No Other (Tipton, MO)

I didn’t know anything about Gene Clark until 1993, which was well after I’d fallen hard for The Stones, The Beatles, Neil Young and (ironically, given he was a founding member) The Byrds.  That year, Teenage Fanclub released their Thirteen LP. While it’s a pretty shambolic self-produced record, it has some terrific songs on it – including one called, simply, Gene Clark. (It has another called ‘Fear Of Flying’, which I worked out later is probably also about Gene).

I’d be lying if I said I immediately became a huge fan of his. In those days, I was much more in thrall to Gram Parsons, another ex-Byrd. It was an immediacy thing I think: Parsons’ music with International Submarine Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers and finally with Emmylou Harris was simpler, sweeter and catchier than Clark’s.

Or maybe – to those teenage ears – it was that Gene’s songs are just so much sadder. Not just compared to Gram’s but to almost any other songwriter since the 60s. Because in the subsequent years that I’ve grown to love Gene Clark, I hear him as a ‘mature’ voice. No one else wrote or performed songs so drenched in melancholy, grief, self-doubt and confusion. His masterpiece, the 1974 LP No Other is musically lush and expansive (with huge slabs of country, folk, jazz, gospel, blues and prog rock: I’ve always thought the title track sounds like a lost Sly & The Family Stone classic). But emotionally it’s absolutely the equal of Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night; the sound of a man falling apart.

He was the equal of any of his peers. His early Byrds stuff is pop dynamite: see ‘She Don’t Care About Time’, ‘Feel A Whole Lot Better’, ‘The World Turns All Around Her’. ‘Eight Miles High’ and ‘Elevator Operator’ are as good as any mid-60s Beatles. ‘So You Say You’ve Lost Your Baby’ and ‘Echoes’ every bit as haunting as that weird baroque period of the Rolling Stones in 1967.

And all of them beautifully desolate.

From the late-60s onwards, he went on to make many brilliant records but (just like Gram Parsons) with no real commercial success. He spent most of his post-Byrds career and life in relative obscurity, and struggled with several drug and drink addictions that eventually killed him in May 1991.

25 years after his passing, I wanted to pay my respects at his grave in Tipton, Missouri (the reason for yesterday’s minor balls-up).   There’s no hoo-ha, just a relatively simple gravestone with his full name Harold Eugene Clark and the title of his most famous solo record. It’s all in keeping with the sleepy, un-showy town of Tipton itself.

Incidentally, there is a worthwhile campaign to get Clark inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame. I was going to leave a badge there but was chuffed to see there are already quite a few of them around the plot anyway. Hopefully, that’s a sign many others feel the same way.

Finally, it’s worth plugging a documentary film about Clark that came out a couple of years ago: “The Byrd Who Flew Alone”. An evident labour of love by its creator Paul Kendall, it is an excellent introduction to Gene’s life and music. Among other terrific moments and surprises, there’s footage of Clark singing ‘Silver Raven’ from the No Other LP in the late 70s.

But be warned: the ending is really, really sad.

Just like all of his songs really.