"He Was a Friend of Mine" is a traditional folk song in which the singer laments the death of a friend. EthnomusicologistAlan Lomax was the first to collect the song, in 1939, describing it as a "blues" that was "a dirge for a dead comrade."[1]
The Byrds issued a reworded version of the song in 1965, with lyrics that lament the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Since then, other artists have adapted the lyrics to talk about different murders, including those of John Lennon and George Floyd.
The first professional singer to pick up the song from the Library of Congress recordings was Rolf Cahn. He recorded the song on his 1961 Folkways album Rolf Cahn & Eric von Schmidt, where the song was titled "He Was a Friend of Mine" for the first time.[4]
Bob Dylan picked up the song from the Cahn recording and made some changes to it when he recorded it for his debut album Bob Dylan on November 20, 1961. However, Dylan's recording was not included on the album. It did show up on various Dylan bootleg albums, which received wide distribution soon thereafter. That recording of the song eventually had its official release in 1991 on volume 1 of Columbia Records' Dylan Bootleg Series.[5]
The Byrds included a reworded version of "He Was a Friend of Mine" on their 1965 album Turn! Turn! Turn!.[6] In the band's version, the song's melody is altered and the lyrics are changed to lament the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[7] The Byrds' lead guitarist Jim McGuinn rewrote the song's lyrics in late 1963 to give it a more contemporary slant and transform it into a eulogy for President Kennedy.[8][9] McGuinn explained the origins of the song in an interview: "I wrote the song the night John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I suppose you could say it's one of the earliest Byrds songs. The arrangement used was as I'd always sung it. I just thought it was a good idea to include it on the Turn! Turn! Turn! album."[9] Due to the rewritten lyrics, the songwriting credit for the song is "Traditional/new words and arrangement McGuinn".[9]
Following its appearance on the band's second album, the song would go on to become a staple of the Byrds' live concert repertoire.[9] The band performed the song during their appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 17, 1967, where band member David Crosby made controversial remarks alleging that Kennedy had not been killed by Lee Harvey Oswald alone, but was shot from multiple directions.[10][11][12][9] The Byrds' performance of "He Was a Friend of Mine" at Monterey was included in the 2002 The Complete Monterey Pop FestivalDVDbox set.[13]
In 1990, a reformed line-up of the Byrds, featuring McGuinn, Crosby, and Chris Hillman, re-recorded the song for The Byrds box set.[9]
In 1963, the Greenbriar Boys recorded "He Was a Friend of Mine" with singer Dian James on their Elektra Records album Dian & the Greenbriar Boys. The Briarwood Singers, a five-piece folk group, released a version of the song that reached number 126 on the Billboard charts in December 1963.[16] Bobby Bare also recorded "He Was a Friend of Mine" in 1964, in memory of air crash victim Jim Reeves.[citation needed] That same year, Petula Clark released a French version of the song under the title "Toi qui m'as fait pleurer" ("You, who have made me cry"), with Bobby Bare credited as the writer.[citation needed]
Stephen Stills' band Manassas covered "He Was a Friend of Mine" during a 1972 performance at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Netherlands, which was released in 2017 as the Live Treasure album.[17] Tom Goodkind of the Washington Squares sang the song with Marco Sin of Dirty Looks on bass and Billy Ficca of Television on drums at NYC's Paladium as a tribute to friend Abbie Hoffman. Dave Van Ronk sang the song at the memorial concert for Phil Ochs in New York City's Madison Square Garden Felt Forum, in May 1976, after Ochs' suicide. Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Jerry Jeff Walker sing a duet version on Elliott's 1998 album Friends of Mine, and Walker includes it in his 1996 album Scamp. American actor Billy Bob Thornton included a cover of the Byrds' version of the song on his 2001 debut album Private Radio.[18]
The Grateful Dead commonly performed a song called "He Was a Friend of Mine" during live concerts between 1966 and 1970, but that song was in fact based on the Mark Spoelstra song, "Just a Hand to Hold".[19]
