The Byrd Who Flew Alone: The Triumphs and Tragedy of Gene Clark

So what's your very best memory of Gene?

Standing in the Third Street Studios

with the rest of us singing Tambourine Man

and I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better

and watching Bob Dylan's face light up

as he realised what was going to happen next in the world

and what he was going to do next.

Watching Gene do it right in front of him.

It was like the birth of a new nation,

I mean, it was a whole birthing of a new sound, a new genre of music.

Very, very exciting, no-one had ever heard anything like him before.

It was just like some kind of incredible,

beautiful Earth music that this guy made and...nobody else

that makes that sound, nobody else has that kind of ethereal quality.

You could not be there and listen to him and listen to the lyrical content

of his music and not understand that you were listening to a genius.

I think he is legitimately at least the equal to,

at least the equal to Gram Parsons

and should be better remembered as the father of Americana.

It should have happened. He should have been bigger.

He sang from his heart and he had great songs.

Why didn't it work?

That's the question.

This programme contains some strong language.

How important was Gene to The Byrds?

He was crucial, central, essential...

..heart and soul.

He inspired me and he inspired David and Roger,

he was an incredible writer.

I watched him go from sort of an

innocent country boy to road-weary

and just tired of it all.

He never felt that elation or that inspiration,

he never had the peace of all those incredible things he wrote.

How is it possible someone like that who was so talented,

so good-looking, such a great singer, could get into such a mess?

But if anyone had a star written on their passport,

it was Gene Clark.

Sometimes you're ahead of your time,

that kind of genius is always pretty much ahead of his time.

# When I was a young boy

# Evening sun went down... #

It was a country environment.

He had, like, Gene's parents' home,

it was back in Swope Park.

And you had to drive up a long driveway to see their house,

which was very, very tiny,

with that many children - they had 13 boys and girls.

The only utility to that house was a...

..110... 110 volt electrical wire.

There was no plumbing,

there was no heat other than coal and wood burning stoves.

In a sense, very austere,

as far as material values and things like that.

Most of what we did,

we did ourselves.

We had some chickens, we had cows,

we had...we did our milking,

we even did our meat butchering to a certain degree.

We didn't know how poor we were. We had no idea.

That was just our reality and until we started going to school

with some children that were much better off than we were,

we didn't know we were deprived in any way at all,

and there were all the play times in the woods,

that was good times.

We'd just get away from everything,

and get out in the woods and use our imaginations

to create whatever we wanted to.

# Hours of joy when I was just a boy

# And never wrong I knew

# Kites of red would fly above my head

# The birds would sing their song... #

We actually grew up with a wide, wide range of music

that we'd listen to. We'd listen to, of course, the Grand Ole Opry,

that was a staple and I was the one that brought rock into the house,

because I started listening to WREN out of Topeka,

which was the only rock station in the area at that time.

Any it was kind of iffy to get that,

you had to tilt the radio just the right way.

Gene really picked it up from his father.

And that's how he learnt, more or less, on his father's guitar.

And they sat on the porch and they sang old songs.

I think that that got Gene's interest.

The first thing I ever saw him pick up and play was a mandolin.

I think it was because of his age and its size,

maybe because of the fit.

And he was always on the bed playing the guitar and writing songs

and he probably wrote 30, 40 songs

that I don't know where they're at today, but...

When you tried to talk to Gene while he was trying to think,

he was hard to get to.

# Oh, my love

# Come on to me... #

I recorded my first record,

single record,

when I was 14 years old.

It was called Blue Ribbon,

and I recorded it with

Joe Myers and The Sharks.

That was the main band that I had in high school.

They would start to play at the Coke Bar and it was jam-packed,

just because they were so good.

I knew he wanted to make it his life.

I mean, I didn't know that it would go on to be the, you know,

the big music carrier.

I saw him more maybe as a country star.

Maybe just, you know, where he started out - doing school dances

and playing in some bars and things like that.

And I think that he would have been comfortable with that life.

I think that stardom took him unaware,

and I don't think he was prepared for it.

# ..trade those ribbons

# For a love that is true. #

'I'm very pleased to welcome to the Hootenanny Show for the first time,

'The New Christy Minstrels.'

# Green, green, it's green, they say On the far side of the hill

# Green, green, I'm going away To where the grass is greener still

# Well, now, I told my mama on the day I was born

# Don't you cry when you see I'm gone... #

# And there ain't no woman gonna settle me down

# I just gotta be travelling on... #

Everybody, come on!

# Green, green, it's green they say... #

Back in '63,

The New Christy Minstrels

were riding this crest of success and popularity.

It was a wonderful ride for all of us.

We were recognisable in the street, in restaurants and stuff like that.

It was a very heady, you know, wonderful experience.

We were performing in Kansas City and one night, Nick Woods

came back into the hotel and said, "You come with me, come with me."

And so, Randy and I went with him to this little club,

Randy Sparks was the founder and director of the group,

and he said, "You've got to see this guy, you've got to see this guy."

So we went to see and, you know, there he was,

Gene Clark was singing with this, I think it was a trio,

it might have been a quartet, but I think it was a trio.

# Well, I hope to tell you, Johnny That I lay that rifle down... #

I still remember the song he was singing.

It was...cos it just so indelibly imprinted itself into me,

he was...so intense,

and he had this great look

and this real piercing countenance, you know,

and when he sang, he really sang the songs and we went, "Wow!"

And we were looking for a replacement in the Christies

and we had all just said, "He's the guy, if he'll come with us."

He made up his mind immediately, you know, what an opportunity!

So he went with The Christy Minstrels and did good.

Mum was beside herself, I mean,

she just broke down and shook like a leaf and everything else,

she was so afraid of all kinds of things, you know.

And some of her worst fears did eventually come true.

# The cabin door was standing open

# On that wild and lonely night

# And the hound dog, he lay a-dyin'

# In the gloomy candlelight... #

'He wasn't with the Minstrels that long...'

Thank you.

..but he certainly was a significant part of the group for me.

At this time, we'd like to do a little song

about a very intelligent mule by the name of Billy.

I don't know that The New Christy Minstrels music

was exactly what Gene wanted to do,

because we did Randy Sparks' songs,

and Randy Sparks at the time was writing silly little ditties.

They were fun...

-HE SINGS:

-# Billy's mule can tow the wagon

# He can pull a plough

# He can figure 'rithmetic and milk a muley cow... #

That's not what Gene wanted to sing.

