in the '60s, was with amplified music."

I think because San Francisco folk-rock and psychedelia started just a
bit later than folk-rock had in L.A. and New York, those bands were a
little better equipped to get good quickly on electric instruments,
because it wasn't quite as much a novelty as it had been a year or so
before, and because good venues were sprouting that were drawing crowds
very sympathetic to the kind of music they were playing.

Of course Dylan's first electric shows in 1965-66 remain legendary
and, at least at the time, extremely controversial, because they were
greeted with both extreme enthusiasm and extreme hostility. It seems,
though, that no one else had to deal so much with the issue of
alienating purist folkies who wanted the performerto remain an acoustic
topical folk singer, because there were already so many expectations
and so much idolatry thrust upon Dylan before he went electric. As
noted earlier in the topic, Tom Rush, for instance, didn't recall
people being pissed off when he went electric, which I believe applied
to both his records and his live shows.

It's also interesting to consider how folk-rock changed live rock and
pop music in general, particularly in helping to innovate and
popularize the rock festival format. The Newport Folk Festival is
sometimes thought of as a bastion of purist resistance to electric
folk-rock music because of the whole controversy about Dylan getting
booed by some of the audience when he played his electric set there in
1965. In fact, however, the Newport Folk Festival (and other
early-to-mid-1960s folk festivals) were forerunners of the late-1960s
rock festivals, like Monterey, Woodstock, and the Isle of Wight, in
their countercultural orientation and mass youth gatherings. And the
Newport Folk Festival did not became more resistant to rock after the
Dylan blowup; to the contrary, it steadily integrated more and more
folk-rock and electric performers in the last half of the 1960s. The
Lovin' Spoonful played there in 1966, and by 1968 Big Brother & the
Holding Company with Janis Joplin even played.

The multi-day, large-lineup, outdoor hip music format of festivals
like Newport was an important model for Monterey and Woodstock. The
difference being, of course, that Monterey and Woodstock were very
rock-oriented, and had some real loud bands that had nothing to do with
folk music. But if you look at the rosters of Monterey, Woodstock, and
Isle of Wight, about half of the performers were folk-rockers or
notably folk-rock-influenced -- which, in turn, means that many of them
started out as folk musicians, often playing or at least attending
folk festivals. John Sebastian even said at Woodstock (it's in the
film), "This is really a mindfucker of all time, man. I've never seen
anything like this, man. I mean, you know, like, there's Newport,
right? But they owned it! It was something else."

Another difference, of course, was that whereas when Dylan plugged in
at Newport in 1965 it was the apex of controversy, at rock festivals
like Monterey/Woodstock, it was no big deal to mix folk-rock or even
folk-rockers playing acoustic sets with louder-than-God acts like the
Who and Hendrix. The differences between musics were no longer barriers
to regiment hip authentic and crass commercial styles from each other;
diversity was to be encouraged and celebrated. I think this is one of
folk-rock's subtle legacies: that by breaking the barrier between folk
and rock and mixing the two, popular musicians felt comfortable mixing
many styles, whether within their music or in the performers they
shared stages with, without worrying about being elite or commercial or
pure jazz or pure blues or pure folk or whatever. In that sense, it
affects music up to the present that's not explicitly folk-rock,
whether it's Peter Gabriel drawing from world music or Miles Davis
pioneering fusion or whatever.

Another overlooked contribution folk-rock made to live music is in
general making the live rock club and concert circuit more intelligent
and adult-oriented. Many of the first hip rock clubs were an outgrowth
of the kind of bohemian aesthetic you would find at folk clubs or
coffeehouses. Some of them had *been* folk clubs or coffeehouses. The
editor of the folk magazine Sing Out!, Irwin Silber, wrote as early as 
July 1966, "More than half the coffeehouses that featured folk singing
less than two years ago are now strictly rock and roll or Folk Rock."
In a Billboard article headlined "Record Companies Battling for
Underground Artists" three months later, Verve Records executive Jerry
Schoenbaum was asked to comment on the scene that had spawned the Fugs,
Paul Butterfield, the Blues Project, Mothers of Invention, and the
Velvet Underground. Schoenbaum observed, "You could refer to it as the
coffeehouse underground. Because that's where these groups are
performing--the Poor Richard in Chicago, Le Cave in Cleveland, the
Unicorn in Boston, Cellar Door in Washington, the Village and Riverboat
in Toronto." He should have also added the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich
Village, which might not have been a coffeehouse, but was immensely
important as a hip club that put on early shows by early folk-rockers
like Richie Havens.

