Lost Classics (No.1)

GENE CLARK
Gene Clark (Aka White Light) A&M 1971
Gene Clark was best remembered for his association with the Byrds between 1964 and 1966. He wrote most of The Byrds' best-known originals, including: "Feel a Whole Lot Better"; "Set You Free This Time"; "Here Without You"; "She Don't Care About Time"; and "Eight Miles High" and was the group's strongest vocalist. But there was much more to his body of work than this legacy. He was a prolific songwriter and a singer with a highly distinctive baritone voice who created a large catalogue of music in several genres but failed to achieve great commercial success. He was one of the earliest exponents of psychedelic rock, baroque pop, newgrass, country rock and alternative country. However, no one bought any of his records and he died on May 24, 1991, aged 47, as a result of many years of drug and alcohol abuse.

Allmusic.com wrote such a great review of this album, one that echoes my sentiments exactly, that I have decided to reproduce it here.

Gene Clark's 1971 platter, with its stark black cover featuring his silhouette illuminated by the sun, was dubbed White Light — though the words never appear on the cover — and if ever a title fit a record, it's this one. Over its nine original tracks, it has established itself as one of the greatest singer/songwriter albums ever made. After leaving the Byrds in 1966, recording with the Gosdin Brothers, and breaking up the Dillard & Clark group that was a pioneering country-rock outfit, Clark took time to hone his songwriting to its barest essentials. The focus on these tracks is intense, they are taut and reflect his growing obsession with country music. Produced by the late guitarist Jesse Ed Davis (who also worked with Taj Mahal, Leon Russell, Link Wray, and poet John Trudell, among others), Clark took his songs to his new label with confidence and they supported him. The band is comprised of Flying Burrito Brothers' bassist Chris Ethridge, the then-Steve Miller Band-pianist (and future jazz great) Ben Sidran, organist Michael Utley, and drummer Gary Mallaber. Clark's writing, as evidenced on "The Virgin," the title cut, "For a Spanish Guitar," "One in a Hundred," and "With Tomorrow," reveals a stark kind of simplicity in his lines. Using melodies mutated out of country, and revealing that he was the original poet and architect of the Byrds' sound on White Light, Clark created a wide open set of tracks that are at once full of space, a rugged gentility, and are harrowingly intimate in places. His reading of Bob Dylan's "Tears of Rage," towards the end of the record rivals, if not eclipses, the Band's. Less wrecked and ravaged, Clark's song is more a bewildered tome of resignation to a present and future in the abyss. Now this is classic rock.
Kindly reproduced from allmusic.com, written by Thom Jurek

FURTHER LISTENING: Gene Clark's 1974 album NO OTHER on Asylum Records.