Creativity Quote by Bruce Johnston

The tell here is the phrase “in their original form”: Johnston isn’t just praising The Byrds, he’s policing the timeline. Coming from a working musician (and a Beach Boy, no less), it reads like an insider’s corrective to the lazy way rock history gets flattened into brand names. The Byrds became a revolving door; the legend stayed fixed. Johnston’s intent is to shove attention back toward the early, lightning-in-a-bottle version where the vocals snapped, the guitars chimed, and the chemistry made folk-rock feel like a new technology.

Calling them “the most underrated” is less an objective ranking than a diagnosis of how canon-building works. The Byrds are “rated” in the sense that critics cite them constantly, but they’re rarely felt with the same automatic reverence granted to the Beatles, Stones, or even their American peers. Johnston is pointing to a specific kind of undervaluation: influence without glamour, innovation without a neat myth. Their biggest contributions got absorbed so quickly into the sound of late-60s rock that they can seem like a stepping stone rather than a destination.

There’s also a quiet solidarity in the compliment. Johnston knows what it’s like to be part of a group whose personnel changes complicate the narrative. By praising the “original form,” he’s arguing for the primacy of lineup-as-identity: not nostalgia as sentiment, but nostalgia as evidence. The subtext is a plea to listen to the first records like they’re still dangerous, not just historically important.