Welcome Clarkians to another issue of Echoes!

Photo of the month:

Gene admires some art while visiting a NYC gallery circa 1966. (Photographed by Byrds manager Jim Dickson, courtesy John Delgatto, Sierra/Entree Records.)

NEWS

Gene Clark Sings For You continues to get rave reviews! Full reviews can be found on the Reviews page on Gene-Clark.com. Here are some highlights:

• An essential acquisition for Clark, Byrds and Americana fans in general, Gene Clark Sings For You is a gift that deserves the getting. - Glide Magazine
• The album sounds more interesting than it is dated. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that we’re listening to the gifted melodies and songwriter who was only twenty-three at the time - Americana Highways
• Gene Clark Sings for You is a cause for celebration; we get to hear a songwriter working through the intricacies of songs in these tracks and to hear these songs as they’re being born in his mind and in his writing. - No Depression
• This new release includes all eight songs from the original acetate and see Clark moving away from the Byrds-esque folk-pop sounds heard on his debut album and nearer to the beautifully brooding sound he would later perfect on albums like White Light and No Other. - ReBeat 
• Gene Clark never got his due as a solo artist, but history's loss is our gain. - Shindig!
• There's reason to get excited about this record of long-lost and hard-to-find demo tunes from early in Gene Clark's post-Byrds years - Relix
• Four Stars **** - MOJO

On a side note, there were some delays due to "manufacturing problems" for the CD and as a result many of the pre-orders were not shipped (this also affected other releases). We understand that Omnivore's fulfillment service is trying to rectify this problem and will ship orders out as soon as they are able to. Gene Clark will Sing For You soon!

SPECIAL FEATURE

Gene and Ken, buddies & pals! Photo by Rick Roberts(!) taken January 18, 1986, Salt Lake City Utah.  

Ken Claybaugh: Is there an album in the plan?

Gene Clark: Yes there is. What version? Which particular people? It will probably be most of the people here, however it works. There's a couple of different projects. I don't know what it will be called. I don't think it will be called "The Byrds". I have no idea. There might eventually be a Byrds album of some sort, but I couldn't say that yet. There is some new music that we've all been working on and eventually within the next few months we'll get in a studio and do something. We want to be real careful though.  We want to take the time to select the right material, to make sure that we have time to arrange it and work it out, without just rushing into it. If we jump into it, it will end up like the other Byrds reunion album did you know, and be rushed and not really come together the way that it should.

KC: That seemed to me four solo artists getting together.

GC: That's what I mean. Everybody was with different groups. I was working on a film score and another album and everybody was out on the road with other groups. Manassas, the Byrds, everything all at once. So we didn't really get together and put it together the way we should and that's what it sounded like.

KC: Do you still get royalties from your early Byrds compositions?

GC: Sure, yeah.

KC: You were in the New Christy Minstrels. Let me name a few people and you can answer whether or not they were in the group at that same time. Barry McGuire?

GC: Yeah, Barry was there.

KC: Kenny Rogers?

GC: No, he was later. I was in before that. In fact he was in after Barry left actually.

KC: So Terry Williams, he was in about the same time as Kenny Rogers?

GC: Yeah, probably.

KC: What about Larry Ramos of The Association?

GC: Oh, he was there with me in the earlier group.

KC: Kim Carnes?

GC: She was later too.

KC: What can you tell me about the Sharks and the Surf Riders?

GC: Alright! Well, see, the Sharks was a high school rock band that I had from about the time I was 13 or 14 on up till I was about 17 and the Surf Riders was a folk trio.

KC: Despite the name?

GC: Despite the name. Well it was just a name one of the guys already had for a folk group that he had and I joined up with the two other guys, who also ended up with the Back Porch Majority and the Green Grass Group who were also, uh...

KC: Randy Sparks?

GC: Yeah, Randy Sparks.

KC: Kin Vassy was in the Back Porch Majority.

GC: Yeah, Kin Vassy was in the Back Porch Majority and, oh gosh, a lot of people. Chris Hillman was in the Green Grass Group at one time.

KC: You used to play at the Ice House out in Pasadena?

GC: The Ice House and a place called Ledbetters over in Westwood.

KC: Do you keep in contact with Doug Dillard at all?

GC: I talk to Doug every once in awhile. I haven't heard from him for a couple of months now. I tried to call him around the holidays and I didn't get an answer, so I don't know what exactly is going on.

KC: Have you heard Chris and Bernie's gospel album?

GC: No, I haven't.

KC: They've been here two summers in a row. This last summer with the Buckinghams, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the Grass Roots. The previous summer they were with Gary Puckett, Spanky McFarlane and the Association. But you know, good crowd, 8 to 10 thousand I would imagine.

GC: Yeah, I don't know if we'll do that or not. It's hard to say. So far, we haven't locked or hooked up with them. I know that they've been doing this for sometime now. We might, you never know.

Thanks to Ken Claybaugh for permission to reprint this interview and photos in Echoes.

The Clarkophile Speaks!

