![]() In the following years he'd see numerous friends fall victim to what he calls the hedonistic lifestyle that lured so many musicians of his generation. Not that he didn't face and overcome plenty of dark moments over the succeeding half-century, beginning with the first and probably darkest, his beloved father's suicide when Hillman was just 16. That passion is revealed in his just-published memoir “Time Between: My Life as a Byrd, Burrito Brother, and Beyond." It recounts how a carefree surfer kid from a small California beach town had his idyllic 1950s life redirected at age 15 when his mother, having given in to his repeated pleas, bought him a $10 guitar during a shopping trip to Tijuana, Mexico, with the promise that if he actually learned to play the thing she'd eventually help him get a better one. “I never thought I would get paid," added Hillman, a friendly, modest man of 76. “I just had such a passion for the music," he said by phone recently from his sun-dappled hillside home overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Ventura, California. None of it was deliberate, but organic, Hillman says now, explaining how he went through a half-century of performance simply pursuing the music that he loved, from bluegrass to folk to country to rock. Tambourine Man" that famously featured McGuinn's jangling, 12-string electric guitar. That's thanks in large part to the group having laid the groundwork for the musical subgenres folk-rock and country-rock in the late 1960s with songs like Hillman's “Between Time,” that put a driving, rock-based melody to a country heartbreak ballad, and the band's interpretation of songs like Bob Dylan's “Mr. It was never about getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, either, although Hillman, McGuinn and their fellow Byrds are there, too. Sixty-one years after he picked up his first guitar, Hillman says music was never about becoming rich and famous, something he mocked in the whimsical 1967 hit “So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star” that he co-wrote with fellow bandmate Roger McGuinn for the Byrds. LOS ANGELES (AP) - Tom Petty once described him as one of rock music's most well-kept secrets, and Chris Hillman is fine with that.
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