McGuinn has settled into a drearily unproductive phase as one of rock's weary patriarchs. On Roger McGuinn & Band, his third solo effort, McGuinn again fails to come to grips with his present inertia. The band is little more than a backing unit of typically competent, anonymous L.A. country rockers. True, they harmonize better than later editions of the Byrds but they play without imagination or spirit. This album makes it terribly clear just how important was Clarence White's contribution to the best work of the latter-day Byrds: White's virtuosity and controlled energy gave McGuinn the inspiration he needed to keep him involved and productive. There's no one in the present band capable of providing that challenge.

Ironically, McGuinn underscores this current lack by recutting his and Jacques Levy's "Lover of the Bayou." The original version of the song, recorded live in 1970 and contained on (Untitled), the last exceptional Byrds album, is punishingly raw and vital, with White's guitar twisting nastily through McGuinn's torn and equally nasty vocal. Here, in contrast, we get a polite performance in which all the pieces fit but nothing is expressed or risked.

That kind of pointlessness is the album's distinguishing characteristic. McGuinn's inclusion of inferior versions of "Lover" and "Born to Rock and Roll" (in its original form the best track on the Byrds reunion album) points out his lack of new inspiration. So does his resorting to the songs of his current band members for five of the album's ten tracks: None of these is likely to become a rock standard. That leaves a pair of slight new McGuinn songs, "Lisa" and "Easy Does It" and a rendition of Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" that has neither the magic of the original nor the audaciousness of the version recorded by the English group G.T. Moore and the Reggae Guitars (on the Charisma import of the same name). There it is, an entire album by a certified old master without a single noteworthy track.

Compared with McGuinn, Stephen Stills has a lot to say on his fifth (counting the two with the group Manassas) solo endeavor—but not enough to make Stills a successful album. Stills's first problem is that he often fails to express his thoughts and feelings in an artful or lucid way; his second problem is that his arranging and recording approach tends to obscure whatever life and intimacy his songs