# Billy's mule can tow the wagon He can pull a plough

# He can figure 'rithmetic and milk a muley cow

# There's a famous mule named Francis in the magazines I've read

# I mentioned him to Billy's mule This is what he said... #

'I think that was one of the reasons

'he was kind of standoffish in the Christy Minstrels,'

because we were all in-your-face egos

trying to outperform each other.

He wasn't "egoically" driven, he was artistically driven.

And I think that's what's the difference in the Minstrels,

as an artist, he wanted to do art

and not just go out and sing louder than everybody else.

He tried to present some of his material to them

and, of course, their policy and stuff like was...

that didn't work, you know.

I think he came to the realisation, in the Christy Minstrels,

that fame and fortune is not what he was after.

I mean, it's OK, but that's not the carrot,

the carrot is to be, to have a platform to paint your art

and I think the Christies was not that place for Gene.

He needed a different outlet for his art.

# Step by step Keep a-travellin' on

# Follow the drinking gourd

# Sleep in the hollow till the daylight is gone

# Follow

# The drinking gourd. #

I'd been inspired by The Beatles

to take old folk songs, like...

-HE SINGS:

-# The water is wide I cannot cross over... #

And put a Beatle beat to it, like...

-HE SINGS:

-# The water is wide I cannot cross... #

And I was doing that at The Troubadour

and most of the audience was not appreciating it,

but Gene Clark did, he came backstage and he said,

"I like what you're doing, let's write some songs."

So Gene and I sat down in the little front room of The Troubadour,

where they sold picks and strings,

a place called The Folk Den, and started writing songs.

We were out in the hallway singing

something, David walked up and he started singing with us,

it was totally magic and we knew it was there right then.

They were playing guitars and...

fooling with these songs that Gene had written.

I was instantly attracted

to the songs.

# The reason why

# Oh, I can say

# I had to let you go, babe

# And right away

# After what you did

# I can't stay on

# And I'll probably feel a whole lot better when you're gone... #

One of the reasons the music was good is he didn't know the rules...

at all.

Knew nothing about it.

Figured out a chord on his own.

Figured out another chord,

put these chords together and then made up the third,

he hadn't a clue.

It was very, very refreshing.

It didn't take long, we'd been inspired by The Beatles,

for us to realise we needed a bass player and a drummer

so that's when we got Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke

to play bass and drums.

Then we had the band. We had a band.

THEY SING

We were as strange a band as I could have imagined because there

are no five more different human beings that I could possibly devise.

Completely different people.

Barely able to speak the same language.

And yet, chemistry happened.

And I think it was Gene, a lot, that made the chemistry happen.

I ended up living with Gene and Michael Clarke.

We had a tiny little house in Los Angeles.

Just a little side on this.

Here we are, poor, and we're getting the band going.

We are starving and Gene

and I both were really passing bad cheques to get groceries.

The minute we made it within six or eight months, we started to make it.

We had a hit with Tambourine Man. We were working in clubs.

Gene Clark went back to the landlady and paid the back rent.

I'll never forget that.

The Byrds is here!

It was a tremendous change from being on the street.

Literally taking buses to rehearsal

and having one hamburger a day for our meals.

To having a number one hit.

I remember we went to Columbia Records

and sat in the reception area.

And the secretary didn't know who we were.

And she was treating us officiously.

And then she went back and found out we were Columbia's number one act,

and, "Can I get you anything? Coffee?"

And I could feel the couch we were on go up like an elevator.

It's like we went up 40 storeys.

It was...

..a lot of fun at first.

We were driving down Sunset Boulevard...

..in a '56 black Ford station wagon we had brought from Odetta.

And the big rock radio station played it and then they played it again.

They played it two times in a row.

And we pulled over and we were jumping up and down.

We were completely freaked out.

Nobody had ever done that with a song before on the radio. Ever.

People were talking about The Beatles and Dylan and The Byrds

as the three bands or people at that time most influential.

They lit the world on fire. And then they were anointed by The Beatles.

And that was it. The Byrds were our Beatles.

# There is a season

# Turn, Turn, Turn

# And a time to every purpose, under Heaven. #

Once you're on an airplane, you're flying to London, England,

hanging out with The Beatles and Rolling Stones with gigantic crowds

it's kind of a shocker.

And at that time I never envisioned there would be any problems.

# A time to laugh, a time to weep. #

Gene was the creative glue.

He wrote those songs that constituted 80% of the albums.

Gene really wrote a lot of songs.

He would write five or six songs a week and Mike

and I would work them up with him

before we showed them to Roger and David.

Three of those five or six would be masterpieces.

That's how good he was. Very prolific.

Very prolific writer.

# Hallways and staircases everyday to climb... #

Gene initially was excited about the success

but then it started to bother him. The pressure of it.

The pressure to maintain the success, to write more songs,

started to bother him.

On the first album he was the only one who got a lot of money

and that was about a year after we started the group.

So the rest of us were still taking buses and walking around LA

and he had a little MG and he was driving around in it.

It created a bit of tension between the members of the band.

Supposedly when the first cheques came in, everyone got 4,000

and Gene got 47,000 and went out and bought a Porsche,

it was kind of instant hatred and jealousy.

You take a group of young men...

..very different young men.

Uh...

..give them some money...

..introduce them to drugs.

I don't think there was anything wrong with the fact that we

all of the sudden got laid a lot.

But the money and the drugs...

HE WHISTLES

That will do it every time.

He wasn't suited to taking any kind of drug

and it brought out the worst in him.

And if you throw all that in with the pressure of being a teen idol,

the travelling, the songwriting and everything else,

all those things together seem to culminate on

the 27th of February, '66.

We were flying to New York to do a Murray the K special.

This is maybe a year and a half into The Byrds, something like that.

Gene was already on the plane when I got there

and he was in a cold sweat.

And he was going, "I can't stay on this plane."

And being a sensitive person,

I thought, "Maybe he knows something.

"Maybe he's picking up on something wrong with the plane."

He said, "I can't stay on the plane and I have to get off."

Big moment.

Stood up, looked at us...

..got off the plane.

And I said, "Gene, you can't be a Byrd..."

..If you can't fly.

-And...

-That was it.

I had no idea he had a problem flying. I had no idea.

We had flown all over the place. I had no idea.

I remember the day he got off the plane.

But up until then I had no idea.

There were other issues involved.

I remember he came to my house in Laurel Canyon and I said,

"I don't think you should do this.

"Why are you leaving?"

