Chris Hillman’s musical life from Byrds to Burritos and more

LOS ANGELES — Tom Petty once described him as one of rock music’s most well-kept secrets, and Chris Hillman is fine with that. 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. “I was just having so much fun.” 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. A few years before, Parsons and Hillman had written the song “Sin City,” a searing indictment of the Los Angeles music scene’s dark side of money, drugs and fame in those years with the words, “On the 31st floor, a gold-plated door, won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain.” Hillman, who credits his Christian faith with steering him past much of that tumult, doesn’t go into great detail about those moments in the book other than to observe that Parsons and others made bad choices. Soon they were making country-rock and folk-rock history with songs like “Eight Miles High” and “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better.” Over the years he would play in eight different bands alongside a veritable Who’s Who of LA musicians of the time, including David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay.