The idea really came about in the late '90s when I was at Rhino, producing Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Boom (1950-1970), a 3-CD box set chronicling the folk revival of the '50s and '60s. When it came time to look for a liner note writer, my first choice was Ben Edmonds, who had written a set of notes for our Phil Ochs box that read like a first rate novel, gripping and tragic, as was the artist's life. It turned out Ben was already committed to another project and wasn't able to meet our deadlines. But something he said stuck in my mind: "when you do the folk rock box, count me in."

At the end of 2000 I left Rhino. The folk box came out in 2001 to critical acclaim and got me a Grammy^® nomination. I was doing some work as a freelancer for Shout! Factory, the company started by Rhino founder Richard Foos. The head of A&R was Shawn Amos, who I had also worked with at Rhino. I decided to pitch the folk rock box idea to him and he liked it, but he insisted that it be brought right up to the present. Now, up to this moment I had been thinking of a box set that started and ended in the '60s, maybe up to 1970, but no later. In the view of most music experts the genre only lasted from 1965 to 1969. But Shawn's concept made sense to me. True, in the '70s folk rock morphed into the singer-songwriter and country rock genres, but if you think of folk rock as any music with both folk and rock elements, you can create a compilation that traces the lineage of folk in rock right up to the present. What Shawn and I envisioned was a 4-CD set, with each CD representing a decade, disc one being the '60s and disc four being the '90s through the present, that encompassed classic '60s folk rock, but also singer-songwriter, country rock, roots rock and Americana, and also the odd rock band playing their version of a folk song (e.g., Thin Lizzy doing "Whiskey In The Jar" or Traffic doing "John Barleycorn").

When Shawn gave me the green light on the project I immediately contacted Ben Edmonds, excited to tell him that his old idea had finally come to fruition. As it turns out, Ben didn't share our vision of the project. He was one of those who believed you couldn't call it folk rock if it wasn't of the '60s. So, once again, I had to look elsewhere for a writer. Although disappointed, I forged ahead, starting to compile my track list. Since it was going to be only one CD per decade, I realized there wouldn't be a lot of room for rarities or the esoteric, and Shawn wanted as many big names as possible. But I did manage to include a few artists or tracks on each disc that might have been new to the audience.

Not long after I completed and turned in the first draft of my track list, Shout! Factory pulled the plug on the project, telling me the sales on their last various artists box set had been disappointing, and so they had decided not to proceed with the folk rock box. I was devastated, but had the presence of mind to get a written release from them, giving me permission to seek another distributor.

Rhino seemed like the next logical choice, there are not many options when it comes to shopping a various artists, various licensors box set. The majors generally just want to exploit their own catalog and don't do much cross-licensing. So I contacted the only person left at Rhino A&R that I had worked with when I was there. To my surprise, he was "too busy" to even look at my idea!

I was talking about the project with my old friend Bruce Pollock, who had written the liner notes for my first Rhino folk compilations, the Troubadours of the Folk Era series. He was now working at BMG Special Markets and he was very excited about the folk rock box. I sent him a copy of my track list and he began to make some suggested changes and additions that I felt improved it. He also suggested I contact a guy named Mike Jason at Time Life Music, who Bruce knew from BMG. I pitched the idea to Mike via email, and he ran it by his marketing people. Ultimately they gave me the thumbs up and the project was on again, this time with Bruce on board co-compiling and writing half the liner notes.

The track list is compiled in Excel, with columns for: Track Number (In this case, I was limited by Time Life to 18 tracks per CD, due to manufacturing costs, so each disc needed 18 primary tracks and 8-12 alternates, should we be unable to license some of the primary tracks.); Licensor (The master owner. Part of my responsibility was to research this information and provide the legal people at Time Life with the correct master owner for each track. In most cases it was one of the four major music companies: EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, Universal.); Source (The exact title and catalog number of the original album release. For this compilation I was using almost entirely album versions, even though some of the tracks had also been hit singles, so I always sourced the original album release information, unless it had only been released as a single.); Month of Release and Year of Release (These were two separate columns, so I could sort the spreadsheet chronologically by month and year.); Song Title (exactly as it appears on the original label copy); Artist (exactly as billed on the original label copy); Time (Exact timing?as close as possible?in minutes and seconds. It's important to know if your 18 primary tracks are going to fit on an 80 minute CD. For example, I found that disc two, with the full-length version of Don McLean's "American Pie," timed out at 79:36 with only 17 tracks.) Then there were some columns to keep track of the licensing status, where dates were filled in: Requested, Cleared, Pending, Refused.

