WPLN News Archive; Roger McGuinn on the Songwriter Sessions (Henry Fennell) 6 4 04; News Archive 4/22/04-6/17/04

in january of nineteen sixty five a new band called the birds with their leader roger when the words of bob dylan and fused them with the sound of the beatles and folk rock it's been fast forward four years ago it still has the magic in his voice will produce goods meg there was music and musical

career taken many turns over the past five decades he began as a faulty with the chad mitchell trio in the early nineteen sixties when under found the bird along with his band mate david crosby chris tillman jean and mike clark and later found success writing songs for everything from musical theater to a landmark movie back in nineteen sixty eight peter fonda was trying to save some money on the production costs of easy rider so he dug this record collection and of the soundtrack and he like the way it sounded i thought oh i'll you know either get one song written for the move because everybody else did so he took moving to new york to be screened it for bob dylan and dylan sat there in the screening room and rosen those down on little paper napkin and said here give this immigrant a lot to do with it so peter fly back to la to get middle napkin and he said bob wants you to have this man so i know i lost it so i got the napkin and i collect evidence of the river flows flows

to the sea wherever that her goes that's where one of the flow river flow to finish off the words he made up the tune for it and we call it the ballad of easy rider and when we put out i gave dylan to credit or to music by bob dylan enrichment plant or three in the morning he call me up and i guess a month or two later is that what's is you put my name i don't need to do that i don't need the money men take it off so i did bbc a sign at the fillmore east back in nineteen sixty eight and this pretty blonde girl came to the dressing room and she said my boyfriend was wondering if you wanted to write the score to a broadway musical i said well

yeah a chorus and then he showed up and he didn't like his pretty but writer pajamas jack levy so his idea was to write a broadway musical based on pure get and it was going to be a westernize version of it instead of being in scandinavia is can move it to the wild west around the same time period nineteen forty and there's a scene in here get where pure get the lead character is a reindeer and goes off the cliff and so we move the whole thing to the western united states and we changed the reindeer into a chestnut mare the fbi says the plan these days though when tories as a one man band he brought his custom

made seven string guitar to wpln studios see recently it was joined there by randy scruggs and john jorgenson for taping of the songwriter sessions you can hear that program the saturday night seventy or sunday afternoon one o'clock wto for nashville public radio it's been nice