And he just wanted to do something else at the time.

MUSIC: "Eight Miles High"

The falling out of The Byrds was really a mistake.

It was not on purpose by anybody's purpose.

It only had to do with a bunch of guys who made it so big

when they were 19,

20 and 21 years old that they could not possibly fucking handle it.

I'm sure the management was looking at it like,

"OK, we can't force him to stay in the band.

"Maybe he can have a nice solo career and do that?"

# On the streets you look again

# At the places you have been

# For the moments that you thought Where am I going? #

Gene was experiencing, for the first time, horizontal income.

By that, I mean lie down on your couch and don't do anything

and you're making money.

He was making it off his songs and he instantly recognised what the

songwriting career was doing for him.

A lot of people that came to Gene Clark later tend to

think of him as the mystical poet or person that had come from a rural

background, and that was part of his personality, as well, of course.

But he really did love the Hollywood lifestyle. He liked the fast cars.

He liked the live dancers, the glamorous models.

We had very little information about how his life was going.

I had no idea he was dating Michelle Phillips for a while.

-I found about that later.

-He was the first guy to make money in The Byrds.

Went out and bought a Ferrari.

Didn't see him happy because of that.

So all the money in the world and all the things you can acquire

and all the adulation is not the ticket to happiness.

One wouldn't know at a young age.

The world is open to him at that time.

He can be Bob Dylan plus, with Echoes.

He can still be the folk guy,

he can be the rock'n'roll guy, or he can go on the country route.

# Stopped this morning on my way back home

# I had to realise this time that I'd be

# All alone... #

The first Gene Clark solo album

is not just the beginning of... in many ways...

Who knows when country rock began?

It doesn't matter, but in many ways it kick-started what

we now know as country rock.

I worked with the Gosdins and Vern and Rex were straight country.

He was really thrown by Byrds fans not grasping what

he was doing with this country-esque music.

-They wanted...

-SINGS "EIGHT MILES HIGH" GUITAR LINE

..the Eight Miles High, John Coltrane modal solos

and they got none of that.

Had Echoes been a hit, I think Gene would have moved in that direction.

I think he was very proud of that.

When it failed, I think he...

he lost confidence in that direction.

I think he kind of floundered

and couldn't really find the right voice or the right vehicle.

Not until we got to Dillard & Clark.

Doug Dillard was a giant in music at that time,

in country music, because he was generally regarded as being

one of the greatest banjo players in the country.

He was in the Dillards, who were the great bluegrass group

and they hailed from Missouri, the same state as Gene.

So he had a strong empathy with Doug Dillard.

And Doug Dillard was good and bad for Gene Clark.

I had breakfast with Gene and Doug. It was 10:30 in the morning.

At the Hamburger Hamlet on Hollywood Boulevard. Never forget.

And when they ordered Martinis, I went,

"There's something afoot here."

Doug probably needed no help to start the evening.

He was probably blasted already.

Doug could go on three or four day binges

and somehow still be upright, still play.

He wanted to form a band and start recording

with A&M, so Gene was already with A&M and he asked me

to join him.

First of all, he approached me about recording

and then we decided to put the group together.

Bernie, Leadon, Doug Dillard, Gene and Don Beck,

and we started showing up at Dillard's house on Beachwood Canyon.

And without anybody ever calling.

I don't recall ever getting a call saying,

"Let's show up tomorrow," or any of that business.

-We just showed up there.

-We sat down and started writing songs.

It just sort of came about.

# And now we shall see what the future will bring

# As we swing freely as one... #

Gene would be slumped on the couch, strumming some chords.

Always interesting chord patterns.

And spouting some words.

Often not making any particular sense until much later,

when things got filled in and he could see where he was going.

By the end of the day, there was usually a very good song.

He seemed to really have something that was a little bit

more into the real soil of American music.

Coming from Missouri, I think that his roots

really came through, and of course my idea was that when he hung around

the Dillards, and the Dillards were rootsy kind of players, you know?

# I lost ten points just for being in the right place

# At exactly the wrong time... #

I was real into starting into the contemporary country thing.

Of course, that was before the Flying Burrito Brothers

and The Eagles and everybody else.

There was no sense of breaking ground.

No sense of what was to come from this.

It was just one note at a time. One line at a time.

And a lot of Martinis.

And an interspersion of LSD.

They'd come to the studio and we'd start to play and it was just magic.

And it was a perfect vehicle for Gene.

He kind of found his vehicle and his voice at the same time.

So we had a great time making that album.

Didn't take very long, happened organically.

So here we are, we've made the album,

we're going to open at the Troubadour.

It's Tuesday night and the press is there.

So we go to the Troubadour about three or four o'clock

for the sound check, set up, do the sound check, everything is fine.

I drive back to Santa Monica, where I was living at the time,

take a nap, take a shower,

get ready for the evening's festivities,

drive back around 7:30, or 8:00 or 9:00, 8:30, I suppose,

and the doorman says, "You need to go next door to Dan Tanna's."

"Why do I need to do that?" Knowing full well.

And he said, "Well, apparently, they have taken LSD

"and they are drinking Martinis and have been since the sound check."

Which was over about 4:30, and so, yeah, sure enough,

I go over there and they are happy.

So now we get on, it's time to go,

we get on the stage and the lights come up,

and Gene is sitting on his amplifier facing the wall.

Douglas has a violin in his hand

with one of Douglas's massive smiles

and he has got this fiddle in his hand and he is ready to play.

He's got the bow on the thing, but there is no Gene

and we get it going,

we got through that first song, and at the very end Douglas is

holding the note like this, playing away like this,

and all of a sudden he leans down and puts the violin on the floor

and jumps up in the air and lands on the violin,

breaking the entire instrument.

Little Don Beck looks at me and he says,

"Well, I think that's enough for me,"

and turns around and walks off the stage and leaves.

This is the end of the first song.

Dillard & Clark, that first album, was a beautiful record

and I think a portent of what was to come.

You know...it hit a groove that a lot of people were getting into

and enjoying tremendously and... But that spluttered out.

I don't know the reasons.

I remember the second album.

I remember when Donna Washburn appeared on the scene.

She was Doug's girlfriend and really had a big voice. A lot to say.

A lot to say about what was going to go on

and she wanted a major piece of...

you know, the presence on stage and in the recording,

so the band, you know, dramatically changed and the personnel changed

and the fun kind of went out of the band.

And all of a sudden, we just didn't show up at the house any more.

