This is what a rock biography should be. Having recently endured two horrible examples of the art in the sixth form philosophical babble of Katherine Monk on Joni Mitchell and the cliche ridden agony of Paul Rees's tome on Robert Plant it was a joy to come to this book. John Einarson's exhaustive biography of the late great Gene Clark is a very satisfying if rather sad read. It chronicles the story one of the key founders of the Byrds, possibly the most important American band of the 1960s and someone who ranks alongside Gram Parsons as the founder of Country Rock. This book offers chapter and verse on the late singer songwriter leading his friend Chris Hillman to write that having worked alongside Clark for years "I never really knew him until I read this comprehensive study"
Like many stories of the counter culture generation Clarks is one of tragedy and yet throughout his troubled life he managed to produce a series of country masterpieces not least one of the greatest albums in the whole canon 1974's "No Other". It is typical of Clark that it also includes one of the ugliest album covers on any famous record. Gene Clark had psychological hang ups so severe that they emotionally and professionally crippled him. His love life was tumultuous and often chaotic, but even worse for a performer his stage fright was legendary in its debilitating impact. His friends and family give eloquent testimony in Einarson's book of the agonies which he went through especially if any song went wrong which would see him turn to copious amounts of booze and pills leading to anarchic performances. Equally problematic for the writer of "Eight Miles high" was a fear of flying which meant that he couldn't venture out into the wide open spaces of the US and effectively tour and promote his albums.
Thus the brightest star in the Byrds was in the words of Hillman not equipped to survive particularly as drugs and the rock n roll lifestyle took their toll. His exploits for example with his country singer drinking partner Doug Dillard around the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles were the stuff of "Lost Weekend" legend including driving motor bikes directly into the bar and generally making a royal prat of himself. Einarson sympathetically charts the horrible predictability of Clarks extended twilight throughout the Seventies and Eighties, of false career starts and the painful outcome of his unsustainable lifestyle. In 1988 he underwent surgery during which much of his stomach and intestines had to be removed and from thereon he declined to a mere 130 pounds in weight. Yet the Byrds checks kept coming in not least a substantial amount of money from Tom Petty's superb cover of his anthem "Feel A Whole Lot Better". Petty hero worshipped Clark but in another cruel twist of fate some of Clark's fair weather friends took him on an extended month long binge with this money where as Einarson states he disintegrated to the point of death. Clark eventually died in 1991 after the years had taken their toll. Yet he left a musical legacy which stars such as Tom Petty, Alison Krauss Robert Plant have developed with the utmost care. Plant's covers on "Raising Sand" of Clark's "Polly" and "Through the morning, through the night" are the tip of the iceberg of in terms of his huge output. Sadly as Einarson states "Clark never escaped the long shadow of the Byrds" He ended up as as "a cocaine fuelled visionary....a Southern gentleman on the one hand and a belligerent drunk on the other". With Gene Clark you must learn to love the contradictions.