I'm going to answer Dave's question about Dylan in Newport in the
following post, since that might merit a few paragraphs on its own.
  

    
Dave asked if Dylan's celebrated electric rock set at the Newport Folk
Festival in 1965 "was really that pivotal to folk-rock as a coming
sound or if Newport was more of a public turning point specific to
Dylan's career?" When I discussed this concert at length in the
prologue to "Turn! Turn! Turn!," I took the view that it wasn't as
pivotal to the birth of folk-rock as has sometimes been reported. It
makes a great story, because it's like the ultimate faceoff between the
old era and the new one, with Dylan dividing his set into electric and
folk songs,  and the electric set getting met with a mixture of
hostile boos and enthusiastic cheers (the percentages of who was doing
what seem to vary according to who you talk to, and I talked with a
number of eyewitnesses to the event).

But in fact, folk-rock had already taken off by the time Dylan did
this set in late July 1965. The Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man" had already
made #1 and their first album had been released. Entering or about to
enter the charts werethe We Five's "You Were on My Mind," the Lovin'
Spoonful's "Do You Believe in Magic," and Barry McGuire's "Eve of
Destruction." More importantly, musicians -- dozens if not hundreds
besides Dylan -- had been experimenting with and sometimes recording
electric folk-rock in various forms for about a year and a half, almost
from the time the Beatles became popular in America at the beginning
of 1964. Albums by Fred Neil, Richard & Mimi Farina, the Fugs, the Beau
Brummels, and others exploring this fusion in various ways had already
been released or at least recorded in part.

Dylan himself, it should be added, had already recorded and released
half of an all-out rock album on the "electric" side of "Bringing It
All Back Home." And "Like a Rolling Stone" was entering the charts
right at the time he played Newport. It was really not so much the
unveiling of folk-rock, as it was part -- albeit a very interesting
part -- of a movement among hundreds of musicians that had just broken
through to the masses.

It should also be remembered that his concert at Newport was actually
*not* a big news event at the time, even in the music press. Much of
the Armageddon-like significance of it has, I believe, grown in
retrospect. Part of it was fanned by controversy/complaints over the
appearance in folk magazines like Broadside and Sing Out, though even
those didn't appear until months later, owing to long gaps between
events and reportage in those small-circulation periodicals.

But it *was* a big event in Dylan's own career, in combination with
his subsequent touring throughout the world doing half-electric
half-acoustic sets for the next year or so. Dylan had played some live
rock as a teenager, but this was the first time he'd played it live
after becoming a recording artist. There was also the shock value of
where he chose to do his first live electric set. If he'd chosen just
to do it as part of his regular commercial itinerary, in a place like
New York's Town Hall or something, it would have been noted but
wouldn't have been such a lightning rod for controversy. Instead he did
it at a place he had to have known would have greeted it with split
opinions, as kind of a statement that he was going to follow this new
direction no matter what. Possibly also he was thinking that it might
even create more attention for his new direction than it would have had
he done it at a conventional concert, though there's no way to know
without asking him.

Part of the mystique about Dylan at Newport, too, is that there are so
many varying and at times contradictory eyewitness reports of the same
event. I have a number of these from first-hand interviews in my book,
where I compare it to the film "Rashomon" in which four characters
give different, sometimes contradictory versions of the same murder.

Eric Andersen had this interesting comment about the significance of
Dylan's appearance at Newport (as opposed to just a comment about what
happened that day): "Bob had the biggest problem, because he went an
outrageous way--he went to a folk festival [Newport] and did this. He
pulled a stunt, it was a big impulse, and he got a reaction. He went up
in a polka dot shirt and said, 'I'm not standing for this anymore. I
can't stand this anymore.' And he did something else he wanted to do.
But I mean, it wasn't that far from what he was starting with."
  

    
"Turn! Turn! Turn!" concludes with a discussion of how Dylan's 1966
motorcycle accident and subsequent prolonged period of recuperation may
have impacted the evolution of folk-rock. Richie ponders the assertion
of fans and critics who place "mystical significance" on the event,
writing: "Without Dylan's leadership, such pundits opined, the rock
juggernaut began to fragment into scattered, more self-indulgent
pieces, without Dylan around to set the ultimate standard for which to
shoot." He further writes: "Whether due to Dylan's vanishing act or
not, the accident did also seem to mark the end of folk-rock's first
golden age." 

A question, Richie, is what groups do you feel made up the "scattered
self-indulgent pieces" the so-called pundits may have been referring
to? Or, if in fact, you even agree that this was the case.  