The songs didn't get written any longer.

Gene was at that point again in his life

and this repeated over and over again

where he was done with that and he was ready to move on.

And I think at that time he decided he was going to exit

the Hollywood world.

MUSIC: "1975" by Gene Clark

When Gene moved to Mendocino and out of Los Angeles, I think he was

looking for a return to a more peaceful way of life.

He was looking for hours of joy.

He was burnt out, fed up with the rat race,

so I think he was pretty much going to be satisfied with doing

a little writing and stuff like this and... He wanted a family.

At least he thought he wanted a family, let's put it that way.

One day I came home from work and it was up in the hills

and it was a really hot day in LA and he was on a beautiful bike

and asked me if I wanted to take a ride to the beach.

So we did, we rode down to the state beach and watched the sunset

and the rest is history.

# She went off to the city

# To find what she was looking for... #

I met Carlie briefly in '69 when I was out there.

He had just gotten to where he knew...

Got acquainted with her and it was just a thing...

He was pushing me out the door while she was coming in.

Little brother wasn't going to be around for this one.

All the guys used to, when they were on...

When they had time in LA,

they all went to Big Sur, and Gene was never that much of a social

butterfly, in that he liked hanging out and he was pretty much

an isolationist at times, especially when he wanted to write.

And so I think that Gene probably just kept on driving

and found Mendocino on his own because when we moved there,

he said he never told anybody else about Mendocino,

nor had he ever taken anyone there.

So I think that was his private meditation place.

# And that life forms are insane... #

Being in nature and, you know, being up here in Mendocino

and having this wonderful land around him and being free, you know.

Being free of all the stress and all the...

chaos that had gone on in his life during his fame and everything else.

I think what made him most happy was to let go of all that

and just kind of be out in nature and relax and enjoy it.

We were just driving around one day

and here at the end of this ridge was this big old Victorian farmhouse

standing at the end of the road overlooking the ocean.

I said, "Wow, can you imagine living there?"

He said, "Yeah, I think we should."

And he had just met Carlie

and his love for her or their mutual love was...

She had the same idea, you know,

although she had never been country person but...

You know, it was a real dream that they had.

MUSIC: "Spanish Guitar" by Gene Clark

# To play on a Spanish guitar

# With the sun shining down where you are

# Skipping and singing a bar

# From music around

# Just to laugh through the columns of trees

# To soar like a seagull in breeze

# To stand in the rain if you please

# Or to never be found... #

Of course, we moved up there for keeps, but it wasn't long before

we had to have a house in LA too and we would go back and forth.

But Mendocino was always our home base. It's what kept him sane.

The next year, I guess '71, they got married here on the land.

And we were tight, you know, close.

There was always a lot of partying and...

Not wild parties, just people congregating a lot,

sitting around in the yard, driving here and there, meeting people.

Hanging out like that, not in bars. That wasn't until later.

Jerry Moss was a big fan of the Byrds and a big fan of Gene

and the writing he did and all the times when Gene hated to

leave Mendocino, he had a two-record contract,

two-record-a-year contract,

and Jerry would actually come to Mendocino and talk Gene into...

"It'll be OK, I'll put you here, you can bring Carlie..."

The next step, because we still liked Gene, was for him

to put some songs together.

Go into a studio, just make some demos, see how he sounds,

see what musicians he organised to work with.

And see if it was worth making a record.

# The village of the hills

# Sitting silently at will

# Like some prophecy forgotten by an age... #

It is a shame that that early 1970s singer-songwriter crowd,

that whole movement, was huge in the States, huge.

James Taylor on the cover of Time magazine. Oh, my God!

It's amazing that Gene somehow missed that particular

ship as it left the harbour.

He was tailor-made for it with a record like White Light.

I suppose it's that he didn't play the record company game

of touring and calling radio stations and so on and so forth.

A&M was largely an artist sort of label

and we sort of let the artist do what they wanted to do.

We present opportunities -

you could do this, you could do that -

and if they choose them, that was great,

but if you didn't want to do certain things,

well, then you didn't want to do certain things, you know.

And, obviously, the only other thing was, at some point,

we would not be able to continue with you

because we couldn't keep promoting and putting money into artists

that weren't willing to go out and promote the stuff, you know.

# From a place that I can call my home... #

It looked like what had happened was they were coming up with

a pretty strong follow-up to White Light and it seems to be that

what happened was A&M was getting nervous.

They pulled the plug because they thought,

"We're going to have another fine record but our artist isn't going to play the game."

I don't think that Gene ever didn't seem to react to success

or not success.

You know, the bottom line is there were still royalty cheques coming

and he was happy in Mendocino.

# I remember the railroad line. #

We had these two beautiful, adorable children

and we had this beautiful house overlooking the ocean.

We could see the ships pass in the night on the horizon.

We'd wake up and have breakfast till noon and then take a walk or...

You know, it was a fantasy.

Gene's interaction with LA after he went up to Mendocino,

and the music industry altogether, was,

I think it was a compulsion as much of anything.

Once you're a top-seated rock'n'roll star,

you don't just get over that overnight.

You know, that doesn't go away.

# Funny how the circle turns around

# First you're up and then you're down again... #

David Crosby came over to my house in Malibu,

accompanied by Elliot Roberts

and the two of them sat me down and said,

"You know, some of that stuff you're doing as The Byrds is OK,

"and some of it isn't.

"Some of it isn't. And the Byrds brand ought to be better than that.

"What I would like to propose is that we get all the original

"members back together and do an album like that."

Gene was really excited about it and there had been some differences with

various combinations of the guys and things, but David Crosby

was in one of his real control trips then,

but he knew what he was doing too.

It was amazing, because sitting in the studio

and hearing what they were doing was as good or better

than anything I ever heard of The Byrds.

What was released wasn't that same... The magic wasn't there.

She's right.

She's right. It could have been so much better.

If we had gone at it from the point of view of the songs

and left the freaking history behind...

..could've been a great record.

# And if it's right

# Brings it back again. #

Crosby had really the finest pot I'd ever smoked. It was...

I don't know how much THC was in it

but it was, like, ten times more than usual.

You would take a couple of hits and you're floating round the room.

There was cocaine and... It was a big party.

It was a party more than a recording session.

They could have made a fantastic album.

I was looking forward to it and when I was finished, there were

maybe three good songs, and two of them were Gene's.

That were far, far better than anything else.

# You can tell a change of heart

# Two faces smiled and yet there is no joy... #

Gene shined on that record. A couple of great songs saved the record.

