Psychedelic Baby Magazine has published a wide-ranging interview with Cyrus Faryar — singer, guitarist, bouzouki player and founding member of the Modern Folk Quartet. Born in Tehran in 1936, Faryar spent his early childhood in wartime England and Honolulu before opening Greensleeves, Waikiki's first beat coffeehouse, in 1957. There he met Henry Diltz and helped form the Modern Folk Quartet, a group that modelled its four-part interplay on the Modern Jazz Quartet and recorded two albums for Warner Bros. in the early 1960s.

As the 1960s progressed, the MFQ plugged in. At the Troubadour in 1965 they debuted their electric set — Levi's, beads, electric guitar and bass — to an audience partly horrified, partly exhilarated. Sessions with Phil Spector and Jack Nitzsche at Gold Star Studios followed, though a full electric MFQ album never materialised. Faryar later led The Group With No Name at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, played bouzouki on Fred Neil's debut, worked with Cass Elliot and produced the Firesign Theatre's comedy albums. His solo records 'Cyrus' (1971) and 'Islands' (1973) document a voice that moved freely between folk, jazz, Hawaiian music and the emerging psychedelic sound.

The interview, conducted with help from Faryar's family, preserves his recollections of Greensleeves, the MFQ's harmonic craft, the electric transition, and a life lived across cultures — from Tehran to Honolulu to the LA scene that shaped 1960s folk-rock. The 1964 debut album stream is available on YouTube.