Chestnut Mare
| "Chestnut Mare" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Cover artwork for the single, as used in the Netherlands. | ||||
| Single by The Byrds | ||||
| from the album (Untitled) | ||||
| B-side | "Just a Season" | |||
| Released | October 23, 1970 | |||
| Recorded | June 1 – June 5, June 9, June 11, 1970 | |||
| Studio | Columbia Studios, Hollywood, CA | |||
| Genre | Country rock | |||
| Length | 5:08 2:58 (single edit) | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Roger McGuinn, Jacques Levy | |||
| Producer(s) | Terry Melcher, Jim Dickson | |||
| The Byrds singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Audio sample | ||||
"Chestnut Mare" is a song by the American rock band the Byrds, written by Roger McGuinn and Jacques Levy during 1969 for a planned country rock musical named Gene Tryp.[1][2] The musical was never staged and the song was instead released in September 1970 as part of the Byrds' (Untitled) album.[3] It was later issued as a single, peaking at number 121 on the Billboard singles chart and number 19 on the UK Singles Chart.[4]
Composition
Throughout most of 1969, the Byrds' leader and guitarist, Roger McGuinn, had been writing songs with psychologist and Broadway impresario Jacques Levy for a country rock stage production of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt that the pair were developing.[5] The intended title for the musical was Gene Tryp, an anagram of the title of Ibsen's play.[6]
McGuinn and Levy's production was to loosely follow the storyline of Peer Gynt, albeit with some modifications to transpose the story from Norway to south-west America during the mid-19th century.[2] Ultimately, the Gene Tryp stage production was abandoned and among the twenty-six songs that McGuinn and Levy had written for the project, six (including "Chestnut Mare") would end up being released on the Byrds' (Untitled) and Byrdmaniax albums.[7][8]
"Chestnut Mare" was intended to be used during a scene in which the play's eponymous hero attempts to catch and tame a wild horse, a scene that had featured a deer in Ibsen's original.[9] While the majority of "Chestnut Mare" had been written specifically for Gene Tryp, the musical accompaniment to the song's Bach-like middle section had actually been written by McGuinn back in the early 1960s, while on tour in South America with the Chad Mitchell Trio.[9]
Musically, "Chestnut Mare" echoes the sound of the Byrds' mid-1960s recordings, with McGuinn's chiming 12-string Rickenbacker guitar sitting alongside guitarist Clarence White's country-style acoustic and electric guitar picking.[10][11] Lyrically, the song's spoken verses recount the story of one man's quest to tame a wild horse, and, as such, it echoes the familiar Byrds' themes of nature and freedom.[1][11] Byrds expert Tim Connors has also suggested that the song's narrative can be seen to deal in mythic archetypes: the wild mare being an embodiment of untamed nature, which the narrator wants to control, and thus an analogy of mankind's attempts to dominate and subjugate the natural environment.[10]
Release and reception
"Chestnut Mare" was initially released as part of the Byrds' (Untitled) album on September 14, 1970.[3] It was then issued as a single on October 23, 1970, with "Just a Season", another McGuinn and Levy song left over from the Gene Tryp project, on the B-side.[2][3] The single stalled at number 121 on the Billboard singles chart, but nonetheless, "Chestnut Mare" went on to become a staple of FM radio programming in America during the 1970s.[1][4]
The song did much better, however, when it was released as a single in the United Kingdom on January 1, 1971, reaching number 19 on the UK Singles Chart, during a chart stay of eight weeks.[12] "Chestnut Mare" was the first UK Top 20 hit that the Byrds had achieved since their cover of Bob Dylan's "All I Really Want to Do" had peaked at number 4 in September 1965.[9][12]
Although the U.S. single release featured the full-length album version of "Chestnut Mare", in the UK and Europe a severely edited version of the song was issued instead.[9] The running time of the album version is 5:08, while the single edit is noticeably shorter at 2:58, due to the removal of the song's second verse and middle section.
Following its appearance on the (Untitled) album, the song would go on to become a staple of the Byrds' live concert repertoire, until their final disbandment in 1973.[13] The band also performed the song in 1971 and 1972 on the German music television program, Beat-Club.[14]
In addition to its appearance on the (Untitled) album, "Chestnut Mare" appears on several Byrds' compilations, including The Best of The Byrds: Greatest Hits, Volume II, History of The Byrds, The Byrds, The Very Best of The Byrds, The Essential Byrds, and There Is a Season.[1] A live performance of the song is also included on The Byrds' Live at Royal Albert Hall 1971 album.[1]
The Icicle Works covered "Chestnut Mare" as a medley with another Byrds' song, "Triad", on the 1989 Byrds' tribute album, Time Between – A Tribute to The Byrds.[15]
References
- ^ a b c d e "Chestnut Mare review & album appearances". AllMusic. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
- ^ a b c Hjort, Christopher. (2008). So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star: The Byrds Day-By-Day (1965–1973). Jawbone Press. p. 200. ISBN 1-906002-15-0.
- ^ a b c Rogan, Johnny. (1998). The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited (2nd ed.). Rogan House. pp. 544–547. ISBN 0-9529540-1-X.
- ^ a b Hjort, Christopher. (2008). So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star: The Byrds Day-By-Day (1965–1973). Jawbone Press. p. 257. ISBN 1-906002-15-0.
- ^ "Musicians Associated With The Byrds: Lev – Ma". ByrdWatcher: A Field Guide to the Byrds of Los Angeles. Archived from the original on 2009-04-30. Retrieved 2009-10-02.
- ^ Rogan, Johnny. (1998). The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited (2nd ed.). Rogan House. p. 297. ISBN 0-9529540-1-X.
- ^ Rogan, Johnny. (1998). The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited (2nd ed.). Rogan House. p. 318. ISBN 0-9529540-1-X.
- ^ Fricke, David. (2000). (Untitled)/(Unissued) (2000 CD liner notes).
- ^ a b c d Rogan, Johnny. (2000). (Untitled)/(Unissued) (2000 CD liner notes).
- ^ a b "(Untitled)". ByrdWatcher: A Field Guide to the Byrds of Los Angeles. Archived from the original on 2009-08-21. Retrieved 2009-10-02.
- ^ a b Rogan, Johnny. (1998). The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited (2nd ed.). Rogan House. p. 313. ISBN 0-9529540-1-X.
- ^ a b Brown, Tony. (2000). The Complete Book of the British Charts. Omnibus Press. p. 130. ISBN 0-7119-7670-8.
- ^ Rogan, Johnny. (1998). The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited (2nd ed.). Rogan House. pp. 591–615. ISBN 0-9529540-1-X.
- ^ Rogan, Johnny. (1998). The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited (2nd ed.). Rogan House. p. 617. ISBN 0-9529540-1-X.
- ^ "Time Between: A Tribute To The Byrds review". AllMusic. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
