BY JUD COST

It was a thrilling entry by Roger McGuinn into the cozy environs of Montalvo's Carriage House Theatre (capacity about 300). Topped by a black Indiana Jones-style hat, he strode briskly to the mic, already playing the jangling opening chords of "My Back Pages" on his electric Rickenbacker 12-string, and the man who assembled the Byrds in late 1964 received a thundering hero's welcome. Flanked by a modest array of instruments that included an acoustic 12-string, a banjo and a custom-built Martin with a seventh string added, McGuinn took a seat and proceeded to spin out a delightful 90-minute narrative of his charmed life in the music business. It was every bit as enthralling as a similar format employed by Ray Davies of the Kinks in the same venue 11 years ago.

McGuinn's boyhood days, sneaking into famed, 100-seat Chicago folk club The Gate Of Horn, and his early guitar lessons from a local folk music center were all detailed with just the right musical selections: from obscure Leadbelly and Clancy Brothers tunes to early Elvis and Bob Gibson. Before he'd graduated from high school in 1960, McGuinn was offered a job playing guitar with red-hot folk trio the Limeliters when Glenn Yarbrough and Alex Hassilev heard him at The Gate Of Horn. That gig led to others backing the Chad Mitchell Trio and none other than Bobby Darin. When McGuinn first heard the Beatles in '64, however, he knew what he wanted to do: electrify his beloved folk music.

The most intriguing moments for longtime Byrds fans centered around McGuinn assembling the band with Gene Clark, a singer he met at L.A. folk club The Troubadour. McGuinn was opening shows for Hoyt Axton at the famed Hollywood nitery by trying to convert old 2/4 folk songs into something more au courant - Beatles-style, 4/4 rockers. Up-and-coming country star Roger Miller, second-billed for the engagement, gave McGuinn some good advice: "He told me, 'I like what you're doing, but you might try not getting so mad at the audience.'"

McGuinn's experiment did attract a third singer, baby-faced David Crosby, who claimed he could get free time at the studios of local jazz label World Pacific if they let him join the band. McGuinn selected drummer Michael Clarke much the same way Marty Balin chose early Jefferson Airplane skinsman Skip Spence - by his haircut. "He looked like two of the Rolling Stones," said McGuinn of Clarke who played "a little bit of conga drum" and was given some cardboard boxes with tambourines duct-taped to the top to quickly learn his trade. Chris Hillman, already a proficient Bluegrass player, picked up the electric bass in no time. Once McGuinn decided on a Bach-like intro to semi-obscure Bob Dylan tune "Mr. Tambourine Man," the Byrds skyrocketed to the top of the pop charts in the spring of '65, as the brightest young stars signed to Columbia Records.

When Dylan first heard the Byrds rehearsing the tune, he asked, "Nice song, whose is it?" "It's one of yours, man," answered McGuinn.

Alternating between stand-up electric and sit-down acoustic, McGuinn unspooled a potted history of the Byrds - from their reworking of Pete Seeger's biblically-indebted "Turn, Turn, Turn" and the John Coltrane/Ravi Shankar-inspired raga-rock of 1966's "Eight Miles High" to the prototype country-rock of 1968 album Sweetheart Of The Rodeo," which shone plenty of light on new recruit Gram Parsons. McGuinn encouraged everyone to sing along to "Mr. Spaceman," an earlier, humorous stab at country-rock with a sci-fi twist.

Then there was the fabled incident of McGuinn co-writing a tune for the soundtrack of 1969's Easy Rider, the film, according to its star, Peter Fonda, whose two lead characters were based on McGuinn and Crosby, themselves. "Peter flew out to New York and met Dylan to ask him to write a tune for the movie," said McGuinn. "Dylan scribbled down a few lines on a cocktail napkin and told him, 'Take this to McGuinn, he'll know what to do.'" When presented with the hallowed artifact, McGuinn wasted no time finishing up "The Ballad Of Easy Rider."

McGuinn circled the bases tonight and headed for home like a brown-eyed handsome man with an inspired electric encore of Dylan's "The Chimes Of Freedom," followed by Gene Clark's "I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better." You couldn't have asked for anything more.

Backstage, I suggested to McGuinn as he poured out celebratory glasses of red wine, that the only thing I'd add to his stellar performance was a tale he told me while I was penning liner notes for Sundazed reissues of his early solo albums on Columbia. He's a huge fan of classical guitarist Andres Segovia, who apparently only missed one live engagement in his long career - when he died that same morning. McGuinn wants to go out in similar fashion, even more dramatically, by dying onstage. He'd like the people who witness his final performance to be telling each other as they leave the theatre: "Wow, he was dead before he hit the ground... and his Rickenbacker was still ringing!"

Gotta love a guy with that kinda attitude.