The Sorrows of Gene Clark

HERE at The Misread City, we're huge Byrds fans, and Gene Clark is, some days, our favorite member of that great L.A. band. With the Byrds he wrote and sang songs like "I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better" and "Set You Free This Time"; his country-tinged solo career was rich and varied, and included Tried So Hard" (covered by Fairport Convention and Yo La Tengo), "Why Not Your Baby" (covered by Velvet Crush) and some soulful collaborations with Byrd Chris Hillman.

But there's always been a sense that the Missouri-born Clark, who left the Byrds during their heyday, in 1966, because of his refusal to fly, never quite arrived. (This is the guy, of course, who co-wrote "Eight Miles High.") There is a strong Clark cult among musicians and fans of country rock, but it's not nearly as large as that commanded by Gram Parsons. Much of the poignant work of his solo career remains largely unheard.

Clark was reticent, often anxious, sometimes self-destructive and did not love the attention the group's fame brought. And he felt deep disappointment that his 1974 record, No Other, which he recorded in Mendocino and was intended comeback, never hit. It was a lasting sorrow for a musician whose best work is about loss and missed connections.

So it gives us great pleasure to see a number of indie musicians -- Beach House (pictured), the Walkmen, Grizzly Bear -- performing a handful of tribute concerts to Clark and this oft-overlooked album. They're at the 9:30 Club in D.C. (a club important to me as a teenager, for what it's worth) and in Brooklyn this weekend.

Here's the New York Times' Jon Pareles:

A British Invasion beat carried Clark’s early songs with the Byrds, like “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” — which, in a typical Clark touch, brings uncertainty to its chorus, “I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone.”

But rock often gave way, during his solo career, to something closer to the country music he had grown up on, transformed by his lyrics. His songs have been recognized as a foundation for what would later be called alt-country or Americana. Clark wrote story songs as stark as traditional ballads, and deeply haunted mood songs like the two chosen by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss — “Polly Come Home” and “Through the Morning, Through the Night” — for their 2007 album “Raising Sand.”

Yet “No Other” is no one’s idea of down-home roots-rock. Mr. Clark and its producer, Thomas Jefferson Kaye, gave it a far more lavish palette, and even the songs that start out countryish end up in realms of their own. There are gospelly female choruses, horns, synthesizers, Latin percussion, wah-wah violin and, in “No Other,” a bruising fuzz-toned bass line played by a phalanx of overdubbed basses. The head of Elektra/Asylum Records, David Geffen, was furious that a $100,000 studio budget had yielded only eight finished songs, and the label barely promoted the album. In a notorious Hollywood incident, Clark and Mr. Geffen nearly came to blowsat a restaurant.

Now, let's have a Gene Clark tribute in the state he called home for much of his career. Let's start with the city in which his old band was formed -- Los Angeles.

Legends of the High Desert

A few weeks back I had the pleasure to visit Joshua Tree with my wife and son. I guess for some people the place invokes U2, but it always makes me think of Gram Parsons and his hippie/ Dylanesque updating of the high-lonesome sound.

Here is my piece that runs in this Sundays' LATimes. It's both a meditation on the power of music and a trip-with-kids story. It's also one of the few trips I've taken as an adult that I have really screwed up, at least the Pioneertown part. (I keep thinking of Sam Shepard's play "True West" whenever I am in its faux-Wild West environs.)

A lot of fun to be out in the desert with Ian and his 3-year-old's perceptions.

I look forward to going back and seeing a show at Pappy and Harriet's, where Lucinda Williams, Jim Lauderdale and others play regularly. (The place seems to be stretching beyond country and alt-country these days: England's Arctic Monkeys played a post-Coachella show there a few days after we left.)

I'll fill out this post shortly.

Our Favorite Guitarists

SOME of you -- especially if you are a musician, music writer, or serious listener -- have already taken part in my informal poll of favorite guitarists. This was conceived not exactly as a historically rigorous greatest-of-all-time but the work you'd grab either if your house was burning down, or to take to the proverbial desert island. (I'm aware that these are two slightly different categories, one spurred by an instant craving the other by the opportunity for eternal contemplation. Can some musicians offer both?)

In any case, I have very roughly compiled the results. I'll admit that my method was unscientific and personally biased -- these people are friends or at least peers of mine. I allowed myself one vote, like anyone else, tho I think I will not post my own ever-changing list quite yet. And, most of those polled were born between the late '40s to the late '60s -- that is, we have fans who came of age with the British blues boom voting alongside those who grew up with college radio, alt-rock, indie, and so on. Some were primarily blueshounds or jazzheads; one is a critic of classical music.

Some generational patterns, of course, are apparent, and while most Boomers voted for Clapton, Page, Beck, Richards, etc. it wasn't enough to launch more than of them into the very top tier. Perhaps appropriately, the very highest vote getting musician is an eclectic and atypical Boomer with a significant Gen X/ alt-rock following. I was also surprised that Hendrix -- perhaps my favorite and certainly the greatest of all time -- did not simply shut down all opposition.

With no further ado, here is the list -- I don't think a difference of a single vote is significant, but this is in order of votes attained. (I have posted a poll on the right margins, using the top six names here as finalists. Sorry, folks, if your hero not on list -- I can only go to six.)

Richard Thompson
Nels Cline
Jimi Hendrix
Neil Young
Robert Quine
Keith Richards
Thurston Moore
Wes Montgomery
Roger McGuinn

Let me point out that the top four names on this list are all West Coast figures -- though of course Thompson grew up in England while Hendrix made his name there, Young is originally Canadian, etc. But Roger McGuinn is as solidly grounded in LA rock as you can get.

Some others came close -- Johnny Marr, Robert Fripp, Peter Buck, Pat Metheny, Pete Townshend. I'm struck by the huge amount of talent and huge range of styles in just a few names.