Also, what where some of the key, initial musical forces that sparked
new dimensions of folk-rock when Dylan was on the sidelines?
  

    
I'm going to back-track in this post to answer Antonio's question
about the eastern-like influences in folk-rock musicians like Richard &
Mimi Farina, Fred Neil, and Tim Buckley, which I couldn't quite get to
before going to sleep last night.

As I've noted here and there earlier in this topic, the strong
connection between folk-rock and psychedelic music is often overlooked.
Even before the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" and the early San Francisco
groups, there were eastern/world music/jazz/improvisational influences
creeping into the work of some early folk-rockers. Even in their days
on the folk circuit, they were apt to get some exposure to Third World
musicians, who were sometimes included in folk festivals, sometimes
played on the folk/coffeehouse/university circuit, and were often
recorded by folkloric labels. Carolyn Hester, noted early-'60s folk
singer and first wife of Richard Farina, for instance, met Ravi Shankar
way back in 1963 at the Edinburgh Folk Festival, long before he
started to make serious inroads into the pop-rock audience via his
influence on the Beatles. John Sebastian recalled to me playing African
hair drums and sitar on some 1964 recording experiments he did with
future Lovin' Spoonful producer Erik Jacobsen.

There was also an improvisational jazz/raga influence in the work of
some early folk-rock musicians like Tim Hardin and Fred Neil, even
before they made their most noted recordings. Tim Hardin recorded with
noted jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton on some of his earliest recording
sessions in 1964 (not issued at the time, but eventually released on
compilations). Fred Neil had a raga influence to some of his music as
early as his first mid-1960s Elektra album with Vince Martin, on the
track "Baby," and periodically revisited that form in his other
recordings, particularly on the "Sessions" album (much of which had an
improvisational feel to it).

Michael Ochs, brother/manager to Phil Ochs and now a top rock
archivist, captured this aeshetic in one of his recollections to me:
"One of the best musical things I've ever seen in my life, it would
have happened in early '67, was at the Night Owl cafe, Tim Hardin would
play there quite often. And he'd be playing electric guitar, and he'd
be probably stoned out of his mind. He'd go all night without even
opening his eyes. Him on electric guitar, and behind him would be
Freddie Neil on backup guitar, Peter Childs playing like a dobro or
something exotic, John Sebastian on harmonica. And they would just go
all over the place. They would do a Bo Diddley song, do one of his
songs, do one of Dylan's songs, and Hardin never even opened his eyes.
You just sat there and you'd be going Christ, this is everything I love
about music. It was like the best singing in the world, the best
playing. And Sebastian was a masterful harmonica player. And they were
just jamming. They had no idea where it was going to go next. And that
was like one of the best things I'd ever seen in my life. That's what
the Village was like. You never knew what you were going to run into."

Richard & Mimi Farina also captured some Latin and middle eastern
influences on some of their songs, particularly ones in which their was
extended interplay between Richard's dulcimer, Mimi's guitar, and
their accompanists. Richard Farina was of Cuban-Irish background, and
the Farinas' frequent accompanist, guitarist Bruce Langhorne,
speculated to me that "I think if Dick were alive today, he would be
doing just really super-cool salsa."

Sandy Bull, though not a folk-rock musician, made eastern-influenced
world fusion improvisations that I think were influential on some
folk-rockers' decisions to move into more psychedelic/improv/eastern
territory. He'd already influenced the Farinas inasmuch as Bruce
Langhorne borrowed a twin reverb amp from Bull for his recordings with
the Farinas. Barry Melton of Country Joe & the Fish speculated to me,
"If you listen to 'Eight Miles High,' [the] solo in there, that stuff
is close" to what Bull did.

So if I needed to answer Antonio's question in brief, I think the
middle eastern sound in folk was born from their greater exposure to
world music than most other popular musicians. The open-mindedness that
the birth of folk-rock encouraged in turn further encouraged the
admission of more influences than conventional folk and conventional
rock into folk-rock and other kinds of rock music. That's where you get
performers like Tim Buckley of a very slightly younger age, who
started as a pretty straightforward folk-rocker, but quickly
incorporated influences from Miles Davis-type jazz, avant-garde
improvisational jazz singers like Leon Thomas and Cathy Berberian, and
an Eastern-African fusion-like sound on "Hallucinations" (from his
second album). His sometime lyrical collaborator and close friend Larry
Beckett told me that song was sparked by an album with Moroccan street
music.
  

