I think one's opinion of the Byrds' later period is basically going to come down to whether you dig country or not.
I can't argue against that assertion that Clarence White was a great technically skilled musician, jimi Hendrix was a fan, etc, but to me those things are beside the point. What matters to me is the musical direction they took.
"You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" is an OK song, but they had done plenty of Dylan covers before, and better ones IMO, so for me this is a bit of a yawn. The bigger problem though is that this song is actually one of the better songs from their later catalogue.
When you talk about "country rock", the obvious comparison, the elephant in the room if you like, is The Eagles. Now I stopped being an Eagles fan after Hotel California, but for a while there I thought The Eagles were doing something really new - not country, so much as rock-pop songs done in a country style. To this day I consider Tequila Sunrise one of the best songs ever written - utterly simple, yet managing to sound fresh and original.
One could (and probably should) do a whole separate Eagles thread. My point however (and all this is "IMO") is that The Eagles brought something new to the table, whereas The Byrds, from Sweetheart of the Rodeo onwards, sounded most of the time like a country and western nostalgia band.
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