The rest of us handed in some unfinished things

that I didn't feel were that good.

The Byrds reunion album was released on Asylum Records

which was the young, thrusting label of the time.

They had Joni Mitchell on there, they had Jackson Browne,

they'd even signed Bob Dylan, for goodness' sake.

It was the most exciting label to be on, and David Geffen, shrewd,

could see that Gene Clark was a real talent

and this was the platform, the perfect platform for Gene Clark.

Once he was signed to Asylum,

it was a perfect opportunity for him to make THE Gene Clark record.

I was producing Bob Newerth for Asylum and David Geffen called me

to ask me who I'd like to produce next, Gene Clark or Jackson Browne.

I said Gene Clark, cos I thought that Jackson Browne, you know,

didn't need to have a producer at the time.

I've always been a fan of Gene's, so that's how that came about.

We did the No Other album.

Thomas Jefferson Kaye had vast experience,

went right back to the '50s.

He was a producer, he was himself a songwriter and a performer.

More importantly, he was Gene Clark's soul mate in waiting.

That was a friendship that matches some of the greatest

friendships of all time.

The closeness between Tommy and Gene, as I saw it.

Tommy was really one of our legendary producers.

An extremely creative person. And I think he understood Gene

and Gene's musical talent probably like nobody else did.

When he signed with Asylum, he went away for a whole year

and he wrote all the songs.

Specifically because HE wanted to change his whole trip.

A lot of the writing that I did had some kind of spiritual things to it.

It was during a time when I felt like I was doing a lot of soul-searching.

# Have you seen the silver raven?

# She has wings and she can fly

# Far above the darkened waters

# Far above the troubled sky... #

He'd go for days.

Especially when it came close for him to have to record.

He would just be writing and scratching it out,

writing and scratching it out, and then, bam!

It was like a light went through him and then it just came.

Yeah, it was amazing.

I've been fortunate in the sense that I've known some really,

for me, interesting,

good artists and have witnessed some of their creative processes

and I don't think I've ever seen anybody like Gene.

It's just one of those intimate things that you witness

and you don't disturb it.

Oh, my God! Where does he get...?

He doesn't read books, where does he get this...?

He would come up with these divinely inspired lines and, you know,

as songwriters, we were begging for that, you know.

Gene had gone off into this headspace.

He starts kind of chanting this melody

and starts scratching words on the paper.

This went on for an hour or so and by the time that he had quieted

back down, the hair was standing up all over my arms and everything

because he went somewhere and I didn't know where that place was.

I was grateful to have just been sitting there next to him

while he went through this writing experience.

This thing came through him, this incredible mysticism.

Anybody whom I consider a good poet leaves it up to the listeners'

or the readers' imagination to analyse it in their own situation,

to kind of apply it to their own life,

however they want to do it, or to apply it in a real general basis.

A lot of stuff on No Other, I feel that about.

# Have you seen the

# Changing rivers now they wait

# Their turn to die... #

Gene played me the songs and I flipped out and he said,

"Let's go into another...

"Let's take it to another place musically."

We spent an awful lot of time.

It was a very expensive record to make.

Gene's songs are fairly dark, to say the least.

But I've worked with people,

a lot of singer-songwriters are fairly dark.

It's not like a pop song at all. It was great material to work with.

It was very creative.

It left a lot of interpretation for the musicians.

The songs would evolve by us just playing them.

The thing that was great in those days was generally

when you did a session you had a group of musicians in the room.

The amount of juices that were flowing in the room of ideas

and stuff was really intense.

# You say that you don't want no other... #

So we're in Village, working,

and Joe Cocker was in the next room working on his album

and so we were doing this one song and I don't remember which

song it was, but it was one of those ones where everybody

kind of looked at each other when we were about halfway through the song

and we went, "This is the take." You just feel it. It's just...boom!

It's just locked in. Well, during the course of this,

Cocker had come from his studio and gone into the control room.

And was sitting there, just getting into it, totally digging it,

and at one point, reaches down, hits the button for the talkback,

and lets out one of his Cocker screams into the microphone.

Literally blowing the headphones off of everybody's heads.

Gene busts down the vocal booth to get at Joe to get out of there.

Joe's handlers grab him, they drag him back to his studio

and lock the door, cos he wouldn't be alive today,

cos Gene was a big, tough dude.

If he'd have gotten his hands on Joe, it would have been all over.

The result is one of the most astonishing albums of its era,

and it still sounds great. It's a Technicolor production.

He throws everything in there.

He fuses different musical genres

without any sense of incongruity whatsoever,

and produces from that something which is just unique,

and absolutely incredible.

'David Geffen was furious,

'because there were only eight songs on the album.

'He just didn't get behind it.

'He wouldn't give us any money to go on a tour, subsidise the band.

'He didn't put anything into that.'

Another little thing that happened that didn't help that at all

was when Gene went after David Geffen at Dan Tanna's

and nearly took his head off.

From what I understand from the eyewitnesses,

he literally jumped over the table and took him by the throat.

Took him right off the chair.

Gene got so angry right there in the restaurant

that he punched him out, which isn't real cool in public.

Not cool at all, but...

And that was a real blow to his career,

because Geffen would have been everything for him.

Like he was for so many people.

'I was sorely let down after No Other,

'the fact there wasn't a hit,

'because I felt it really was

'a work of art, in its own way.'

Of course, funny enough, now, particularly here in the UK,

it's considered a major, prime one, primo example of a lost classic,

like Forever Changes by Love,

or the Smile album by the Beach Boys.

It's just considered... wow, wow, and wow again.

Nobody knew what was going to go on.

You know, there was talk of agents and tours and so on and so forth,

everybody living day to day,

and going from country house to country house and playing music.

When we played music, the world was well.

You know? We'd count off.

I was the guy to always count off.

I'd count off the tunes,

and the world was right.

Soon as the music stopped,

it was chaos.

# Seems my dreams are the wings of a spirit

# This vessel's sails can't fill without... #

'I didn't do anything for a while,

'and then Tommy and I got back together,

'and we independently produced

'Two Sides To Every Story.'

The RSO album, Two Sides To Every Story,

was pretty much as we now know, his last chance, and I think...

He did too little, too late,

and he should have been doing that all along.

It's a really fine record in its own sweet way,

but it's a bit out of time, because he is on the cover as

this rustic, bearded man,

which would have been fantastic five years earlier.