    
Not to mention middle-eastern influences in bands like the
Kaleidoscope and Devil's Anvil (early Pappalardi band). Seems there was
a lot of that going around. 
  

    
There were undoubtedly some talented instrumentalists experimenting with
"ragas" in the mid 60s (Sandy Bull adn the Butterfield band's East/West
experiments come immediatley to mind) but most of it, Neil and Buckley
included, was due to the fact that we could use the minor scale we'd just
learned without needing the harmonic sophistication of jazz, or the
extensive vocabulary and inflection of the blues.   Quite frankly, we were
learning to play while on stage.   I partidipated in one with Buckley, Steve
Noonan, and Bruce (whose last name excapes me) of the Dirt Band that went on
for 30 minutes.  Luckily for us, the house was almost empty.  But US folk
audiences at the time were pretty much unable to distinguish between
self-indulgent folkies and Ravi Shankar.   As we got better, we started
improvising over chord changes and life improved for everybody.

One of the big problems most acoustic musicans faced in learning electric
instruments was that much of what we'd already accomplished and were getting
strokes for on acoustic had to be discarded on electric.   Some did this
superbly (Garcia is a prime example. Electric set him free), and some stayed
in a limbo between.   I don't think Jorma ever fully acclimated to pure
electric guitar.   His best work is still on amplfied acoustic, which is not
the same thing.   Tom Rush's main man, Trevor Vietch, was a pure electric
player, using feedback, a light touch, compression, tape delay, etc.   Tom
remained an acoustic player.   Bruce Cockburn, a superb acoustic player,
made the switch easily.  Dino Valenti didn't.    David Lindley made it,
while Jackson didn't.   And in spite of bending Fender professionaly for 25
years, I'm still more comfortable wearing a dreadnaught.

So the game for the folkies was to find guys who could play electric
wherever they could.   Usually in some band that was pure rock.  In SF, the
holy grail was to find a guy who'd spent time in a "Las Vegas showband",
which is where Gary Duncan worked before being tapped by Quicksilver.
Duncan, Cipollina, and Elmore had no folk backgound at all.   The point I'm
trying to make is that many of the best players in folk rock bands had very
little folk in their backgrounds.   The Band became folk rock only after
exposure to Dylan.   I don't think you could call Butterfield folk rock at
all, but every time they played the Golden Bear, every folkie in Orange
County was there.
  

    
Going back to Dave's question about what happened to the folk-rock and
pop scene after Dylan's motorcycle accident, actually I don't share
the opinion that "the rock juggernaut began to fragment into scattered,
more self-indulgent pieces, without Dylan around to set the ultimate
standard for which to shoot." But fairly often, I see it written that
when rock headed into psychedelia in late 1966 and then throughout
1967, it was getting too prone to loud distorted guitars, aimless
jamming, and pretentious philosophizing lyrics. The California heavy
acid rock bands in general are thought of as culprits. I suppose those
would include the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, Quicksilver, the
Grateful Dead, the Doors, and somewhat more obscure ones like the
Electric Prunes (though that band did have a couple of hits). Also the
Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper," though still pretty highly esteemed by many
critics and listeners, is sometimes fingered as something that got rock
away from its basic strengths into pretentious ambitious concepts.

I also see it written fairly often that Dylan's "John Wesley Harding"
was the antidote to this self-indulgence, bringing rock back to earth
with a back-to-basics approach. That back-to-basics approach was then
followed by several leading rock acts in 1968: the Rolling Stones with
the bluesy "Beggars Banquet" (following their psychedelic "Satanic
Majesties"), the Beatles' "White Album," the Byrds going into
country-rock on "Sweetheart of the Rodeo," and even before "John Wesley
Harding," the Beach Boys retreating from the experimentalism of "Pet
Sounds" and the uncompleted "Smile" to "Wild Honey."

In general in my writing, I eschew simple reductions like this and
appreciate the shades of grey involved, even when there are some
truthful elements to such views. I think there's room for both good
basic earthy rootsy songwriting-oriented rock and experimental,
electronically textured psychedelia. I love many of the psychedelic
records of the time, including ones by the Beatles, Byrds, Airplane,
Stones, Big Brother, Quicksilver, Doors, and so forth. I don't think
Dylan's back-to-basics path was so much steering rock or folk-rock back
to its true path as it was another natural course in its evolution.
But Dylan's been idolized so much that I sometimes get the impression
some fans and critics think that he was more the ultimate standard for
what was best in music than he actually was. Many people disagree with
me on such points, naturally.

