Gene Clark

The Byrds

Harold Eugene Clark was born in Tipton, Missouri, in 1944, the third of 13 children. He learned guitar and harmonica from his father and began writing songs at 11. After a spell with the New Christy Minstrels he moved to Los Angeles, where he met Jim (later Roger) McGuinn at the Troubadour. In early 1964 the two began assembling the band that became the Byrds.

Clark was the Byrds' principal songwriter until early 1966 and wrote many of their best-known originals of the period, among them I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better, She Don't Care About Time and Eight Miles High. He left in early 1966. The reasons included his disappointment that McGuinn sang the major singles, his dislike of travelling and a chronic fear of flying. Uncut recounts McGuinn's memory of Clark panicking on a plane at Los Angeles airport after the band had recorded Eight Miles High, and walking off it. Chris Hillman said years later that at one time Clark was the power in the Byrds, the songwriter with a gift the rest of them had not yet developed.

Solo, and country rock

Columbia signed him as a solo artist, and Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers came out in 1967. It was a failure, released almost at the same time as the Byrds' Younger Than Yesterday on the same label. In October 1967 he rejoined the Byrds for about three weeks and left after an anxiety attack in Minneapolis. In 1968 he signed to A&M and teamed up with the banjo player Doug Dillard. With Bernie Leadon, Dave Jackson and Don Beck they made The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark and a second album, Through the Morning, Through the Night. Neither sold well, but both are now regarded as seminal examples of country rock and progressive bluegrass.

Mendocino

Clark settled in northern California, and Uncut calls White Light, Roadmaster and No Other a visionary trilogy. White Light was produced by Jesse Ed Davis, mostly acoustic and intimate, and it was praised but sold only in the Netherlands, where critics voted it album of the year. Roadmaster was assembled from unreleased A&M sessions and appeared only in the Netherlands at first.

After the 1973 Byrds reunion album, David Geffen signed him to Asylum. No Other was written over more than a year at his coastal home, then recorded in Los Angeles with producer Thomas Jefferson Kaye and a crowd of session musicians and backing singers. It cost over $100,000 and held eight songs, among them Life's Greatest Fool, Silver Raven and the eight-minute Some Misunderstanding. Geffen was unhappy, Asylum did little to promote it, and it was out of the catalogue by 1976.

Afterwards

Two Sides to Every Story followed in 1977 on RSO. In 1979 he joined McGuinn and Chris Hillman for McGuinn, Clark & Hillman, then made Firebyrd (1984) and So Rebellious a Lover with Carla Olson. In January 1991 the original Byrds performed together at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where they played his I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better. Clark died on 24 May 1991, aged 46. Others kept taking up his songs: Tom Petty covered I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better on Full Moon Fever in 1989, and in 2007 Robert Plant and Alison Krauss recorded Polly Come Home and Through the Morning, Through the Night on Raising Sand.

No Other was reissued on CD in 2003 and again by 4AD in November 2019, in formats up to a box set with a documentary, The Byrd Who Flew Alone. In January 2014 members of Beach House, Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear and other bands, with Iain Matthews, performed the album from start to finish over four shows. The Guardian's David Bennun wrote that it eventually became synonymous with the phrase lost masterpiece, and Pitchfork gave the 2019 reissue 9.3 out of 10.