What's a record company to do when it's exhausted every single possible opportunity to cream cash out of the 60th birthday of the greatest genius on the roster?
That's the question that must have occurred to the suits gathered together with the purpose of squeezing that last drop from old (quite literally) Bob Dylan. Fortunately, Columbia records is also home to the only band that founded a considerable chunk of their career on the business of covering the great man's songs.
So what do you do? Reissue an album already released but currently out of print with a bit of old shit - alternate versions, live versions - thrown in to secure sales in the 'obsessive' market, that's what.
The Byrds, in fact, offered a unique proposition for all those would-be Dylan fans who simply could not abide the man's nasally whine and bloody shrill harmonica solos. Both offending articles being stripped out of their interpretations of these songs, replaced instead by those familiar harmonies and jangling Rickenbacker 12-string.
In the crudest possible terms, The Byrds were the British Invasion colliding head on with the old Greenwich Village folkies, albeit very heavily inspired by the colossal strides made by Dylan between '64 and '65. A band that, early on before Gene Clark and Dave Crosby found their spectacularly beautiful song writing voices, depended upon four Dylan covers for their debut album, not to mention Pete Seeger and others.
All those songs are here and many, many more totalling twenty from 'Mr Tambourine Man' all the way through to 'Lay Lady Lay'. And, largely, it's a very worthwhile listening experience for both the Dylanologyst/Byrdsologyst and passing folk rock observer alike.
It's certainly true that there are instances when The Byrds could almost be said to better Dylan's original. The sublime 'My Back Pages' stakes a reasonable claim, making one of Bob's most personal songs positively soar with psychedelic wonder. But the real revelation here is how few of The Byrds most perfect moments - 'Eight Miles High', 'Everybody's Been Burned', 'Goin' Back' - depended on Dylan's songwriting.
Ultimately the whole thing is dragged down by the unnecessary additional tracks that ensure that the album closes on a prolonged whimper rather than in a blaze of psychedelic glory.