The key to putting together a great various artists box set is licensing. If the person who does the licensing doesn't understand the concept, or doesn't care about it, he or she won't be able to effectively "sell" the idea to the prospective master owners, the ones we're going to have to license the tracks from. Unlike Rhino, Time Life did not have one in-house person doing all the licensing for every disc of the box. The way they worked it, each disc was to be manufactured by a different major label and the manufacturer would do the licensing on that particular disc. This meant I had to skew each disc toward one or the other of the four major music companies, in other words there had to be more tracks on that disc from that major than from any other licensor. The way it worked out, Sony BMG had disc one (The '60s), Warner Strategic Marketing (the once-and-future Rhino) had discs two and four (The '70s and The '90s and Beyond) and Universal had disc three (The '80s). I was to consult with the three licensing people and, operating within the strict protocol dictated by their company, use whatever personal connections I had to expedite the licensing of key tracks and artists. As luck would have it, the guy that would license in for WSM was an old friend of mine, David Ponak. David turned out to be a huge asset to the project, not only because of our friendship, but because of his enthusiasm for and understanding of the concept. He provided me with an example of one of his licensing request letters, which always included a paragraph or two that gave an enthusiastic description of the main selling points of the project. From this I was able to fashion a blurb for Time Life to circulate to the other two licensing people, hopefully that would not only give them an understanding of the concept, but also some copy they could incorporate into their request letters. Here it is:

4 Decades of Folk Rock is a deluxe, 4-CD box set that traces the legacy of folk rock from its beginnings in 1965 through the present. Each disc represents a decade (Disc 1, the '60s, Disc 2, the '70s, Disc 3, the '80s and Disc 4 the '90s through the present). Accompanied by extensive liner notes and photos, this high profile release features many of the greatest artists and songs of the last 40 years and clearly shows the progression of folk rock into the singer-songwriter, country rock, and Americana genres, and the influence of folk on rock, then and now.

One of my first priorities was to contact Jeff Rosen, Bob Dylan's manager, who had been very gracious to me in the past and had facilitated the licensing of a Dylan track on my Rhino folk box. I felt the song "Like a Rolling Stone" should be the first track on disc one and the keynote track of the compilation. At the time, my proposed title for the box was Return of the Mystery Tramp: Four Decades of Folk Rock. The Mystery Tramp is a character that appears in "Like a Rolling Stone" and I just felt we wouldn't have a credible compilation without that track. I knew I couldn't just call up Jeff and ask for the track. I had to go through the Sony BMG licensing person and ask permission to contact the artist's management, explaining that, if Rosen knew it was my compilation, he would look favorably upon granting permission on behalf of the artist. I asked Sony BMG's licensing person, if I could do this and he said I could. I was careful to do all this in writing-via email-because I knew how sensitive the majors were about outsiders contacting their artists and managers. I made the call and, as I had hoped, Jeff was impressed enough with the project to give his okay to licensing a Dylan track that had never been licensed for a various artists compilation before-at least not in the U.S. It seemed to take forever, but at last the track cleared. Then I got an angry email from Time Life, saying the Sony people had complained to them about me contacting artists' managers without their permission! I knew they could only mean the Dylan track, because I hadn't contacted any other managers at that time. I had to show them the email giving me permission from the Sony licensing person. Now it was my turn to be indignant: I had done everything exactly right, followed protocol, and I had secured the most important track on the compilation, so why were they giving me grief?!!

