"Those teenage kids could be kind of wild. It could be downright frightening at times." The story of the tongue-in-cheek classic that slammed manufactured pop music, aided by a pair of South African legends

The Byrds in 1967.

Eighteen months can be a long time in show business. In the spring of 1965, The Byrds exploded into the public consciousness with their chiming cover of Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man, topping the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Fêted as avatars of folk rock, the band suddenly found themselves on Top 40 stations across America and Europe, appearing on TV and staring out of teen magazines.

By late ’66, however, all that had changed. After a run of successes and having experienced the full mania of the record industry, The Byrds were no longer guaranteed hit makers.