Talk:Why (The Byrds song)

Re-recording of "Why" for the Younger Than Yesterday album

I have added information to this article relating to the song "Why" having been re-recorded for its appearance on the Younger Than Yesterday album and added inline references to support this fact. I know that it has been claimed, by journalist David Fricke and also by Christopher Hjort in his book So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star: The Byrds Day-By-Day (1965-1973) that the version of "Why" on Younger Than Yesterday was recorded during sessions for the Fifth Dimension album but I believe this to be erroneous for at least three reasons.

Firstly, both the sessionography found in Johnny Rogan's book Timeless Flight Revisited and the recording session chronology in the liner notes for the Never Before CD (both derived from the actual Columbia Records recording session documentation) confirm that "Why" was re-recorded between 5 - 8 December, 1966, which would place it firmly among the Younger Than Yesterday recording sessions. The second, and to my mind, most compelling piece of evidence though, is the fact that the Younger Than Yesterday album lists Gary Usher as its sole producer. If the version of "Why" included on the album had indeed been recorded during the Fifth Dimension album sessions, then it would list Allen Stanton as the producer of this track - since it was he and not Usher who produced those recording sessions.

The third piece of evidence is a little bit more circumstantial than the first two, but is worth considering nonetheless - "Why" on Younger Than Yesterday sounds noticeably different in its musical approach to the versions of the song recorded during the Fifth Dimension sessions. McGuinn's whining, raga-style guitar, which was ubiquitous during the Fifth Dimension era, is not present on the version of "Why" found on Younger Than Yesterday, in keeping with the rest of that album. The Younger Than Yesterday version also doesn't display any of Allen Stanton's mixing traits, such as super-wide stereo separation of vocals and instruments, it sounds much more like a Gary Usher production job to me.

Taking all three of these pieces of evidence into consideration, I personally think that it builds a pretty strong case for "Why" having been re-recorded during the Younger Than Yesterday sessions. If anyone can provide any other evidence to the contrary then I would be most interested to hear it. --Kohoutek1138 (talk) 22:16, 26 November 2009 (UTC)