By '77, after disco, with punk/new wave coming in,

everybody was clean-shaven and a bit more coiffed

and a bit more well groomed.

It's just...

He continually missed ships leaving the harbour,

in terms of a metaphor for his career.

It's just heartbreaking.

I don't think that he enjoyed success.

I think it was a hugely confusing thing for him.

I think he was never comfortable with being somebody,

and not feeling it in here.

# Weigh the anchor once more... #

He would do what he liked,

he would do his music, he would be very happy.

Then things would start getting complicated,

because then it would be contracts and managers

and recording and the business, and that's when he would withdraw,

and that's when he would go off to the left a little bit sometimes.

Al Coury was the president of RSO Records, and...

..and...

..and they had a dinner for Gene that night.

They were going to talk over deals and, you know, wheeling and dealing.

And Gene came in late, and he came in drunk, and he had his old,

dirty boots on, you know, and he puts them up on the table.

Comes in, put his feet up on the table...yeah.

He's having a drink and he looks over at Al Coury, and he says,

"You look like Sonny Bono."

Which he did, actually, he looked like Sonny Bono!

He said, "You look like Sonny Bono."

And...yeah, and that did it.

That sealed it. Right there. You know?

Gene always had these great opportunities.

He always had a record deal, and they were behind him,

and he'd make a great record, and then it would fall apart.

The minute it was time to go out the gates,

the horse is trained and it's lined up to race.

The gate opens and the horse falls over.

That's what would happen.

Every time. And you're going, "What? What is that?" You know?

When he did the RKO album, they had decided that

they couldn't afford to have Kelly and Kai and I live there,

that they were just going to put Gene up,

and for me to stay in Mendocino.

And then I found out that he had gotten a house,

and there was a gal living there with him.

So, that was it. And, in retrospect...

I would have handled it completely different.

But I was mad, and I just told him I was going to go to Hawaii.

He...

was drinking a lot, and it was just...

It was like I stepped out of what I thought was a fantasy,

and realised in retrospect that it was insanity.

# Look around, little darling

# Do you know who I am?

# I'm as much your reflection

# As I am my own man... #

I don't think he expected it. I think that he had this...

vision in his mind that he could have both lives.

And the choice was made for him more than he made it.

And that's another thing, I think, that bothered him deeply,

is because that had to be walked out on.

You know, damaged him immensely.

You know, that carefree, friendly guy that moved up here was disappearing.

Even though he was always nice, but he had this dark streak, really.

# Watch the sun's fading embers

# Hear the wind as she cries. #

After having lived in Hawaii for three or four months, I just...

I couldn't feature living in that insanity any more, you know?

The drinking was out of control.

You know, like, Gene has enough Indian in him that

when he drinks, you know, he's not himself.

He would tell you that, that he actually is

up looking at himself when he's drinking.

I knew two Gene Clarks, as a lot of people did,

and the Gene Clark in Mendocino was this kick-back,

totally a cowboy kind of person, that kind of person.

In LA, his notoriety had been with The Byrds

and The Byrds were, in a way, like The Beatles to us,

and you know, that was one of The Beatles' favourite bands

in the beginning, so in LA, he was very famous.

And so he did have a totally different persona.

# I can only make guesses

# On some of my past addresses

# And tell you what my broken memory recalls

The Byrds never got out of him.

I think The Byrds defined Gene,

and I think that kind of caged Gene in again, you know?

Our next guests helped create the whole country-rock trend

back in the '60s, when they were members of The Byrds,

with songs like Mr Tambourine Man, Eight Miles High,

and now, after a 12-year break,

three of the members got back together with a whole new sound

that we're all hearing on the Top 40.

Here are McGuinn, Clark and Hillman.

For the 20th anniversary, I believe, of the Troubadour,

I was up on stage doing a solo,

and Gene Clark was out in the audience,

and Gene was right in front of me,

and I invited him up to do Eight Miles High with me,

and we had so much fun doing it,

and his friends and other people in the audience said,

"Why don't you guys go on the road as a duo?"

We did that, and then Chris Hillman got into it,

and it became McGuinn, Clark and Hillman.

Well, my first question is, will this band stay together,

or is it just an occasional album you've made?

No, we're going to stay together.

This is a new thing, McGuinn, Clark and Hillman,

and we intend to stick with it as long as it stays together.

Do you think you can avoid the problems, you know,

that caused The Byrds' split, in this new band?

Well, we can avoid some of them,

because we've been through all that stuff before, you know?

-I don't think it'll happen again, will it?

-Never.

There was still, like I said,

a lot of old resentments and things,

and so we never knew

if Chris would blow up at Roger,

or Roger would want to choke Gene,

or...you know, you just never knew.

So...

that lent itself to making some good music. It always did.

I think that negativity always made them create some great shows.

Live, we were good.

I've got some great tapes of McGuinn, Clark and Hillman live,

and it is darn good.

There were moments when he was back to the old Geno,

and he was getting it. It was good.

# Hey O, there's a stage for every star in the show

# And there's a star for every stage

# Ten feet away from the stage she can stand

# Hey O, do you know if she'll think that it's grand... #

When he was on stage, nobody could touch Gene. You know?

But I think he was happiest when he was on stage playing,

because the hour that we played,

there were still 23 hours left in the day to fill,

and he spent most of those 23 hours miserable.

'We walked into a ready-made bed,

'just by our names only,

'and we're spoiled with

'immediate limousines and Learjets,

'and you know, that kind of thing, it's not...

'You don't feel like you've earned your money.

'You don't feel like you've worked for it,

'and I think that was a lot of the reason why things fell apart.'

# Don't you write her off like that

# Don't you write her off like that

# Don't you write her off like that

# She's a real fine lady, don't you see?

-# Don't you write her off like that

-Don't you write her off

-# Don't you write her off like that

-Don't you write her off

# Don't you write her off like that

# She's a real fine lady, don't you see? #

Once we got a top 40 hit with Don't You Write Her Off,

and the pressure was on, and we were doing television

and radio shows and interviews, the pressure came on again,

and it started to affect Gene,

the way he had been affected in The Byrds.

He was just under pressure, and uncomfortable.

He started to find relief in other ways.

As far as...

..lifestyle choices, substance abuse,

that hit everybody hard in the '70s.

It got Gene bad.

So that McGuinn, Clark and Hillman was the time

when I did not know if he was going to make it.

When he came home for that McGuinn, Clark and Hillman concert,

that was really the time that I knew

that he was in deep trouble with drugs.

