Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Wasn't Born To Follow


Jangle pop with added envelope phasing: When I was about sixteen this short musical piece by the *Notorious Byrd Brothers was, for quite a few months, my favourite song in the whole world. I still retain a soft spot for it as I particularly liked the phaser driven guitar break, a studio effect that was all the rage in those days. The lyrics are mostly just a mystical 60s word salad thing that was common at the time. The song wasn't even written by the Byrds but by the mighty Goffin/King partnership, presumably for a hard cash and a few laughs. 

I don't know how it ended up on the somewhat eclectic Easy Rider soundtrack other than it fits the "bright but on a bit of a downer" hippie vibe. I'm still stuck in that by the way, a sort of unplanned lifestyle choice that never quite burned out. It's also a fairly easy three chorder to try to hammer out on your cheap, bedroom use only, completely out of tune £10 acoustic guitar. Bandparts (music shop), formerly of Leith Street, Edinburgh have quite a lot to answer for.

*This is one of a series of badly written articles that you can file under the heading of  "What I may have done then but I'm not so sure about now."

1 comment:

  1. Good to get more background. Bandparts - blast from the past indeed!

    ReplyDelete