Recently writer TOM SANDFORD, author of  The Clarkophile blogspot ("an appreciation celebration of Gene Clark"), was interviewed by CHRISTOPHER HOLLOW of the Australian magazine Rhythms about his involvement with the recent release of Back Street Mirror EP from Entrée/Sierra Records. Tom has written articles on Gene which have been published in Shindig! magazine as well as additional liner notes for the Two Sides To Every Story reissue from High Moon Records and the cover notes to the Back Street Mirror EP. 

What do you hear when you hear these tracks? 

I hear fearlessness; a willingness to try anything.  There's a deep commitment to experimentation in these songs that far too many people have dismissed as failures and misfires. McGuinn and Crosby always seem to get name-checked as the innovators in The Byrds, but Gene Clark should be celebrated as a true visionary in his own right.  One need only look at this E.P. to see the ways in which he reconciled seemingly disparate genres. Take 'Back Street Mirror,' which I like to call the sister track to 'Echoes.' Obviously Gene was deep in his Dylan obsession at that point—as he would be for the remainder of 1967—but it's the juxtaposition of his Dylanesque phrasing with the glorious chamber-pop backing that, for me, makes it, like 'Echoes,' a masterstroke. Dylan couldn't have gotten away with it.  But there is something stately, soulfully dignified in Gene's approach.  Forget the Dylan impersonation for a minute, and just listen the commanding presence—the gravitas—in his voice. That's why I wish there had been a full scale chamber-pop LP made after his debut. He flirted with this direction, when I think he should have fully committed to it. 

But then Gene never stayed in one spot for long, and must've grown disenchanted, either with the sound itself, or Columbia's indifference to the direction.

With 'Only Colombe', 'Yesterday Am I Right,' and many others from the period, one can almost create a lost baroque album from 1967—Gene Clark's version of SMiLE.  This difference here is that I doubt whether any such project was planned, and most of the tracks were abandoned (by Gene) or rejected (by Columbia).
 

Elsewhere, 'She Told Me' is like the blueprint for a great power-pop song.  It's all there: the riff, the breaks, the rhythm.  I hear a song like that and instantly I'm hearing guitars, drums and voices that aren't there.  It would have been an absolute gift to the Byrds, or any other group.

There is a very specific reason why I suggested that the E.P.’s final track should be its earliest-recorded song, 'That's What You Want' (copyrighted in late 1965 while Gene was still in the Byrds). It's the earliest song in the set, yes, and yet it's the most forward-looking of the lot, at least in terms of the way in which it presages the sound Gene would pursue six years later on White Light. It's a deceptively simple song, one that I fear some will give the short shrift. I've already seen comments online like "It's easy to see why the Byrds rejected that one."  Well, that seems rather presumptuous to me.  In truth, there is no proof Gene submitted the song to the band for consideration.

If they did reject it, then, quite simply, they were fools.  Take a listen, get inside the song: it's a harrowing tale of romantic servitude and self-abnegation, contrasted by a partner's open indifference to—and simultaneous reliance upon—those same qualities. And Gene Clark was 21 when he wrote it.

Both personally and career-wise, 1967 has been a mysterious year for Gene Clark – arguably the height of his success and notoriety. Do these two releases help unravel the mystery or add to it? 

Both, I think.  The mysteriousness of the period is the result of a few things, not the least of which is an abrupt end to any kind of documentation of Gene's daily activities.  I'm sure you've read Christopher Hjort's excellent book that chronicles the day-to-day goings-on of the Byrds—recording sessions, gigs, TV appearances, etc.  After Gene stepped off that plane bound for New York, which effectively ended his life as an official member of the Byrds, we lose track of his daily life.  Everything we know has been put together like pieces of a puzzle.

There's no mention of the Byrds, the split, the scene at the airport. No malice, no bitterness, no self-pity.  When you remember that the guy just left a band coming off two #1’s in the same year, the grace and humility in his words is overwhelming. But then, one remembers that it's only a postcard, not a letter, and by definition, maddeningly brief. Should it be analyzed as a window into his soul?  Or is it just a guy trying to work things out, sending his mom and dad a postcard to say he was thinking of them?  So a bit of the mystery is solved, for sure, but this only leaves further questions...to which we will likely never get answers.

You helped get this music out. But why has it taken this long?

Because Gene's music was never about sales. He always put art first. From his complex lyrical wordplay to the fact that some of his most brilliant songs have no discernible chorus whatsoever to sing along with (quick: what's the chorus of 'Echoes'?), Gene was never going to be an easy artist to market. If it was difficult when Gene, the erstwhile Byrd, was still a big star, how does one justify it now, when it's difficult for everyone to sell records? We need more people like John Delgatto at Sierra Records and Cheryl Pawelski at Omnivore. These people are my heroes. Meeting Ingrid Neimanis (who runs the Gene-Clark.com site, did the artwork on the E.P. and is known online as Neon Brambles) was a changing point in my life. I'd finally met someone who got Gene Clark the same way I did. It was an honour to work with her, both on this project and The Lost Studio Sessions before it, because we both fought so hard and for so long to make it happen. I'll never be able to thank her enough for her encouragement and support.