We waited a good half hour or more in the lobby,

the whole family, just waiting in the lobby.

He came downstairs with his sunglasses on.

First clue.

And he was literally strutting.

I mean, he was strutting around, big star. That was just...

Just the scene right there that,

you know, the light bulbs all went on. He's in big trouble.

There were some tough moments with Gene, between Gene and I,

and I was getting the job done, you know?

And Roger also, a consummate professional,

and it was hard to work with somebody who was not there,

not giving his all,

and we had moments that were very uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, Gene sought solace in heroin,

and he couldn't make the gigs any more, he wasn't working,

so we just asked him to leave.

It was rough, but it got to where we couldn't work with him,

so we'd do the second album,

and it's, "McGuinn, Hillman, featuring Gene Clark".

It was sort of easing him out.

It wasn't as good, and the last one wasn't very good at all,

so that was the end of that deal, and it was just as well.

That's really a shame, because...

especially in Gene's case, because they were just so talented.

I think he had so many more great songs in him.

When I hear other people do the songs, it just amazes me

how great a singer-songwriter he was.

MUSIC: "Mr Tambourine Man" by Gene Clark

# My weariness amazes me... #

Things just didn't feel good.

Nobody felt good about anything we were doing.

So I just wanted away for the year, just to cool out, you know,

clear my head, get my thoughts together,

and then I came back to the Firebyrd album.

# Hey, Mr Tambourine Man... #

When we moved into the '80s, I think it was hard on him,

cos the reviews weren't very good

and the money was not there.

You know, record deals were scarce and far between,

a lot of bridges were burned

and people were not looking at him

the way that they had looked at him in the past or with The Byrds

and stuff like that.

I had a new band that I put together and was managing.

We got the big thing that we were going to headline the Whisky.

The whole thing about when you open at the Whisky is to have

celebrities in the audience.

So, Gene, in all his wonderfulness, was going to be there for us.

So the stage is set up, ready for my band to go on.

Gene gets there and he gets hassled at the door.

He starts getting a little rowdy about it

and he starts getting real mad about it.

Well, basically the end result of it

is that Gene closed us down that night.

So, uh... He ruined our opening.

Totally ruined it.

So later that night we're up in the canyon at my house or someplace

and really ticked off at Gene. I mean, really ticked off.

Gene comes up to the house and gave us the old, soft cowboy hat in hands.

"I'm so sorry."

I think that's probably the point I loved Gene the most,

just to see him to go from that tough guy just to that sweet, gentle...

He was just gentle.

He was just a little kid with his head hanging down,

begging forgiveness.

A lot of mixed PR about...

Gene's a drunk or Gene is a drug addict, Gene is this, Gene is that.

Most of it wasn't true.

Yeah, he had some problems, but he wasn't...

My God, if you had read or had heard what people were talking about

without having known the man, you'd have thought he was Jack the Ripper.

But Hollywood falls for that. They love a good crazy story.

I think he's just stressed out. Completely stressed out.

All the time.

Trying to get back to where he once was, I think.

How's that got to be, to be on top of the world for, you know,

ten years and then scraping by,

waiting for your next royalties cheque?

You live that lifestyle, you become accustomed to that lifestyle.

How is it to clip coupons? It just doesn't work.

He tried to make it work.

I first met Gene Clark...

a strange night at a club that, well,

used to be a club we played at. It was called Madame Wong's.

One of his friends, Tom Slocum, knew of my band The Textones.

Anyway, long story short is, he dragged me

physically up on the stage.

When they were getting ready to start playing their encore,

Feel A Whole Lot Better, they're already into the intro of it

and Gene Clark is standing there.

Gene reaches over, sticks out his paw and says,

"Hi, I'm Gene Clark." I said, "I'm Carla Olson, nice to meet you."

That was it.

Carla is probably one of the most positive people...

..you're ever going to meet. She's a sweetheart. These duets they did...

..they worked. It kept them going. It kept both of their careers going.

I basically got pulled in, singing harmonies,

just from hanging around the living room, to be honest.

Then one day we were sitting there, I guess Gene showed us a song

that he had written with Rick, his brother Rick Clark, called Del Gato.

The lyric was just so incredible.

sort of a Western theme, kind of, Good The Bad And The Ugly.

# My name is Del Gato

# Born close to the border

# Of White blood and Red blood I came

# I travelled the saddle

# I followed the cattle

# Down on the range where they graze

# And I just ride in

# From a hard southwestern drive... #

We thought it was a standard,

before he said that he'd written it with Rick.

Gene says, "Hey, we ought to record this."

Saul says, "Well, let's record a whole bunch of them."

Carla and Gene just had some just had some obvious kind of...

simpatico.

Things seemed to make sense to try and do something together.

We decided because the voices were the most important thing, obviously

the songs too, we decided not to put any electric instruments on it.

Thus, we were the first unplugged.

# Sing that two-wheeled melody

# The highway symphony

# You know she'll never understand

BOTH: # Gypsy rider

# Sing

# Your two-wheeled symphony

# You know there's nothing

# To explain... #

As far as live shows, we did a few around LA,

but Gene was busy with The Byrds reunion.

He was in demand at that point for shows with that particular group.

# You may never pass this way again.. #

Michael Clarke told me that they were putting together this group.

I guess it was called The Tribute To The Byrds,

because who could use the name, who could not use the name?

It was a very touchy thing.

They said that if they could have a third former Byrd in this tour

that it would solidify everything and that it would really happen.

He was on the road a lot with these various tribute bands,

so that did sustain him, that kept him busy as well.

It kind of kept him in trouble a little bit,

cos there were a few bad boys in some of these incarnations.

I remember thinking that there were five gigs that I thought

really had the magic.

The rest were just like...

Like being on a pirate ship in a storm.

It was grind, definitely. It was crappy hotels and doubling up.

You know, driving the Pinto up to the show.

He was sober and he was just struggling.

Touring, getting his career back on track.

One of the things that was remarkable to me

is that even though Gene had a reputation for self-destruction...

..people would always show up who wanted to finance the next project.

He had that...

..undeniable quality of genius.

He had various groups of friends.

Pat Robinson, who was not really in the band,

but was a tremendous friend to Gene.

We felt that we were sort of his protectors.

MUSIC: "Carry On" by Gene Clark

We kind of started working together - writing songs,

that rolled into Cry when John York came along.

The Cry project was a beautiful idea.

Pat would invite Gene to write songs up in the studio,

but the condition was - no drugs, no alcohol.

