Today is the birthday
… of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Patrick Stewart is 69.
… of Bob Falfa. That’s Harrison Ford. He’s 67. And yes, Ford, who at one time had been in seven of the ten top grossing films of all time, has an Oscar nomination — for best actor in Witness.
… of Roger McGuinn, an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Byrds. He’s 67.
As Roger McGuinn once said of the Byrds, “It was Dylan meets the Beatles.” The Byrds combined the upbeat, melodic pop of the Beatles with the message-oriented lyrics of Bob Dylan into a wholly original amalgam that would be branded folk-rock. If only for their harmony-rich versions of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” drenched in the 12-string jangle of McGuinn’s Rickenbacker guitar, the Byrds would have earned their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yet the group continually broke ground during the Sixties, creating revelatory syntheses of sound that were given such hyphenated names as space-rock (“5D [Fifth Dimension]”), psychedelic-rock (“Eight Miles High”) and country-rock (their Sweethearts of the Rodeo album). At a time when rock and roll was exploding in all fronts, the Byrds led the way with an insatiable curiosity about the forms and directions pop music could take. In so doing, they became peers and equals of their mentors, Dylan and the Beatles.
… of Pedro de Pacas. Richard ‘Cheech’ Marin is 63.