Chris Hillman

All right, now on to my honorable mentions.

Coming off of that, my first honorable mention is a Dwight cover of a song that Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman wrote from the Burrito Brothers.

And I like this right up there with their version, and it's Wheels.

Good one.

Yeah, this is some real stuff.

But, well, you know, Chris Hillman, um, the, you know, wonderful, um, founding member of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers with Graham, and close collaborator with him, always said Graham's life story was just like a, a, it's kind of funny to talk about now, but it w- really had an element of, like, Tennessee Williams as far as tragedy and trauma-

Mm-hmm.

Oh, my God

Big country music Hank Snow fan, et cetera, who would of course be a founding member of The Flying Breida Brothers c- which we'll come to in a second.

Mm.

But anyway, yeah, so by the time that record finally came out, he had met Chris Hillman standing on line at the bank.

[laughs]

In the 1960s and 70s, the community was the backdrop to the rise of West Coast folk rock, and the Canyon Country Store was its unofficial hub.

Chris Hillman, the original bassist for the Byrds, credits his move there in 1964 to a for-rent ad he saw outside the grocery.

Jim Morrison of the Doors turned an afternoon watching The Store Where the Creatures Meet into a 1968 hit, Love Street.

Glenn Frey of the Eagles recalled that the first celebrity he saw when he moved to Los Angeles was David Crosby on the market's front porch wearing his signature cape and flat-brimmed hat.

Uh, he co-wrote several of the band's other hits, uh, as well as a, songs for a lot of other artists.

Uh, he also had this great couple albums with the Souther Hillman Furay Band with Chris Hillman of The Byrds and Richie Furay of Poco, uh, which is worth checking out, side note.

note.Uh, Joe Walsh lays down some really smoking slide guitar lines on this one, uh, which is no surprise considering how adept a slide player he can be when called upon.

Uh, there's nothing particularly earth-shattering here, but it, it's a damn ro- fine rock tune to me.

maybe a little bit less obvious, just a little, is Sin City by the Flying Burrito Brothers from their 1969 debut album, Gilded Palace of Sin.

This, of course, is the band with Graham Parsons, Chris Hillman, Chris Etheridge, Sneaky Pete on Pedal Steel, one of the greatest albums of all time.

Graham was trying to get this kind of shit going in The Birds.

He was on the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.

And afterwards, we went up to a club called The Scene, where the Flying Burrito Brothers were playing.

And Bill, by this point, had gotten to be friends with Chris Hillman.

And so we all went up there, and I said to myself, well, this is kind of what we were doing, this kind of mix of country and folk and whatever.

I was, because I was working for Newport, I'd gotten to know people at record labels and that kind of thing, and so I called up a couple of people, and one of them was a guy named Andy Wickham, who was an English guy, but he worked for Reprise Records, and he had signed the Everly Brothers and Doug Kershaw, whatever, and he said, well, I just signed Doug Kershaw, so I don't think I can do anything, but He said, oh, Joe Smith at Warner Brothers might be interested.

He was expelled from boarding school, but was soon allowed back in because of that charm of his which, when necessary, could take the wheel while his arrogance and punk-ass indifference took a backseat.

These qualities of David Crosby's were often on display simultaneously, but that wasn't the only reason Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman kicked Crosby out of The Byrds, the band that David Crosby had co-founded.

Crosby was looking and sounding increasingly like a fucking lunatic, at least in the eyes of his bandmates, airing his conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination to the crowd at Monterey Pop.

And he was writing songs like Triad about a threesome, allegedly inspired by his own unquenchable thirst for sex, kinky, freaky sex in which nothing was taboo or off the table.

Perhaps The Byrds were musically progressive, but when it came to sex and politics, the far-out Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman were actually more aligned with the status quo.

So David Crosby was sacked from The Byrds.

So what? It was the late '60s, Los Angeles, California, and David Crosby had an open road ahead of him.

What an interesting character.

I mean, he toured as the guitarist for Elton John, but, you know, he's basically probably better known for his work in Bluegrass and with the Dillards, and, you know, he's close friends with Chris Hillman and was in the Desert Rose Band.

Really a super talent.

Absolutely, yeah.