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May 24, 2024 By Mark Lager

Gene Clark was born (and is buried) in Tipton, Missouri and like the land in the center of the country he was deeply conflicted so he left home behind, moving to L.A. so he could become a singer/songwriter. Despite finding his creativity in California, the city of L.A. and the rock star lifestyle of alcohol, drugs, and excess gradually destroyed the fragile Clark during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, leading to his death at the young age of 46 on May 24, 1991. Clark’s brother David said the tragedy began decades before this in 1975, when his album No Other was deleted from the Asylum record label, stating “when they killed it, it killed him.”

Clark’s lyrical poetry began its growth during the late 1960s to early 1970s and he prophetically predicted his own musical peak in the closing track of his album White Light, “1975.” According to biographer John Einarson, this was recorded during the 1971 earthquake that affected L.A. and there is a residual shaking of the studio at the start of the track. The earthquake in Clark’s life and music happened a few years later during the spring of 1974. While Clark meditated in Mendocino by the Pacific Ocean in his solitude, he composed the lyrics for several of his songs, such as “Silver Raven,” “Strength of Strings,” and “From a Silver Phial.” “Some Misunderstanding” was inspired both by a dream that awakened Clark in the middle of the night and the unraveling of his relationship with the mother of his two sons, his wife Carlie. “Life’s Greatest Fool” and the title track arise from the city streets of Los Angeles. The closing song, “Lady of the North,” was a collaboration between Clark and Missouri musician Doug Dillard and was written in the aftermath of his separation from his wife.

In April 1974, Clark entered the Village Recorder studios in Los Angeles with Thomas Jefferson Kaye as his producer and some of the most skilled and talented session musicians of that time. Initially the tracks followed the patterns of Clark’s previous recordings, rather sparse, with an emphasis on his vocals. Returning from the White Light sessions were guitarist Jesse Ed Davis (who had produced the album) and Michael Utley, Davis’ plaintive guitar is particularly prominent on “Silver Raven” while Utley’s piano playing is pronounced on most of the tracks, particularly the country-folk “True One,” featuring the pedal steel of Ben Keith (who had previously played on Neil Young’s Harvest), plus Clark’s former Byrds bandmate Chris Hillman was a guest on mandolin for “From a Silver Phial.”

When the recording sessions continued in May 1974, however, Clark’s and Kaye’s ambitions intensified as they added to the arrangements, encouraging the musicians to experiment (Lee Sklar explained in a video on his YouTube channel that most of the textures on the title track are from his fuzzed out bass being layered multiple times, while Richard Greene’s electric violin on “Lady of the North” is pirouetting psychedelia) and expanding to as many as seven background choral gospel vocalists (Ronnie Barron, Cindy Bullens, Claudia Lennear, Venetta Fields, Clydie King, Shirley Matthews, Carlena Williams) on “Life’s Greatest Fool” and “Some Misunderstanding.”

When the album begins with “Life’s Greatest Fool,” it initially sounds like it could have easily fit on a previous Gene Clark album with the country-folk guitar/vocals, however, Clark’s lyrics are profound as he contemplates birth/adulthood (“formed out of pleasure / chiseled by pain”) and aging (“children laugh / and run away / while others look into / the darkness / of the day”). When the chorus hits, the album becomes the opening credits of a widescreen film as Clark stands atop a hill overlooking Los Angeles and the background voices belt out “Do you believe / When you’re all alone / Do you believe / Deep in your soul / That too much loneliness / makes you grow old?”

While “Life’s Greatest Fool” is exuberant in its music despite the emptiness felt in the lyrics, the softer background vocals and somber slide guitar of “Silver Raven” mirror the lyrics, as Clark stares at the Pacific Ocean in Albion on a cloudy evening, “Far above / the darkened waters / far above the troubled sky / have you seen / the changing rivers / now they wait their turn to die / but they turn / their tide upon you / when the sea / begins to cry / have you seen / the old world dying?”

While “Life’s Greatest Fool” is an L.A. afternoon, the title track is a chaotic drive into L.A. after dark, a late night party, the rhythm section is gritty and funky and the background vocalists are serpentine and sinister, especially at the end of the track (these same background vocalists previously added to the atmosphere on Dr. John, the Night Tripper’s Gris-Gris and The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street and there is a similar sounding ominousness).

“Strength of Strings” is stunning and sublime, Clark staring this time not at the Pacific Ocean but at the landscapes to the east of California, an epiphany that “there is always change / hear the strings / are bending in harmony / not so far from breaking / on the cosmic range.”

“From a Silver Phial” is one of only two songs on the album that is not sweepingly universal, it is about a particular person (like “Lady of the North”), it is about a woman who is in a relationship with a “magic master,” she is seeking truth, “she saw the sword / of sorrow sunken / in the sand of searching souls,” “falling in the darkened rain / she was taken / from a cruel storm.”

“Some Misunderstanding” (like the next track “True One”) is the most autobiographical song on the album, Clark’s confession about the cost of fame, his sorrowful struggle and suffering, this eight-minute, elegiac epic is surrounded by the biggest choir on the entire album, moaning sadly while the guitars of Buzzy Feiten and Steve Bruton, the Rheem organ of Bill Cuomo, and the violin of Richard Greene exquisitely express Clark’s pain while his voice trembles with world weariness.

“True One” is the least elaborate song on the album, yet it contains some of Clark’s most brilliant lyrics, one of his definitive philosophical statements (alongside “Full Circle”) as he recollects how his rambling restlessness and traveling away from Missouri to California affected his life. “You can buy a ticket / out there all alone / then you can sit / and wonder why / it’s so hard / to get back home / the longer you’re in one place / the harder it is to leave.”

When the listener reaches the end of Gene Clark’s voyage with the closing song “Lady of the North,” every one of the $100,000 in the budget that was generously spent on this masterpiece is aurally apparent as cello by Ted Machell and organ/piano by Michael Utley paint the picture for Clark’s most poetic lyrics (“flying high above / the clouds / we lay in grassy meadows / as a change / in the wind must come / over the mountains / and the seasons / roll under the sun / passing the shadows / of our dreams / like breeze / whispers through the trees”). The cinematic climax is euphoric, Richard Greene’s phased electric violin solo soaring like streaks of cirrus clouds into the heavens…echoing faraway…

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