Younger Than Yesterday - Music

Music

Younger Than Yesterday found The Byrds successfully expanding their musical style into several different directions. Chris Hillman contributed two country rock-flavored songs with "Time Between" and "The Girl with No Name", the latter of which was inspired by a young lady with the unusual moniker of Girl Freiberg. "Time Between", on the other hand, was a Paul McCartney-influenced pop song and the result of Hillman's first ever attempt at writing a song on his own. Both songs featured the country-style guitar playing of session musician Clarence White, who would go on to become a full member of The Byrds' latter-day line-up from 1968 through to 1973. Both "Time Between" and "The Girl with No Name", like "Mr. Spaceman" before them, anticipated The Byrds' future experimentation with the country rock genre.

In addition to these two country-tinged songs, Hillman also contributed the LSD-influenced "Thoughts and Words", a metaphysical meditation on human relationships that featured the sitar-like sound of backwards guitar effects. A fourth Hillman-penned song on the album, the British Invasion-influenced "Have You Seen Her Face", was considered commercial enough to be issued as a single in the U.S. some months after the release of the album. Byrds expert Tim Connors had noted that these four melodic, romantically-themed Hillman songs brought to the album elements that had largely been missing from the band's recordings since Gene Clark's departure.

Hillman also had a hand in writing the album's opening track, "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star". With its satirical and sarcastic lyrics, the song was an acerbic, but good-natured swipe at the success of manufactured pop bands like The Monkees. However, "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" also suggested certain ironies due to pre-fabricated aspects of The Byrds' own origin, including session musicians having played on their debut Columbia single and drummer Michael Clarke having been initially recruited for his good looks, rather than for his musical ability. Music journalist David Fricke has noted that these factors have led some fans to mistake "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" for an autobiographical song. Hillman's driving bassline and McGuinn's chiming twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar riff form the core of the song, with the production being rounded off by the sound of screaming teenage fans that had been recorded at a Byrds' concert in Bournemouth during the band's 1965 English tour. South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela contributed the trumpet solo featured in the song, which represented the first use of brass on a Byrds' recording. Masekela and The Byrds would later perform "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" together at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 17, 1967.

McGuinn and Crosby's songs, written both separately and together, represented an expansion of the jazz influences and psychedelia that had been featured heavily on the band's previous album. "C.T.A.-102", named after the CTA-102 quasar and written by McGuinn and his science-fiction-minded partner Bob Hippard, was a whimsical but ultimately serious song that speculated on the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. McGuinn explained the inspiration for the song in a 1973 interview: "At the time we wrote it I thought it might be possible to make contact with quasars, but later I found out that they were stars which are imploding at a tremendous velocity. They're condensing and spinning at the same time, and the nucleus is sending out tremendous amounts of radiation, some of which is audible as an electronic impulse on a computerized radio telescope. It comes out in a rhythmic pattern ... and originally, the radio astronomers who received these impulses thought they were from a life-form in space." Although the band's earlier song "Mr. Spaceman" had been thematically similar, "C.T.A.-102" was a slightly more serious attempt at tackling the subject matter, highlighted by the extensive use of studio sound effects, simulated alien voices and the sound of an electronic oscillator.

Crosby's songwriting skills had also developed rapidly, with "Renaissance Fair" (co-written with McGuinn) being an example of his increasingly wistful and atmospheric writing style. The song is marked by the instrumental interplay between Crosby and McGuinn's guitars and Hillman's melodic, loping bass. Inspired by a visit to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire of Southern California, the song's dream-like medieval ambience can be seen as a thematic precursor to Crosby's later song "Guinnevere". Another of Crosby's songwriting contributions to the album was the moody, jazz-influenced "Everybody's Been Burned", a somber meditation on the need to find a balance between disillusionment and resolute perseverance in a relationship. Although the song was regarded by many critics as a leap forward in terms of musical sophistication, it actually dated back to 1962, before the formation of The Byrds. Originally written as a nightclub torch song, Crosby had recorded demos of "Everybody's Been Burned" as early as 1963. An acoustic recording of the song by Crosby, dating from this pre-Byrds period, was eventually released on the archival album Preflyte Plus in 2012. Author Johnny Rogan has noted that The Byrds' recording of the song features one of Crosby's best vocal performances and one of McGuinn's most moving guitar solos, while critic Thomas Ward described it as "one of the most haunting songs in the Byrds' catalogue, and one of David Crosby's finest compositions."