However, it was also felt that the band had a sufficient backlog of new compositions to warrant the recording of a new studio album. It was therefore suggested by producer Terry Melcher that the band should release a double album, featuring one LP of concert recordings and another LP of new studio material. To help with the editing of the live recordings, the band's ex-manager Jim Dickson, who had been fired by the group in June 1967, was invited back into the Byrds' camp. At around this same time, former business manager Eddie Tickner also returned to the group's employ as a replacement for Larry Spector, who had quit the management business and relocated to Big Sur.
The two-record (Untitled) album was released by the Byrds on September 14, 1970 to positive reviews and strong sales, with many critics and fans regarding the album as a return to form for the band. Peaking at number 40 on the Billboard Top LPs chart and number 11 in the UK, the album's success continued the upward trend in the band's commercial fortunes and popularity that had begun with the release of the Ballad of Easy Rider album. The live half of (Untitled) included both new material and new renditions of previous hit singles, including "Mr. Tambourine Man", "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" and a 16-minute version of "Eight Miles High", which comprised the whole of one side of the original LP release. Band biographer Johnny Rogan has suggested that the inclusion of these newly recorded live versions of older songs served to forge a spiritual and musical link between the Byrds' current line-up and the original mid-1960s incarnation of the band.
The studio recordings featured on (Untitled) mostly consisted of newly written, self-penned material, including a number of songs that had been composed by McGuinn and Broadway theatre impresario Jacques Levy for a planned country rock musical titled Gene Tryp that the pair were developing.
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