What else is there for Gene-fans to hear from this 1966-1967-1968 period?

That's a genuinely tough one to answer, because we simply don't know the full extent of what's out there. So much is undocumented or lost to time.  Gene wrote so many songs and moved on from them so fast.  It's impossible to take a full inventory of extant material. One hears rumours and speculation, and it’s usually just rumours and speculation...mixed with a lot of wishful thinking.

Take Gene Clark Sings For You. Finally out, at long last—which is great—and yet, even after all this time we still have no idea of who played on it with Gene, apart from the keyboardist Alex Del Zoppo!  Even Del Zoppo himself doesn't remember, which is unsurprising when you're a Gene-fan. You expect these roadblocks. They're infuriating and enticing, all at once. You just take the hit, and keep moving forward. Chalk it up to more of that mystery we were discussing. On one hand we know more than we did before—another piece of the '66-'67 puzzle has been located. Good, so that's all cleared up then, right?  Wrong! It only deepens the mystery, and prompts a new set of questions. I'm sure you've heard the track 'Doctor, Doctor' that's also included in the new Sings For You release. How come we've never read about the recording session for that before?  I knew of the existence of an solo-acoustic demo of the song, but to find out that there's a full-band version is almost overwhelming. But the added bonus of its being an extraordinary song makes it all the more special.

Johnny Rogan talks about a song called 'That's Why', recorded during the sessions for the first solo album. Reading between the lines, it sure sounds like he's heard it. So why hasn't that turned up on any re-releases of the album? And what else is out there in the hands of collectors? What other material lies waiting to be discovered, restored and released? You can really drive yourself mad thinking about these things. But I love a good mystery. 

Both the Back Street Mirror E.P. and The Lost Studio Sessions 1964-1982 are available from Sierra Records.

Top left, close-up of Gene with the New Christy Minstrels, 1964, right, Gene goes solo and opens for Love at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, December 9, 1966. Gene circa 1967 with what appears to be the same guitar. Bottom left, the Dillard and Clark years, Gene with Doug Dillard circa 1969. Bottom right, publicity photo circa 1990. Same guitar?

(Thanks to Kenny Newberry and Dan Frechette and Adam Walsh for their help with this article.)

Out on the Side

We Hear...

​​​​​In The Plan

• “Gene Therapy” a Gene Clark podcast – topics & music specific to Gene’s career (yes folks this is still in the works!)

• "Who's Who" List of people associated with Gene Clark to be added to the website.

All I Want

• "Backstage Pass" - Did you see Gene perform in concert with the Byrds or solo? Echoes is always looking for recollections from fans who met Gene at a show and maybe even snapped a photo or two. Email: GeneClarkWebsite@gmail.com if you have anything you'd like to share.

• Guest Blog Spot - Do you have a talent for writing? Have you always wanted to write about your favorite Gene Clark album, or share your interpretions of his songs? If you would like to submit an interesting blog piece about Gene Clark for our website, please contact Echoes at GeneClarkWebsite@gmail.com with your pitch, Echoes would love to hear from you!

                                                                 JON FAUROT

JON FAUROT is a musician who has worked with numerous artists such as B.B. King, Maria Muldaur and of course, Gene Clark. He first worked with Gene on what is known as "The Glass House Tapes" which are a collection of unreleased demos recorded in the early 1980s. Jon was also the bass player with Gene's band for his final performances at the Cinegrill.  Jon Faurot still performs and resides in Mendicino, CA.

1. When was the first time you met Gene?

I first met Gene Clark at the home of actor, David Carradine, who lived in Laurel Canyon in a house we called the "Glass House" because of the large windows that went all around the house. I was friends with David's daughter Callista and spent a bit of time up there. Later on we used to play music at the house and it was where we recorded the music that became known as the "Glass House Tapes." I started playing with him because I was working with producer, Tommy Kaye and guitarist, Garth Beckington.

2. What is your favorite Gene Clark story/memory?

My best memory of Gene is sitting in his kitchen at night, playing guitar, or bass with him while he was working on new songs. I learned some subtle, interesting things about writing songs and could see that he had some kind of "road map" in his head about the way the song was supposed to go.

3. What do you know about Gene that you would want his fans to know?

I guess what I would want Gene's fans to know is what a really sweet person he was, I never heard him say a bad thing about anybody, a very caring guy.

4. Favorite Gene Clark Song/Album?

My favorite song of Gene's is "I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better." When I was about twelve years old, I remember putting that 45 on the turntable and playing it over and over, as I was trying to learn how to play the guitar, as well as the song. So many years later when I was playing with him and actually rehearsing that song, it was a wonderful experience for me.

5. Complete the sentence:

I think Gene Clark should be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame because...

I think Gene should be inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame because he was a true American original, who had a great deal to do with the creation of what we now know as "folk rock." Another reason would be because of the large body of work he left behind and the quality of the songs. He was far and away the best songwriter in The Byrds, in my opinion. Crosby came through a little later but at that time Gene was the guy.

(Thanks to Paul Kendall for his help with this month's 5Q.)

So long until next time. Enjoy your summer! Let's hit the beach!

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