The licensing process took about 6 months, but the wait was worth it. We cleared 90% of our primary tracks (7 refusals out of 71 tracks). I did wind up speaking with a couple of other managers, with whom I was friendly-Elliot Roberts for Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash and Cree Miller for Jackson Browneand-successfully got those artists to clear. Remarkably, some great major names like James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, Lucinda Williams, R.E.M., Wilco and Sarah McLaughlan came on board without any cajoling. I was gratified to hear that some of them did so simply because they saw the merit of the project.

Meanwhile I was hard at work, researching the discographical information?the track list at the end of the booklet, which contains all the factual details of the tracks: title, artist, timing, songwriter(s), all the musicians, producer(s) recording studio(s), location(s) and recording date(s), original album title, catalog number and release date (usually month and year) and the legal licensing line. Here's an example:

 1. Wooden Ships – Crosby, Stills & Nash (5:27)

       (D. Crosby, P. Kantner, S. Stills)

       David Crosby: vocal, guitar • Stephen Stills: vocal, guitar, bass & organ • Graham Nash: vocal • Dallas Taylor: drums

       Produced by Crosby, Stills & Nash with Bill Halverson

       Recorded at Wally Heider's Studio III, Los Angeles, CA, June 1968-April 1969

       From the album Crosby, Stills & Nash, Atlantic 19117 (5/1969)

       Produced Under License From Atlantic Recording Corp.

In many ways, this research was the most exciting and gratifying part of the process for me. By the time licensing was completed, we had obtained CD sources for every track on the compilation. All but a couple were on commercial CDs. Two or three tracks that were unavailable on CD were culled for us from the Sony BMG vaults (thanks to the fact that Bruce was an executive there) and burned onto CDRs. But, as expected, not all of the information I wanted to include in my booklet was printed in the CD booklets. I was determined to get every musician, every recording studio and all the dates. With the help of many wonderful people in the music industry I was able to get over 90% of the discographical information I was after. Along the way I reached out to artists like The Roaches, the Bangles, Peter Case, Anne McCue and Jesse Colin Young and legendary producers like Peter Asher, David Kershenbaum, Erik Jacobsen and John Boylan, as well as artists' mangers and A&R people at the labels, who provided me with information that had never been documented on previous releases of these tracks.

Bruce and I had decided to divide the liner notes, with him writing an overview of the genre and the "atmosphere" and me writing a track-by-track-a paragraph of 100-200 words on each artist and track. I also wrote an intro to the liner notes, explaining a bit about our concept and objectives. Bruce's piece turned out to be a surprisingly moving, epic saga, tracing the meteoric rise of an idealistic generation, their subsequent disillusionment, and their legacy to the generations that followed. The net result turned out to be a 65-page, 20,000-word book (to call it a "booklet" would be more than an understatement!).

Time Life had a mastering facility in upstate New York that they liked to use for box sets like this, but I was determined to oversee the mastering personally and, thanks in no small part to the understanding of Bas Hartung, who had, by this time, been brought in by Time Life as my A&R supervisor, I was allowed to master at DigiPrep in Los Angeles, a studio where many of the best Rhino products had been re-mastered. Warren Salyer, the owner, and my mastering engineer, Dave Schultz understood that mastering a compilation-especially a various artists compilation-was a tricky business, as one had to match the sound on disparate recordings that had been done in different places and times. Gone are the days when the licensor provides you with a first generation master source. Since the advent of the CD, that became as good a master source as you were likely to get. As I mentioned, I had acquired all of the CD sources, not just for research purposes, but also for mastering.

