Even though the Byrds were together for only a few years, they were one of the most influential groups of the 1960s. They gave the movement to fuse folk music sensibilities with rock and roll some much needed momentum; they revolutionized vocal harmony and combined elements of British Invasion bands and the lyricism of American popular music to create a new hybrid that would eventually become psychedelic rock.
Jim "Roger" McGuinn, David Crosby, and Gene Clark were all folk musicians performing in Los Angeles coffee houses. McGuinn was inspired by the Beatles; he thought he heard within their songs a possibility for combining folk music and rock and roll in an interesting way. He recruited Crosby and Clark for an experimental trio. They released a single on Elektra Records as the Beefeaters, and while it didn't sell well, it convinced the musicians that they were on to something. A few months later, after adding several more members—drummer Michael Clark and bluegrass mandolin/guitar player Chris Hillman—they renamed the band the Byrds. The group had almost no money—Clark was at first playing on cardboard boxes rather than drums—but they managed to scrape together enough money to record a demo, a reworking of a recent Bob Dylan song, "Mr. Tambourine Man." The song went to number one, outselling Dylan's original by a considerable margin.
The album of the same name (1965) is still considered one of the finest debut albums ever. Though it yielded only one hit single, the world was captivated by the beautiful harmony singing and the immediate presence of McGuinn's guitar. The first was entirely the doing of David Crosby; rather than singing a line parallel to the melody, Crosby created a "composite" harmony out of fourths, fifths, and sixths, which created the impression of four part harmony. McGuinn's guitar sound was the result of Hard Day's Night exposure; while viewing the film he was captivated by the sound of George Harrison's guitar. He caught a shot of the guitar in profile, which revealed it to be an electric twelve-string Rickenbaker, at the time so rare that few knew they existed! McGuinn bought one and made the guitar his usual instrument; the jangling quality became a staple of folk- and country rock musicians and repopularized the Rickenbacker brand, which had been losing market share to Fender and Gibson since the advent of rock and roll.
The success of the album made them national stars who were hailed as the great American "hope" of competing with the Beatles and the Stones, whom they would precede into psychedelic rock and explorations of the musical past that would lead to country rock.
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Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, the Beatles
Must Haves:
 "Turn, Turn, Turn"
"Eight Miles High"
"So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star"
"Mr. Spaceman"
Crosby, Stills, and Nash, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Flying Burrito Brothers, Poco, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
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