GENE CLARK STARTED OUT ON HIS OWN ON THE SMALL CLUB FOLK CIRcuit; graduated to membership in the New Christy Minstrels, the Byrds and the Dillard and Clark Expedition, and now, after seven years, is back on his own with a solo album on A & M Records, White Light.
Gene was born and raised in Missouri, where he developed his interest in music by playing in various high school rock bands.
“We had surf bands,” Gene said, “which is pretty funny when you notice that Missouri is about as far from the ocean as you can get in the U.S. The only surfing is maybe wake surfing on the big rivers.”
After school, Gene started playing the folk circuit in Kansas and Missouri. It was there that he was seen by members of the New Christy Minstrels, who asked him to play twelve-string guitar and sing for them.
Gene played with the Minstrels on two of their albums and their hit single, “Green, Green,” before leaving the group in L.A. He was tired of commercial folk music and wanted something more challenging.
It was at Hollywood’s Troubadour that he met Jim McGuinn and David Crosby and formed the nucleus for the Byrds.
After a year-and-a-half with the Byrds, Gene split with the group. “I don’t like to fly in airplanes,” he said. “To be a Byrd you had to be able to fly all the time, and the pressure got to me. It had nothing to do with musical hassles.”
Gene tried unsuccessfully to rejoin the Byrds on two separate occasions, but found that he would have to sacrifice his artistic freedom.
In 1966, Gene recorded a little-known album for Columbia, Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers. Accompanying Gene on the album were the Byrds, Leon Russell, Glen Campbell, Larry Marks, and Gary Usher. It was the first step back toward country music for Gene.
The next step was the formation, with his friend Doug Dillard, of the Dillard and Clark Expedition. The country-bluegrass-oriented band recorded two albums for A & M before trouble began to set in. Although the albums were good, they failed to sell. What with personnel changes and worrying about directions, the band broke up.
Moving to the woods north of San Francisco, Gene decided to settle back and write songs for a year and then do a solo album. The result of his year alone is titled White Light. It contains mostly original songs with the exception of his version of “Tears of Rage.”
The album, produced by Jesse Edwin Davis (who also does some fine guitar work on it), is low-keyed and poetic. His songs are easy to listen to and show the maturity his music has developed over the last seven years.