When not touring with the 20th Anniversary Byrds or recording demos with CRY, Gene occasionally played gigs with Carla. Their duet album, So Rebellious A Lover, was released on Rhino in 1986. Eschewing the kind of synthesised ’80s production that severely compromised Firebyrd and revealed it to be nothing more than a cynical, somewhat desperate, attempt at sounding au courant, So Rebellious A Lover to this day sounds warm and timeless. Although the album featured a few covers, Carla says this was not the result of a paucity of songs on Gene’s part. “They were just songs we used to sing together. It wasn’t something intentional that they were covers. What was intentional,” Carla stresses, “was that we didn’t have any electric instruments on the record.”
When asked what her favourite Clark song from the ’80s is, Carla answers without hesitation. “‘Del Gato’,” she says, “was the most pleasurable song for me to sing with him.” The stately performance, as co-written with Gene’s brother Rick, is one of the standout tracks on So Rebellious, and a bona fide late-period Gene Clark classic. When it’s suggested to her that Gene sang the song as though he were making a divine proclamation from atop a mountain, she offers her own image of majesty for consideration.
“If you were in the saddle of a really comfortable horse – really comfortable – that sort of feel, the movement of the horse with your body, and you’re kind of one with the horse, that’s what that song feels like when you sing with Gene Clark.”
The ongoing reality of paying his bills necessitated Clark’s return to the road with his booze-soaked band of pirate Byrds – which safely ensured that neither his potential with the CRY collective, nor the association with Carla would ever be fully realised. (As a tantalising aside, Carla Olson reveals that two songs slated for the follow-up were intended to feature Mick Taylor on slide guitar – a remake of White Light’s ‘Where My Love Lies Asleep’, and Moby Grape’s ‘8:05’.)
The follow-up to So Rebellious A Lover was never recorded, but posthumous releases like Gypsy Angel, featuring Clark demos of songs intended for the project, suggests Gene was returning to the dark lyrical complexity of his best work. Standouts from this set of crudely recorded but starkly soulful demos include ‘Kathleen,’ a haunting tale of lost-at-sea love told from the perspective of a mystical young Irish widow; ‘Dark Of My Moon,’ an analysis of romantic despair featured on the soundtrack to the 2005 Australian film Look Both Ways, and ‘Pledge To You’, a lengthy but deeply moving love song, sung with Clark’s quasi-operatic sense of drama, that cuts deep without ever seeming sappy.
‘Your Fire Burning’, an epic, seven-minute cri de coeur displaying Clark’s facility with narrative ambiguity, is arguably the last great song he wrote. Its appearance as the opening track on the posthumous 1992 live album Silhouetted In Light (now available as In
Concert) stands as our best evidence that, in spite of the substance abuse problems which contributed to his death on May 24th 1991, Clark’s muse was still serving him well. A searing, dramatic performance featuring him at his stentorian finest, ‘Your Fire Burning’ is the most complex, mature piece of writing Gene Clark ever undertook. Carla Olson still recalls the day she heard the song for the first time, and provides an anecdote that gives us a glimpse into a little-known aspect of Clark’s character, his self-deprecating sense of humour.
“When he played it for us the first time we were in his living room, and he said, ‘I’ve got this new song I want to play you.’ And he started to play it, and then when he got to the [she sings chord progression leading to chorus] – before it goes ‘All I want is you to believe in me’, he stopped the first time he got to it, before he played it, and he said, ‘Now I gotta show you where I ripped off The Bee Gees! This is my Bee Gees moment!’ And then he went back to the song. It was so cute! The Bee Gees would have these sort of movements in their songs where just when you thought you’ve heard the chorus, there’s another section, and that’s even better than the section you heard.”
Rumours persist that it was the diagnosis of throat cancer that came around the time the original Byrds were inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame which precipitated Gene’s fast decline into a booze and drugs- induced oblivion, and a desire to drink himself to death. Carla dismisses this notion outright and is emphatic that Gene did not want to die. “Gene never really wanted anybody to know [about the cancer] because it was such a fear. It wasn’t a fear of dying,” Carla says firmly. “It was the fear of not being able to sing. That really scared him.”
