Fifty years on from their first successes, Roger McGuinn, the 12-string architect of THE BYRDS , tells Uncut about their exceptional first 18 months – and his relationship with Gene Clark. As the young group make their jet-powered escape from the folk think tank, we hear about making the scene on the Strip, outraging Iowa and a muted response in the United Kingdom. But ultimately how “Eight Miles High” became the spectacular conclusion of the band’s first era. “I almost left The Byrds entirely to go and be in this space band With Dino Valente,” McGuinn tells John Robinson

For a band who’ve spent the last months playing to thousands in North American venues, it could have felt uneasily sobering to pull up outside Berlin’s Columbia Theater. Just a couple of years short o

From The Bottom Of An Old Grandfather Clock (reissue, 2004) DEAD OCEANS

How Eno-supervised jams and a playful tale of obsessive relationships yielded the Manchester veterans’ biggest hit to date. Just don’t wear those dresses on American TV!

In 1976, the revolutionary singer-songwriter LAURA NYRO returned from self-imposed exile. But her comeback confounded expectations, shifting away from the impassioned intimacies of her early albums to embrace more radical perspectives. Fifty years on, Nyro’s collaborators revisit her striking second act. “She was a hip American from the Bronx,” one friend and producer tells Rob Hughes. “But her soul was old.”

Black And Blue UMC/POLYDOR