Since signing the deal with Time Life, the whole process had gone more smoothly than any multi-disc compilation I had ever been involved with. It was almost too good to be true and, as it turned out, it wasn't quite true. After the masters were finished and approved, Time Life forwarded to me an ominous email from Prince's publishing company, denying us permission to include the song "Manic Monday," written by Prince and performed by the Bangles. Up to that time I didn't think the publisher of a song had the power to prevent someone from licensing a song for any purpose, as long as the licensee paid the statutory mechanical royalty. It turns out, as Mike Jason explained to me, that, if the licensee takes a compulsory license (that is, without the publisher's expressed approval), the publisher can make the licensee account to them on a monthly basis, a hardship which, in Mike's words, would be way "too onerous" for Time Life to deal with. And so they made me select another Bangles song. I chose "Hazy Shade of Winter," their cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song that not only worked perfectly as a folk rock song with an '80s sound, but also represented Simon & Garfunkel, who had not been included on the box, since I was told they would be "unlicensable." Amazingly, Sony BMG turned the new licensing request around for us in three days, and we were back in business. Now, all I had to do was to go back and "re-re-master" disc three. Oh yes, and research the label copy for the new track. This turned out to be much harder than I had anticipated. The only album sources for this track were the soundtrack album to the movie Less Than Zero and a greatest hits collection, neither of which had any details about the musicians, studio or recording dates. Shawn Amos was doing a new album with Susanna Hoffs, and I had contacted her earlier for info on the musicians on "Manic Monday." But now it turns out that none of the Bangles have any memory of the recording of "Hazy Shade of Winter." An enlightening conversation with their former manager, my friend Mike Gormley, gave me some insight into this: The band at that time was experiencing interpersonal tensions and was on the verge of breaking up. Mike was about to quit as their manager. Rick Rubin did the original production of the song for the movie soundtrack and the Bangles rejected his recording, opting to go back into the studio-a different studio-and re-do it with their engineer, Bill Drescher, who is credited as the producer of the track. So I went in search of Bill Drescher. My friend Jerimaya Grabher is the editor of the Producers & Engineers Directory and I thought surely he would know how to find Bill Drescher but, to my surprise, he didn't. I followed several more leads that turned out to be dead ends. Meanwhile, time was running out; I was already past my deadline to turn in booklet copy. I did a Google search and came up with a band called Alien Cowboys that Bill Drescher had produced recently. I emailed the band and, after what seemed like an eternity, got a reply with Bill's contact info. I spoke with Bill on the phone and was able to piece together almost all the information, with one "unknown" and a "poss." Here's what I came up with:

15. Hazy Shade Of Winter – Bangles (2:43)

(Paul Simon)

Personnel/Susanna Hoffs: vocal, guitar • Vicki Peterson: guitar, vocal • Michael Steele: bass • Debbi Peterson: drums, vocal • with/(poss.) George Drakoulias: lead guitar • Steve Bartek: guitar • Unknown: keyboards

Produced by Bangles & Bill Drescher

Additional Production: Rick Rubin & David White

Recorded at the Record Plant, Los Angeles, CA, Sept. 1987

From the original motion picture soundtrack album Less Than Zero, Def Jam 44042 (11/87)

P 1987 SONY BMG ENTERTAINMENT, Under License From The Sony BMG Custom Marketing Group, Sony BMG Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment

Once Bruce and I had turned in all of the writings, there was the editorial process, the selection of photos and, oh yes, the graphic concept for the cover. Remember I said my original title was going to be Return of the Mystery Tramp: Four Decades of Folk Rock? Well, I also had a graphic concept for a cover to go along with this title. It was going to look like a B movie poster with the sinister image of the Mystery Tramp ("as you stare into the vacuum of his eyes…") coming out of the shadows, proffering an electric guitar in one hand and an acoustic in the other. Well, to make a long story short, the powers that be at Time Life ultimately decided that my title didn't tell the buyer what the product was succinctly enough, and so the title-and the graphic concept-was abandoned in favor of simply Four Decades of Folk Rock. In all fairness, they did come up with a nice graphic for the cover, the simple and elegant image of a Rickenbacker electric 12-string guitar, overlaid with collage-like photos of some of the major artists.

My final duties were to proof the booklet and to work with the publicist on a press release. As I write this I'm at the end of an odyssey of close to a decade. The finished product is probably a few weeks away and the release is two months away (September 11^th-a day that will live infamy, but also a lucky day for me-the first anniversary of my employment at Concord Music Group). All I can do now is wait and hope for the best.

In this turbulent time of transition for the music industry, as the physical CD passes into extinction and is supplanted by digital product, it occurs to me that a box set like this, with a big book and many artists from many different labels, may quite possibly be the hardest item to replace digitally and therefore may just be the last bastion of physical music product.

-Ted Myers

July 2007