We are just going to write songs.

# So many times that I will make my mistakes

# Take my heartaches

# Do what it takes to get along

# I will lay down my pride

# Tears I can't hide

# I've made up my mind to carry on... #

He had this tape recorder that he would put in the kitchen.

I could always remember his cowboy boots tapping all night.

It was kind of like this rhythm. I knew he'd be in the kitchen playing.

There was always music around, there was always guitars.

He was always working on stuff.

It was healing to him to be able to play music all the time.

It was a release of emotion too.

# Carry on

# Till you find your way back home... #

So that was the idea - that we could do something that had this...

..higher musical ethic, you know, where...

..there would be no demons present, really.

But we weren't able to take it anywhere.

Part of the problem with getting Gene a new record deal is, again,

Gene had kind of burned bridges.

He had a particular reputation as kind of a maverick

and an outlaw, which he cherished, but I think that didn't do him well.

We were playing, I think it was in Reno, in casinos there.

We had to have oxygen backstage for Gene.

He was so ill. We kept saying, "Gene, let's just cancel this.

"We don't think it's worth it."

He would say, "No, no, you guys all have bills to pay, you have families.

"Let's finish this."

We... We were really concerned.

From the airport, he went right to the hospital.

They took half of his stomach out. I'll never forget it.

Go to see him after he's had this surgery and he's up walking around.

He was... His recovery was just unreal.

This man just had his innards taken out.

He says, "I've got to have a cigarette."

I said, "Gene, you've been out of surgery less than 24 hours."

He was ready to run.

He was on the phone trying to book dates for the band.

I remember him coming to me...

..later...

..telling me that they'd cut out part of his stomach.

Told him he could never drink again. Ever.

A drop.

CRICKETS CHIRP

MUSIC: "Feel A Whole Lot Better" by Tom Petty

Tom Petty recorded his very first solo album.

The only outside song on an album that sold more than 4 million copies

was Gene's Feel A Whole Lot Better.

The money just poured in.

Then he just started getting huge royalty cheques.

I don't think he stayed sober much longer after that.

Started partying a lot.

He was still doing music,

but I think it was kind of like a lot of fits and starts.

So in the midst of all of this happening, everything,

then we get nominated to the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame.

I think really, for myself, gratitude is the main thing.

I've got to be really thankful for all the people in my life

that have supported me through the years, through MY good and MY bad,

and especially my brothers here on stage with me,

with whom I have enjoyed playing more than anybody else in the whole world.

Most of the bands that are inducted won't speak to each other,

let alone get on stage and play. We sat together.

And we played together at the end. It was a very nice ending.

It was reconciliation, and - I hate this term but I'll use it - closure.

Byrds over, end of story.

He was pretty excited when the Tom Petty thing came out,

Hall of Fame thing came out, but then the new stress came down.

That was more than having to book a show somewhere by himself.

He was having trouble with his throat.

And he was beginning to consume a little bit more alcohol again.

And I said, "You'd better go to the doctor.

"Go and see Flashman." And so...

When he saw Dr Flashman, this was probably a couple of weeks

before his final gig and he says, "I've got throat cancer.

-"What am I going to do?"

-I think he was worried...

that he was going to survive, but couldn't sing any more.

And then what do you do? But my dad was tough.

He wasn't someone who was going to get, you know, lie in bed all day.

He powered through it.

It was more like, "Oh, no, I tried so hard to try and get back

"on it and stuff is coming together and now I'm getting hit with this."

I look at that last picture and I just almost cried

because I saw all that suffering.

Here was this young, beautiful man that I used to know,

and then there's this broken down guy.

Although they were going to be doing the Cinegrill,

and I guess there was a trip to Europe planned.

So his music kind of died, but he was dying. Physically.

The first time I saw him play live was at the Cinegrill in Hollywood

and, ironically, it would be his last shows which was kind of...

You know, it's a coincidence that I was there or fate meant it to be.

We rehearsed at this place called the Alley, North Hollywood.

-A great old rehearsal hall.

-He had been pretty sober.

He had not been drinking at all for the rehearsals.

And, er, somebody showed up at the Alley that day, the last rehearsal,

and I won't mention his name.

He's a very famous guy, a very famous singer,

a singer-songwriter, and gave him a...

Got him kind of high on something, and after that, it was...

It was a different deal, you know.

He just kind of went out to another place...I guess you could say.

Then we rehearse these few tunes, you know,

but we had them down by the end of the...

Of course, he gets to the gig and he plays them completely different,

so in the Hollywood Reporter the next day

they said, Garth Beckington, I don't know, he seems like he's played

the guitar before but I don't think he ever played these songs before.

The Cinegrill was sad.

It was sort of bittersweet, in that he was in Hollywood

and all of his buddies were there, Taj Mahal and David Carradine

and a lot of people came out

that probably hadn't been to a Gene Clark show in a long time.

I wasn't thinking of him being close to passing out of here,

but he looked like...

He'd definitely been through some stuff, you know.

Cinegrill was not my favourite moment to see Gene but he did give me

a kiss on the cheek and said thank you.

I had a good friend named Howie Epstein who

played in Tom Petty's band and he was doing a record with John Prine.

He was going to put Gene on the tracks and I helped set it up.

Howie called me about noon or one o'clock, I think.

12:30, maybe it was.

He said, "Where is Gene?" you know.

I said, "Well, I don't know where he is."

So, I said, "I'll go over there."

I called him up and then was no answer and I went over there.

And I went in the door in the kitchen because the door was unlocked.

I went in the kitchen door and I came in and he was on the floor.

I mean, I knew he was dead right away.

When I walked in the room, when I walked in the house, I knew he was dead.

I was in Mendocino when John called from LA and said that CNN

was at the house and that I'd better let the boys know that Gene was dead.

The floor opened up and fell away.

I was just having a cool day, a sunny up in Mendocino,

and we were skating and my mom showed up there.

It was really weird. And, er, um...she told me.

My having to tell those boys that their dad was gone

was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

Right then, I would have gone back with him in a heartbeat.

# It was more like a dream than reality... #

Even in death,

Gene Clark never really got the full retrospection he deserved.

I think he's still the great missing character

in terms of commercial appeal, or even in cult status.

He is grossly underplayed

and underrepresented in the music business for what he did.

It's such an irony that the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss album,

Raising Sand, had two of Gene's songs on it. Two.

And of course, it sold 2 million copies, that record.