![]() ![]() "Lover of the Bayou" would be re-recorded by McGuinn in 1975 and appear on his Roger McGuinn & Band album. Of the twenty-six songs that were written for the musical, "Chestnut Mare", "Lover of the Bayou", "All the Things", and "Just a Season" were included on (Untitled), while "Kathleen's Song" and "I Wanna Grow Up to Be a Politician" were held over for the Byrds' next album. Ultimately, Gene Tryp was abandoned and a handful of the songs that McGuinn and Levy had written for the project would instead see release on (Untitled) and its follow-up, Byrdmaniax. The musical was intended as a prelude to even loftier plans of McGuinn's to produce a science-fiction film, tentatively titled Ecology 70 and starring former Byrd Gram Parsons (unrelated to Gene Parsons) and ex-member of the Mamas & the Papas, Michelle Phillips, as a pair of intergalactic flower children. The musical was to be titled Gene Tryp, an anagram of the title of Ibsen's play, and would loosely follow the storyline of Peer Gynt, with some modifications to transpose the action from Norway to south-west America during the mid-19th century. įor most of 1969, the Byrds' leader and guitarist, Roger McGuinn, had been developing a country rock stage production of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt with former psychologist and Broadway impresario Jacques Levy. Thus, the McGuinn, White, Parsons, and Battin line-up of the band was the most stable and longest lived of any configuration of the Byrds. York's dismissal and Battin's recruitment marked the last line-up change to the Byrds for almost three years, until Parsons was fired by McGuinn in July 1972. Following the disbandment of that group, Battin returned to session work in the late 1960s and it was during this period that he met Gene Parsons and became reacquainted with Clarence White, whom he had known from a few years earlier. After the break-up of Skip & Flip, Battin moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a freelance session musician and formed the band Evergreen Blueshoes. The duo had notched up a string of hits between 19, including "It Was I", "Fancy Nancy", and " Cherry Pie". Battin's professional career in music had begun in 1959, as one half of the pop music duo Skip & Flip. Battin was, at 35, the oldest member of the band and the one with the longest musical history. Background įollowing the dismissal of the Byrds' bass player, John York, in September 1969, Skip Battin was recruited as a replacement at the suggestion of drummer Gene Parsons and guitarist Clarence White. Likewise, the album is today generally regarded by critics as being the best that the latter-day line-up of the Byrds produced. Upon release, (Untitled) was met with positive reviews and strong sales, with many critics and fans regarding the album as a return to form for the band. The single was later released in the UK in January 1971, where it did considerably better, reaching number 19 on the UK Singles Chart. in October 1970, but missed the Billboard Hot 100 chart, bubbling under at number 121. A single taken from the album, " Chestnut Mare" b/w "Just a Season", was released in the U.S. The album peaked at number 40 on the Billboard Top LPs chart and reached number 11 on the UK Albums Chart. Five of the songs that had been intended for Gene Tryp were instead recorded by the Byrds for (Untitled)-although only four appear in the album's final running order. The production was to have been based on Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt and staged under the title of Gene Tryp (an anagram of Ibsen's play), but plans for the musical fell through. The studio album mostly consists of newly written, self-penned material, including a number of songs that had been composed by band leader Roger McGuinn and Broadway theatre director Jacques Levy for a planned country rock musical that the pair were developing. ![]() The album represented the first official release of any live recordings by the band, as well as the first appearance on a Byrds' record of new recruit Skip Battin, who had replaced the band's previous bass player, John York, in late 1969. ![]() It is a double album, with the first LP featuring live concert recordings from early 1970, and a second disc consisting of new studio recordings. (Untitled) is the ninth album by the American rock band the Byrds and was released in September 1970 on Columbia Records. ![]()
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