Mcguinn Won’t Allow Star To Fall

Roger McGuinn could easily be another jaded, worn-out rock star whose best days are long behind him.

The kind of guy who shows up at the local hall, puts in a tired 60 minutes, plus encore, and splits for the next town. They’re a dime a dozen and they’re our best reminder that the spotlight cast by the pop culture is a harsh one indeed.

But McGuinn, who spent time at the pinnacle of rock as leader of the Byrds, appears to be cut from a different cloth. He’s a former star who seems bent on enjoying life.

In an interview last month from his Orlando, Fla., home, McGuinn talked enthusiastically about his new record, his Web Site and his current tour, a driving jaunt that will bring him and his wife to Alaska by way of Spokane. He plays here Sunday at The Met.

It’s a different kind of life for a guy who once traveled the astral planes, eight miles high.

In the mid-‘60s, the Byrds were America’s answer to the Beatles. They rode the charts with lovely folk-rock songs that spawned the folk-rock revolution and opened the door to the mainstream for Dylan - they covered four of his songs on their first record, including the ground-breaking “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

“The first record was magic,” McGuinn said. “We were all in our ‘teens and early 20s, and there was a lot of youthful exuberance and the-sky’s-the-limit feelings.”

The Byrds may have been the first pop group to experiment with Indian music - some say McGuinn coined the phrase raga-rock - and in 1967 confounded fans everywhere by taking up country music with two country-oriented records, “The Notorious Byrd Brothers” and “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.”

“We just thought it would be fun to do,” McGuinn said. “There was just something in the air.”

These days, McGuinn reprises the early days with a one-man retrospective that he recently documented on a CD, “Live From Mars.”

“It’s an autobiographical one-man play. I cooked it up about three years ago when I was working on my text autobiography.”

The book is on the back burner these days, replaced by a score of other interests, among which is the Web Site, www.mcguinn.com.

In addition to documenting the history of the Byrds in an absorbing FAQ section, McGuinn uses the site to document traditional folk songs, material he fears will be lost when the current generation of folk singers is gone.

Archiving documents was one of the original purposes of the Internet, though its founders probably didn’t anticipate the need to preserve folk songs. It’s fitting that McGuinn, one of the most forward-looking of all the rockers, came up with the idea.

“I think I’m using it the way it’s meant to be used.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT Roger McGuinn will perform Sunday at 7 p.m. at The Met. Jim Boyd opens the show. Tickets are $14 ($15 at door), available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets, or call 325-SEAT or (800) 325-SEAT.