" data-original-title="" title="">The Byrds 1964-1967 is the prototypical coffee table item/gift book. But even as the comparatively narrow time frame it covers would seem to belie the heft of nearly nine pounds within the eleven by thirteen-inch hardcovers, its team of curators headed by award-winning writer, researcher, and music historian Scott Bomar, achieves a much greater purpose: positing the ever-changing Byrds as metaphors for the rapid passage of that halcyon era of the sixties in which the band flourished.

In picturing the group metamorphosing from the clean-cut likes captured on pages four through eight to the exotic hirsute figures on stage at Monterey Pop in 1967, the often-uninterrupted string images of the band that comprises the bulk of the space in the four-hundred some pages seem to take on a lightning-fast life of their own. Yet that's wholly in keeping with the artistic evolution of a group that seemed to evolve in quantum leaps from the chiming guitars and soaring harmonies of their early folk-rock of "Turn Turn Turn" to the experimental psychedelia of "8 Miles High" just a year later.

The latter number is especially crucial in the progression of the Byrds as it marked the last significant contribution to their music from Gene Clark. The most prolific songwriter of the original quintet, he was also the most naturally photogenic, as shown here in multiple shots, especially those of the group in performance: as on page one-hundred sixty-seven, flanked by the guitarists in a perfect symmetry, he appeared the embodiment of the "Mr. Tambourine Man" of their initial