Note to guitarists: McGuinn has an instructional guitar video available on Homespun Tapes ( "The 12-String Guitar of Roger McGuinn", Homespun VD-GUI-GT01). The vinyl version (AL-4648), if you can locate a copy, sounds much better than the compact disk. His previous album, Back From Rio (Arista AR-8648), was released in January, 1991.
His most recent release, Live from Mars (Hollywood Records) is a compilation culled from his stage shows over the past two years plus two bonus studio tracks recorded with members of the Jayhawks. His stage show consists of an autobiographical excursion through his musical career. Since the Byrds, McGuinn has primarily worked as a solo artist, returning in recent years to his folk roots by playing small clubs accompanying himself on guitar. McGuinn also sang lead on many of the group's songs, including all of their Dylan interpretations. When this unusual picking pattern is done on an electric twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar, the resulting sound is a brilliant cascade of harmonic intervals and gleaming overtones. More from five-string banjo rolls than typical guitar scales. Lead guitarist McGuinn's unique style simultaneously employs a flat pick and fingerpicking patterns, drawing If you disassemble the complex tapestry of the Byrds' sound into its molecular underpinnings, McGuinn's distinctive voice and unique twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar are the nucleus.
McGuinn co-founded the group with Gene Clark and was its nominal leader.