The Byrds ( B37 )

Unfortunately, the compilation album also failed to reach the UK charts, while contemporary reviews made note of its misleading and inaccurate title, since among its twelve tracks, only "Chestnut Mare" had been a genuine hit in the United Kingdom. An equivalent compilation wasn't released in the U.S. until November 1972, when The Best of The Byrds: Greatest Hits, Volume II was issued.

On November 17, 1971, less than five months after the release of Byrdmaniax, the Byrds issued their eleventh studio album, Farther Along. The album was met with slightly more enthusiastic reviews than its predecessor but nevertheless, only managed to climb to number 152 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, while failing to reach the charts in the United Kingdom altogether. Musically, the album found the Byrds beginning to move away from their country rock sound—although at least half the album still bore a strong country influence—and instead, embrace a style indebted to 1950s rock 'n' roll music. The Skip Battin and Kim Fowley penned song "America's Great National Pastime" was taken from the album and released as a single in late November, but it failed to chart on either side of the Atlantic. Johnny Rogan has concluded that, ultimately, the rapidity with which the Byrds planned and recorded Farther Along resulted in an album that was just as flawed as Byrdmaniax and as a result, it failed to rehabilitate the band's ailing commercial fortunes or increase their declining audience. The album's title track, sung by White with the rest of the group harmonizing, would later become a poignant and prophetic epitaph for the guitarist when it was sung by ex-Byrd Gram Parsons and the Eagles' Bernie Leadon at White's funeral in July 1973.

Breakup

Clarence White and Roger McGuinn on stage during the Byrds' September 9, 1972 appearance at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

Following the release of Farther Along, the Byrds continued to tour throughout 1972, but no new album or single release was forthcoming. In July of that year, Gene Parsons was fired from the group for a number of reasons, including McGuinn's growing dissatisfaction with his drumming, disagreements that he and McGuinn were having over band members' pay, and his own discontent over the band's lack of morale during this period.

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