Gene Clark
Gene Clark (1944–1991) was a singer and songwriter from Missouri, a founding member of the Byrds, for whom he wrote “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” and “Set You Free This Time” and co-wrote “Eight Miles High.” After leaving the band in 1966 he made Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers and, with the banjo player Doug Dillard, two A&M albums as Dillard & Clark, the second of which put drums and pedal steel alongside banjo, fiddle and mandolin.
Harold Eugene Clark was born on 17 November 1944 in Tipton, Missouri, the third of thirteen children, and grew up around Kansas City. His father taught him guitar and harmonica, and he began writing songs at eleven. At about fifteen he formed a local rock and roll group, Joe Meyers and the Sharks; after high school, in 1962, he started a folk group, the Rum Runners, and then joined a Kansas City folk band, the Surf Riders. On 12 August 1963 the New Christy Minstrels heard him with the Surf Riders and hired him, and he recorded two albums with them before leaving early in 1964.
In Los Angeles he met Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, and in 1964 the two, with David Crosby, began the group that became the Byrds, with Michael Clarke on drums and Chris Hillman on bass. Clark wrote “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” and “Set You Free This Time,” and wrote “Eight Miles High” with Crosby and McGuinn. He left the band early in 1966. His first solo album, Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, on which Vern and Rex Gosdin sang with him, came out on Columbia in 1967, the same season as the Byrds’ Younger Than Yesterday, and sold poorly. In October 1967 he rejoined the Byrds to replace Crosby but left again after three weeks.
Signed to A&M in 1968, he began recording with Doug Dillard around July of that year, with Bernie Leadon on banjo and guitar, Don Beck on Dobro and mandolin, David Jackson on bass and Hillman guesting on mandolin, Larry Marks producing; Clark sang and played guitar and harmonica. The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark came out in 1968. For the second album, recorded around June 1969, the band had grown to include Donna Washburn on vocals and guitar, Byron Berline on fiddle and Jon Corneal on drums, with Hillman and Sneaky Pete Kleinow on pedal steel as guests. Through the Morning, Through the Night (1969) mixed Clark’s songs with bluegrass and country standards, among them “Rocky Top,” which A&M put out on a single with the duo’s version of “Don’t Let Me Down.”
Clark then went back to recording under his own name. In May 1970 and again in February 1971 he made sessions with the four other original Byrds, McGuinn, Crosby, Hillman and Clarke, with Jim Dickson, who had managed the band from its start, producing. His second solo album, White Light (A&M, 1971), was produced by Jesse Ed Davis; it was praised but did not sell. In 1971 he also recorded for the soundtrack of American Dreamer, and a set of his unreleased recordings, Roadmaster, was issued only in the Netherlands in 1973. That March the five original Byrds released a reunion album on Asylum, which reached No. 20 in the United States before the group dissolved again.
David Geffen signed Clark to Asylum early in 1974, and No Other, produced by Thomas Jefferson Kaye, came out that September; it stalled at No. 144 on the Billboard album chart. RSO bought out his Asylum contract and released Two Sides to Every Story in 1977. With McGuinn and Hillman he recorded for Capitol as McGuinn, Clark & Hillman; their first album, released in January 1979, reached No. 39 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold, and a second, City, followed in January 1980. In the 1980s he worked with his band the Firebyrds, whose Firebyrd appeared in 1984, and made So Rebellious a Lover (1987), an album of duets with Carla Olson.
The five original Byrds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1991 and played together at the ceremony. Clark died at his home in Sherman Oaks, California, on 24 May 1991, aged 46.
