From Ron Coro (then the art director at CBS) came the phone call. Roger McGuinn needed a cover and would I be interested? Though not as radically as, let’s say. Lew Alcindor or Cassius Clay, Roger McGuinn had changed his name (God knows why) from Jim. Jim McGuinn had been the lead guitar player for the Byrds whose break in the middle of “The Bells of Rhymney” used to take me traveling every time I listened to it. He was also famous from the line “McGuinn and McGuire just kept a-getting higher / in L.A., you know where that’s at” from the Mamas and the Papas. McGuinn arrived, parked his Mercedes convertible at the door, and walked into the studio with a wicked grin on his face, prepared to have fun. He carried a briefcase, which contained a telephone and a radio that provided a continuous scan of all police and fire short-wave broadcasts.
The initial part of the session was taken up posing Roger by an empty picture frame, water with glycerine sprayed on his face, and a slight bit of wind blown through his hair. Ron would later strip (that is, physically composite) an eighteenth-century illustration of a sailing schooner into the frame. (It was a typical Ron Coro idea. His tastes were broad, eclectic, and usually highly and subtly — not a contradiction — visual.) McGuinn stood patiently, guzzling anything that was put near him. I had him teach me “Eight Miles High” on the guitar. (FROM AN AMERICAN SOTRY)
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