This day in music - December 4, 1965: The Byrds' "Turn! Turn! Turn!" hits #1

By Richard K. Barry

"Turn! Turn! Turn!" was written by folk music icon Pete Seeger, who recorded the song before The Byrds covered it as a follow-up to their hit "Mr. Tambourine Man."

In a book called Songwriters on Songwriting, by Paul Zollo, Seeger says the following about the lyrics of the song, which are based on a passage from Ecclesiastes:

I don't read the Bible that often. I leaf through it occasionally and I'm amazed by the foolishness at times and the wisdom at other times. I call it the greatest book of folklore ever given. Not that there isn't a lot of wisdom in it. You can trace the history of people poetically.

I got a letter from my publisher, and he says, "Pete, I can't sell these protest songs you write." And I was angry. I sat down with a tape recorder and said, "I can't write the kind of songs you want. You gotta go to somebody else. This is the only kind of song I know how to write." I pulled out this slip of paper in my pocket and improvised a melody to it in fifteen minutes. And I sent it to him. And I got a letter from him the next week that said, "Wonderful! Just what I'm looking for." Within two months he'd sold it to the Limelighters and then to the Byrds. I liked the Byrds' record very much, incidentally. All those clanging, steel guitars -- they sound like bells.

"Turn! Turn! Turn!" became an international hit in late 1965 when it was covered by the American folk-rock band The Byrds, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #26 on the UK Singles Chart. 

The Byrds went through a number of changes in personnel from the time they formed in 1964 until they disbanded in 1973. The lineup at the beginning was Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, and Michael Clarke, and then Chris Hillman joined them shortly thereafter.

Although The Byrds managed to attain the huge commercial success of contemporaries like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and The Rolling Stones only for a short period of time (1965–66), they are today considered by critics to be one of the most influential bands of the 1960s, particularly in their early influence in the folk-rock genre.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)