Hillman compares the era to the 1996 Tom Hanks movie That Thing You Do!, which depicts a fictional ‘60s group that hits it big overnight. “That was what the Byrds was like. That was who we were, and what we were,” he says. McGuinn finds the movie analogy apt, though it brings back memories of a more manic sort.

“The girls, the fans were actually pretty brutal,” McGuinn recalls. “They tried to rip your clothes off, they stole my license plates, they tackled me running from the gig to my car. You thought you were in physical danger. It was before good security. Or monitors. Our first amplifier was basically a home stereo system.”

The Byrds, as Tom Petty writes in the liner notes, gave fans of American rock something to be proud of in the British invasion days. But remarkably, the original lineup never even made it to the two-year mark. Clark left after a nervous breakdown in early 1966; Crosby was fired by McGuinn and Hillman the following year, around the same time Clarke left. Crosby, of course, went on to greater fame in a certain supergroup with Stephen Stills and company, and the Byrds would later discover and recruit such legendary talents as Gram Parsons and Clarence White.