November 17, 1944—Gene Clark, an original member of the 1960s pioneering folk-rock group The Byrds, was born in Tipton, Mo., to an amateur-musician father who fed him a diet of country-music standards. Ironically, the future composer of “Eight Miles High” and several other original compositions for his band saw his career blown off course by fear of flying—and his life ended a quarter century later by a host of additional personal demons.
It's hard for me to think that Clark would have been 65 years old today. As a teenager, I nearly wore out my LP of The Byrds’ Greatest Hits. I loved the smooth harmonies and jangling sounds of its dozen or so tunes, but the back cover provided only minimal information about authorship, and none at all on the band’s history. It wasn’t till much later that I gained an idea of the clash of personalities that put this group through constant reincarnations, and not till now did I understand the tragedy that led Clark to become the first member to leave the group and the first to die.
Clark occupies roughly the same position in the Byrds that his contemporary Brian Jones did in the Rolling Stones: a band member present at the creation who, after a period of dominance, found himself increasingly marginalized—partly through the usual ego problems attendant in any collaboration of strong-willed creative types, but also partly through health issues. (See my post on the Stone’s 1969 “death by misadventure.”)
Drug abuse not only undercut Jones’ primary position within the Stones but eventually rendered him so unreliable that he was forced out of the band he had helped form. Substance abuse appeared early in Clark’s career, too, but didn’t threaten his life until much later. What really proved problematic was his phobia about flights.
Jones, an accomplished guitarist and darling of the girls in the Stones’ early days, witnessed the evaporation of his dominance as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards assumed more of the band’s songwriting burden. Clark was nowhere near the guitarist and every bit the songwriter that Jones wasn’t, but, like the Stone, his contribution to his band has been overshadowed by two more flamboyant, enduring members: Roger McGuinn and David Crosby.
Nowadays, the latter two loom far larger in memories of the group than their now-deceased bandmate. Like Alan Alda with M*A*S*H, McGuinn, with granny glasses that John Lennon adopted and that distinctive 12-string Rickenbacker guitar, remained the one physical and sonic constant in a changing lineup. Crosby’s prominence was enhanced not only by membership in this group, but in the later Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
There’s a solid real-life basis to that seriocomic scene in Cameron Crowe’s semiautobiographical, Oscar-winning script for Almost Famous, when the up-and-coming band ‘70s band Stillwater, hitting a pocket of mid-air turbulence, suddenly unburdens themselves of long-held secrets. Given a minute, almost anyone can reel off rock-era musicians who lost their lives in plane crashes: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, Otis Redding, Jim Croce, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Ricky Nelson, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, to name just a few.
Had he gone down in mid-flight, the shy Clark would have been part of this long-remembered company.
Instead, Clark left the group in 1966, only a few months after co-writing “Eight Miles High” (not a drug song, despite the silly rumor that led it to be banned from many stations after release) , which moved the Byrds decisively away from the Dylan and folk-tune covers that landed them on the charts in the first place.
This landmark in “psychedelic rock,” unfortunately, became Clark’s monument. He could dismiss with cool objectivity the turbulent British tour that inspired the song (“You’ll find that it’s stranger than known,” he sang), but not the cabin turbulence that seized him with terror. (He told his family of one incident in which a 707 he was on went into a downdraft or wind shear and plunged 1,000 feet.) The resentment of McGuinn, Crosby, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke over his prolific songwriting only increased his discomfort, so, after only two albums, Clark left the band at age 21. The most important and productive part of his life was over.
The rest of his life was anti-climactic: brief spells spent re-entering the orbit of group members (notably, in the Reunion and McGuinn, Clark and Hillman LPs); solo work and collaborations with other musicians that never climbed the charts; a long lawsuit, ultimately involving every original Byrd, sparked by Clark’s “Byrds tribute tour” that came to be billed, to other members’ annoyance, as “the Byrds”; and ulcer and stomach surgery brought on by years of heavy drinking.
The beginning of the 1990s brought renewed appreciation for Clark, as Tom Petty covered one of his Byrds-penned originals, “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better,” and the group was admitted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. Only four months later, however, a bleeding ulcer ended Clark’s life at age 46. (Two years later, Michael Clarke died as well, also victimized by substance abuse.)
Clark’s gravestone highlights two fascinating aspects of his life. First, the year of his birth: 1944. (As an aspiring musician, he had lied about his age to play in clubs where the drink age was 21, so he added on three years—a “fact” that made its made into early reference books on the band.) Second, the brief epigraph, “No Other,” which evokes a 1974 album of his that, though it supposedly featured some of his best post-Byrds work, suffered from lack of promotion by industry mogul David Geffen.
No matter. For his fine vocals and lyrics, for his innovative blend of folk and country with rock ‘n’ roll, Byrds aficionados have long known there was “no other” like Gene Clark.
