ON SONGWRITING
As Roger McGuinn tells it, his march toward
rock and roll immortality as The Byrds’ guitarist
started the day he heard voices. Before that
he was content with toiling in the background
behind folk groups like the Limeliters, Chad
Mitchell Trio, and Bobby Darin. “My job with
Darin was to listen to records and come up
with stuff like the Beatles were doing. So I got
a pickup for my acoustic 12-string and started
messing around with that. His audiences
thought I was out of my mind and weren’t too
appreciative. But I was doing folk rock when
there was no such thing as folk rock.”
In the meantime, with his guitar on his
shoulder, he moonlighted at the same Greenwich
Village basket houses as future ‘60s icons Bob
Dylan, John Phillips, John Sebastian, and Peter
Tork. Then the voices became too loud to ignore.
He recalls, “When I saw the Beatles I knew I
wanted to get a band together. I remember
walking down the street just before I left New
York and there were these club owners who said,
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
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DIGITAL EDITION
JUNE/JULY