John York, reflecting on the man whom he affectionately teased with the nickname Hillbilly Shakespeare, and with whom he regularly played throughout the final third of his career, speaks eloquently about his friend’s legacy, and the reasons why he continues to this day to play songs written by Gene Clark.
“I think he’s one of the best writers to come out of the ’60s. Stardom has nothing to do with talent. Gene was a guy who was basically compelled to write these hauntingly beautiful songs. And I knew him on a day-to- day basis, roomed with him, and played a lot of music with him, and I’m completely convinced that stardom had nothing to do with any of it. It was just he was compelled to write these songs that no one else was writing. That’s why he moves us like that. It’s because you know a Gene Clark song when you hear it.”
With special thanks to Tim Forster and John Einarson for valued assistance.
THE AMAZING EXPEDITION OF DILLARD AND CLARK
This band may be a footnote in both protagonists resume but its importance cannot be overstated. When Larry Marks, who had produced parts of GeneClark& TheGosdinBrothers, moved from Columbia to A&M in early 1968 he persuaded them to sign Gene as a solo artist. Gene was at that time hanging around with Doug Dillard who had left The Dillards and recorded his own banjo album as well as playing on the aforementioned Gosdin Brothers record. Gene and Doug were both from Missouri and got on well.
Sharing a house with Dillard at this time was ex-Hearts & Flowers member Bernie Leadon. Gene started writing songs with both Doug and Bernie and they decided to form a modern country/bluegrass band. With the addition of David Jackson on bass and Don Beck on dobro and mandolin, an album was produced by Marks and released in October ’68.
Titled TheFantasticExpeditionOfDillardAndClark, the album was a tour de force. Basically acoustic with no drummer it seamlessly mixed rock, country, folk and bluegrass in an irresistible blend with great harmony singing and impeccable musicianship on a superb set of songs. It is hard to pick out individual tracks but mention must be made of the outstanding ballads ‘Out On The Side’ and ‘Something’s Wrong’ as well as ‘Train Leaves Here This Morning’, ‘She Darked The Sun’ and the bluegrass standard ‘Git It On Brother’.
Unfortunately the album – although critically lauded – sold poorly and missed the charts. Michael Clarke – formerly of The Byrds – was recruited to play drums for live gigs and Don Beck left the band. A single coupling ‘Lyin’ Down The Middle’ with a cover of Elvis’ ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ was released without success in February ’69. More changes resulted in Michael Clarke going to The Flying Burrito Brothers and being replaced by Jon Corneal and Doug Dillard bringing in his girlfriend Donna Washburn to take over harmony vocals much to the chagrin of Bernie Leadon. Another unsuccessful single, the astounding ‘Why Not Your Baby’ coupled with ‘The Radio Song’ was released in May ’69.
Fed up with losing his vocal parts Bernie Leadon split in May ’69 and was replaced by fiddle virtuoso Byron Berline. Clark, Dillard, Washburn, Corneal, Jackson and Berline recorded the group’s second album
ThroughTheMorning,ThroughTheNight, released in September ’69. This album disappointed a lot of the people who liked the first but to my mind it was not a matter of it being worse, it was just DIFFERENT. For a start it was cover-heavy, with versions of the Everlys’ ‘So Sad’ – a wonderful duet with Gene and Donna sounding just as good as Gram and Emmylou – and The Beatles’ ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’. There were bluegrass standards, a rollicking ‘Rollin’ In My Sweet Baby’sArms’ and country classics like ‘Four Walls’, which had been a hit for Jim Reeves. Of the original songs a standout was ‘Polly’ recently covered by Robert Plant and Alison Krause and the train song ‘Kansas City Southern’.
The disappointing response to the album and its lack of sales prompted Clark to leave and resume his solo career. A&M dropped the group, which had soldiered on playing bluegrass as Doug Dillard & The Expedition.
In retrospect The Dillard & Clark Expedition can be seen as a glorious attempt to blend country, rock and bluegrass which should be lauded in the same way as The Flying Burrito Brothers are today.
Pat Curran 45
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