Roger McGuinn
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'''Roger McGuinn
in a recent publicity photo |
Roger McGuinn (born
James Joseph McGuinn III on
July 13,
1942 in
Chicago, Illinois) is an
American singer-songwriter and
guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of
the Byrds' hit records, the pioneering
folk-rock band of the
1960s, contributing much to the band's unique sound.
McGuinn's parents, James and Dorothy, were involved in
journalism and
public relations, and during his childhood, they penned a bestseller titled
Parents Can't Win. He became interested in music after hearing
Elvis Presley's "
Heartbreak Hotel," and asked his parents to buy him a
guitar. In
1957 he enrolled as a student at Chicago's
Old Town School of Folk Music, where he mastered the five-string
banjo and continued to hone his guitar skills. After graduation, McGuinn performed solo at various
coffeehouses on the
folk music circuit where he was discovered and hired as a
sideman by folk groups such as
the Limeliters, the
Chad Mitchell Trio, and
Judy Collins as well as playing guitar and singing backup harmony for
Bobby Darin. Soon after, he moved to the West Coast, winding up in
Los Angeles, where he eventually met the future members of
the Byrds.
During his time with the Byrds, McGuinn developed two innovative and highly influential styles of electric guitar playing: the so-called "jingle-jangle"and a merging of saxophonist
John Coltrane's free-jazz atonalities (
harmolodics) with the drone of the Indian
sitar, a style of playing first heard on the Byrds' 1966 single "
Eight Miles High".
While tracking the Byrds' first single, "
Mr. Tambourine Man," at
Columbia studios, McGuinn discovered a key ingredient of his signature sound. "The '
Rick' by itself is kind of thuddy," he details. "It doesn't ring. But if you add a
compressor, you get that long
sustain. To be honest, I found this by accident. The
engineer, Ray Gerhardt, would run compressors on everything to protect his precious equipment from loud rock and roll . He compressed the heck out of my 12-string, and it sounded so great we decided to use two
tube compressors [likely Teletronix LA-2As] in series, and then go directly into the
board. That's how I got my 'jingle-jangle' tone. It's really squashed down, but it jumps out from the radio. With compression, I found I could hold a note for three or four seconds, and sound more like a
wind instrument. Later, this led me to emulate John Coltrane's
saxophone on '
Eight Miles High.' Without compression, I couldn't have sustained the riff's first note."
"I practiced eight hours a day on that 'Rick'," he continues, "I really worked it. In those days,
acoustic 12s had wide necks and thick strings that were spaced pretty far apart, so they were hard to play. But the Rick's slim neck and low action let me explore
jazz and
blues scales up and down the
fretboard, and incorporate more
hammer-ons and
pull-offs into my solos. I also translated some of my
banjo picking techniques to the 12-string. By combining a
flatpick with
metal fingerpicks on my middle and ring fingers, I discovered I could instantly switch from fast single-note runs to banjo rolls and get the best of both worlds."
In
1968 he was involved in the groundbreaking Byrds album
Sweetheart of the Rodeo, to which many attribute the rise in popularity of
country rock. After the break-up of the Byrds, McGuinn released several solo albums, and later toured with
Bob Dylan during his
1975 and
1976 "
Rolling Thunder Revue" and opened for Dylan and
Tom Petty in
1987. He currently tours as a solo artist.
Roger McGuinn has used the
World Wide Web to continue the folk tradition since November
1995 by recording a different folk song each month on his
Folk Den site. The songs are made available from his web site and a selection (with guest vocalists) was released on
CD as
Treasures from the Folk Den. In November
2005 McGuinn released a four-CD box set containing one hundred of his favorite songs from the Folk Den.
On
July 11,
2000, McGuinn testified before in a
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on downloading music from the
Internet that artists do not always receive the royalties that (non-Internet based) record companies state in contracts, and that to date, The Byrds had not received any royalties for their biggest hits, "Mr. Tamborine Man" and "Turn, Turn, Turn"â€"they only received advances, which were split five ways and amounted to just "a few thousand dollars" per bandmember. He also stated that he was receiving 50 percent royalties from
MP3.com.
[http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0007/11/se.01.html]In
1965, McGuinn was initiated into the
Subud religious sect, and practiced
latihan, a
meditation in which he opened himself up to receiving spiritual guidance. McGuinn changed his name in
1967 after his
guru told him it would better "vibrate with the universe." The guru sent Jim the letter "R" and asked him to send back ten names starting with that letter. Owing to a fascination with airplanes, gadgets and
science fiction, he sent names like "Rocket," "Retro," "Ramjet," and "Roger," the latter a term used in
signalling protocol over two-way radios, military and
civil aviation. Roger was the only "real" name in the bunch and the guru picked it. While using the name Roger professionally from that time on, McGuinn only officially changed his middle name from Joseph to Roger.
In
1977 McGuinn become a
born-again Christian.
Roger McGuinn, 1973
# I'm So Restles# My New Woman # Lost My Drivin' Wheel # Draggin' # Time Cube # Bag Full Of Money # Hanoi Hannah # Stone # Heave Away # M'Linda # The Water Is Wide # Jamaica, Say You Will # John, John (previously unissued)
Peace on You, 1974
# Peace On You # Without You # Going To The Country # (Please Not) One More Time # Same Old Sound # Do What You Want To Do # Together # Better Change # Gate Of Horn # The Lady # Rock & Roll Time
Roger McGuinn and Band, 1975
# Somebody Loves You # Knockin' on Heaven's Door # Bull Dog # Painted Lady # Lover of the Bayou # Lisa # Circle Song # So Long # Easy Does It # Born to Rock and Roll # Wasn't Born To Follow (live) # Chestnut Mare (live)
Cardiff Rose, 1976
# Take Me Away # Jolly Roger # Rock and Roll Time # Friend # Partners in Crime # Up to Me # Round Table # Pretty Polly # Dreamland # Soul Love (demo recording) # Dreamland (live)
Thunderbyrd, 1977
# All Night Long # It's Gone # Dixie Highway # American Girl # We Can Do It All Over Again # Why Baby Why # I'm Not Lonely Anymore # Golden Loom # Russian Hill
Back from Rio, 1990
# Someone To Love # Car Phone # You Bowed Down # Suddenly Blue # The Trees Are All Gone # King Of The Hill # Without Your Love # The Time Has Come # Your Love Is A Gold Mine # If We Never Meet Again
Born to Rock & Roll, 1992
# I'm So Restlessten # My New Woman# Draggin' # The Water Is Wide # Same Old Sound# Bag Full Of Money# Gate of Horn # Peace On You # Lover Of The Bayou # Stone (The Lord Loves A Rolling Stone) # Lisa # Take Me Away# Jolly Roger # Friend # Dreamland # Dixie Highway # American Girl # Up To Me # Russian Hill # Born To Rock And Roll
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Live from Mars, 1996
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McGuinn's Folk Den (4 volumes), 2000
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Treasures from the Folk Den, 2001
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Back to New York, 2002
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Live from Electric Lady Land, 2002
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Limited Edition, 2004
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The Folk Den Project, 2005
Recently, McGuinn performed a 3-set show in Irvington, New York's Town Hall Theater.
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Roger McGuinn - The Official Home Page
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Roger McGuinn's Folk Den - An archive of his monthly recordings
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interview sources*
Free ebook of Roger McGuinn at
Project Gutenberg
