byrdsongs, lxii

Gene Clark’s No Other is easily the most compelling mid-70s record by a former Byrd. But this doesn’t make hearing it a fun time. It’s a pretty strange and quite frankly disturbing collection of songs, one that, to me, seems to mark the start of a long drift into oblivion for Clark. The album is slick and glossy sounding in the manner of corporate country rock, but it’s too somber to catch fire with a mass audience, and too weird to be marketed effectively. There’s nothing at all poppy about No Other. It was deleted for a long time and I can remember when it was an almost impossible record to find. I stumbled across a pristine copy purely by accident at a yard sale on Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood. I couldn’t believe the Russian guy only wanted a quarter for it… The album opens with Life’s Greatest Fool, a song that puts Clark’s signature happy/sad songwriting approach to work in a country two-step context. Over the otherwise sunny key of G major, he tells us that‘too much loneliness makes you grow old.’ Wow. That’s painful to hear, if also quite true. Elsewhere he sings, ‘we all need a fix, at a time like this, but doesn’t it feel good to stay alive?’ Whether or not this is a reference to the alcoholism he struggled with, it sounds like a desperate plea for help and understanding. This is what makes No Other so difficult for me to hear, even though much of the music is very good. I feel like I’m listening to someone who’s drinking himself to death, which is such a horrible way to go out. It’s amazing to me that he lived for another 17 years and even managed to have bursts of creative productivity in that time. So much of Gene Clark’s music up to No Other is joyful even when it’s so very sad. This is what you sign up for if you’re a pop lifer. It’s not masochism, necessarily, but rather the capacity to transform life’s disappointments through the power of music. No Other doesn’t fall into this category. If you listen to the record carefully, the music will bring you down. This doesn’t mean you should avoid it, but just know that the pop life catharsis – and Gene Clark gave us so many of these – won’t be forthcoming.  It’s like, ‘ok, this is what profound sadness feels like.’  Sometimes I can go there and appreciate No Other’s deep intensity, but a lot of the time it’s just too much pain and sorrow for me to handle…