As to "what were some of the key, initial musical forces that sparked
new dimensions of folk-rock when Dylan was on the sidelines," since
we're getting to end of my time as a featured author on inkwell.vue,
it's a good segueway into a basic mapping of the aresa covered in my
next book ("Turn! Turn! Turn!"'s sequel, "Eight Miles High").
Basically, I see four large branches of folk-rock that flowered around
mid-1966 to 1970, the years that book will cover. These movements
started around the time Dylan was on the sidelines, and continued to
grow afterhe came back to the recording scene at the beginning of 1968
with "John Wesley Harding."

One was the expansion of folk-rock into folk-rock-psychedelia, in San
Francisco especially, but all over as well. Another was the birth of
the singer-songwriter movement (although that term wasn't used much at
the time), not just with the maturation of writers who'd been recording
folk-rock already in the mid-1960s, but also with the recording debuts
of such important talents as Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. Another
was country-rock, which "John Wesley Harding" had a lot to do with
popularizing, and which bands like the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers,
Poco, the Dillards, and others with folk and folk-rock roots moved into
too. Also there was the development of a specifically British-flavored
brand of folk-rock. Donovan had been a big exponent of that all along
since 1965, of course, but he was joined after 1966 by Fairport
Convention, the Pentangle, the Incredible String Band, Nick Drake, Al
Stewart, the Strawbs, and others. At the very end of the decade British
folk-rock took a more traditional bent, using British Isles source
material, with Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, and some others.

Of course the emergence of folk-rock's ultimate supergroup, Crosby,
Stills, Nash (& sometimes Young), was a notable post-"John Wesley
Harding" outgrowth that drew from various strands of 1960s folk-rock to
briefly create one of its most popular exponents. That's covered in
"Eight Miles High," and also of course in the CSN biography written by
our esteemed topic host, Dave Zimmer.
  

    
Rik, I was interested in your observation that Dino Valenti was one of
the folkies who didn't make the transition to electric well. I did a
whole chapter on Valenti in my book "Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring
Strangers: Overlooked Innovators & Eccentric Visionaries of '60s Rock."
Your sentiments were echoed by several people I talked to about Dino.
John Forsha, a guitarist who played on records by Fred Neil and Tim
Buckley (and on Judy Henske's "High Flying Bird," discussed at several
earlier points in the topic), said Valenti's playing had "a right-hand
rhythm thing that was syncopated on acoustic guitar. It had a
locomotive feel to it. It was almost like a Mexican guitar. It was like
a full band accomaniment sound. This lick wouldn't have worked on an
electric instrument. 'Cause it was too fat, the sound would have jammed
somewhere in the amplifier. It's too busy."

Dino Valenti's a very interesting figure, incidentally, who never
quite got to folk-rock's center stage though he was very admired. Part
of the reason was that problems with the law put him in jail in the
mid-1960s. Part of the problem was that he was difficult for record
labels to work with, and his only solo album, the misspelled "Dino
Valente" (Epic, 1968, and a quite good if quirky record), was barely
promoted as a result. His main legacy as far as leaving a footprint on
folk-rock was writing "Get Together," a hit for the Youngbloods and
recorded by numerous other artists, including the Jefferson Airplane on
their first album.
  

    <scribbled by jonl Fri 11 Oct 02 12:53>
  

    
In response to the remark about middle-eastern influnces,does
anyone remember "Nightime Girl," a Dunhill Records single by the
Modern Folk Quartet, written by Al Cooper and produced by
Jack Nitzsche. At the time,65-66, it was said to be one of the 
best examples of "Raga Rock," although I doubt if it got much play
outside of California. 
  

    

You were a member of the Modern Folk Quartet, weren't you, Henry?
With Cyrus Faryar and who else?  Is "Nighttime Girl" available on any 
in-print CD?
  

    
Glad to see my friend and colleague Henry Diltz has entered The Well.
Hi ya, Henry! Henry was indeed in the MFQ and I'll let him fill you in
further regarding your other questions. Henry also took the wonderful
photos that are spread throughout "Crosby, Stills & Nash: The
Biography" as well as many famous album covers -- which he will be
discussing in his own Inkwell topic about his "Under the Covers" DVD. 
I hope visitors to Richie's "Turn, Turn, Turn" topic will slide over
there when it goes live. Before Henry chimes in here, I have another
question for Richie.

You may discuss this in "Eight Miles High," but I'm curious how you
feel about present-day purveyors of folk-rock. And which young artists
(if any) do you feel are carrying on the folk-rock tradition?