It's hard for me to think that Clark would have been 65 years old today. As a teenager, I nearly wore out my LP of The Byrds’ Greatest Hits. I loved the smooth harmonies and jangling sounds of its dozen or so tunes, but the back cover provided only minimal information about authorship, and none at all on the band’s history. It wasn’t till much later that I gained an idea of the clash of personalities that put this group through constant reincarnations, and not till now did I understand the tragedy that led Clark to become the first member to leave the group and the first to die.
Clark occupies roughly the same position in the Byrds that his contemporary Brian Jones did in the Rolling Stones: a band member present at the creation who, after a period of dominance, found himself increasingly marginalized—partly through the usual ego problems attendant in any collaboration of strong-willed creative types, but also partly through health issues. (See my post on the Stone’s 1969 “death by misadventure.”)
Drug abuse not only undercut Jones’ primary position within the Stones but eventually rendered him so unreliable that he was forced out of the band he had helped form. Substance abuse appeared early in Clark’s career, too, but didn’t threaten his life until much later. What really proved problematic was his phobia about flights.
Jones, an accomplished guitarist and darling of the girls in the Stones’ early days, witnessed the evaporation of his dominance as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards assumed more of the band’s songwriting burden. Clark was nowhere near the guitarist and every bit the songwriter that Jones wasn’t, but, like the Stone, his contribution to his band has been overshadowed by two more flamboyant, enduring members: Roger McGuinn and David Crosby.
Nowadays, the latter two loom far larger in memories of the group than their now-deceased bandmate. Like Alan Alda with M*A*S*H, McGuinn, with granny glasses that John Lennon adopted and that distinctive 12-string Rickenbacker guitar, remained the one physical and sonic constant in a changing lineup. Crosby’s prominence was enhanced not only by membership in this group, but in the later Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
There’s a solid real-life basis to that seriocomic scene in Cameron Crowe’s semiautobiographical, Oscar-winning script for Almost Famous, when the up-and-coming band ‘70s band Stillwater, hitting a pocket of mid-air turbulence, suddenly unburdens themselves of long-held secrets. Given a minute, almost anyone can reel off rock-era musicians who lost their lives in plane crashes: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, Otis Redding, Jim Croce, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Ricky Nelson, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, to name just a few.
Had he gone down in mid-flight, the shy Clark would have been part of this long-remembered company.
Instead, Clark left the group in 1966, only a few months after co-writing “Eight Miles High” (not a drug song, despite the silly rumor that led it to be banned from many stations after release) , which moved the Byrds decisively away from the Dylan and folk-tune covers that landed them on the charts in the first place.
This landmark in “psychedelic rock,” unfortunately, became Clark’s monument. He could dismiss with cool objectivity the turbulent British tour that inspired the song (“You’ll find that it’s stranger than known,” he sang), but not the cabin turbulence that seized him with terror. (He told his family of one incident in which a 707 he was on went into a downdraft or wind shear and plunged 1,000 feet.) The resentment of McGuinn, Crosby, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke over his prolific songwriting only increased his discomfort, so, after only two albums, Clark left the band at age 21. The most important and productive part of his life was over.
The rest of his life was anti-climactic: brief spells spent re-entering the orbit of group members (notably, in the Reunion and McGuinn, Clark and Hillman LPs); solo work and collaborations with other musicians that never climbed the charts; a long lawsuit, ultimately involving every original Byrd, sparked by Clark’s “Byrds tribute tour” that came to be billed, to other members’ annoyance, as “the Byrds”; and ulcer and stomach surgery brought on by years of heavy drinking.
The beginning of the 1990s brought renewed appreciation for Clark, as Tom Petty covered one of his Byrds-penned originals, “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better,” and the group was admitted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. Only four months later, however, a bleeding ulcer ended Clark’s life at age 46. (Two years later, Michael Clarke died as well, also victimized by substance abuse.)
Clark’s gravestone highlights two fascinating aspects of his life. First, the year of his birth: 1944. (As an aspiring musician, he had lied about his age to play in clubs where the drink age was 21, so he added on three years—a “fact” that made its made into early reference books on the band.) Second, the brief epigraph, “No Other,” which evokes a 1974 album of his that, though it supposedly featured some of his best post-Byrds work, suffered from lack of promotion by industry mogul David Geffen.
No matter. For his fine vocals and lyrics, for his innovative blend of folk and country with rock ‘n’ roll, Byrds aficionados have long known there was “no other” like Gene Clark.
I never understood McGuinn, Clark, and Hillman until McGuinn explained it at a concert in Chatham when Dennis Elsas interviewed him and he discussed that they had gotten a producer who was trying to make their sound fit the tunes of the day—late Bee Gees-like disco tracks.
ReplyDeleteDavid Geffen doesn't have as much to answer for as Phil Spector, but it might be close.