Reflections on Gene Clark's "No Other Sessions"
For the past fifty years, I have been avoiding The Byrds. The reasons are unclear to me; maybe it's because they came from Los Angeles as a band, and as a teen, I was devoted to those who drank tea and ate bangers. Also, David Crosby was an annoying figure through the decades. It wasn’t his politics, but his mixture of ego and arrogance, plus his tendency to lecture down to you. I also resent The Byrds being more popular than the Los Angeles group Love. There was something fatalistic about Love that appealed to my teenage sensibility. The Byrds always seemed to cater to their decade and had the knack of being in the right place and at the right time, but Love was always hopeless in a certain sensibility. Then, about four or five years ago, I started picking up Byrds albums out of curiosity, wondering how my take would be now in the 21st century. I also had a deep secret: I loved their guitar and vocal sound. Even David Crosby sounded good in the group. But the real star, of course, was Gene Clark, and he only lasted for the first two Byrds’ albums.
Gene was my Syd Barrett with respect when he was the leading light in Pink Floyd. At first, Gene was the main songwriter for The Byrds, but those two albums were half covers and then the rest, Gene tunes. And the Clark songs were pretty damn great. His voice was more country than folk or even British Invasion rock. He yearned like it was his oxygen to breathe. Beyond that, I have two Gene Clark solo albums. His first one, Gene Clark With The Gosdin Brothers (1967), is superb and close to his sound with The Byrds. The other album I have is No Other (1974). It's a great collection of songs by Gene, but I find the production a tad overbearing. Now, there is also No Other Sessions, and I think that is a better version of the recordings that were on the final version. Stripped-down, yes, but a beautiful orchestrational sound from the other musicians; nevertheless, all the instruments are placed where they shine on the songs themselves. And then there’s Gene Clark's magnificent voice.
I don’t like the authenticity used in describing music, but Clark’s lyrics and voice have a majestic and quiet poetic quality. It is like he’s a honky-tonk singer who also listens equally to opera or classical music. Roy Orbison is operatic with tragically huge emotions, but Clark is quiet in his despair and Proust-like in acknowledging his feelings through the songs. He’s not cinematic but more textural, such as when reading text off a page.
No Other Sessions is a classic piece of work for an album that wasn’t meant to be released. I do like the parent album, No Other, but hearing these rehearsal tapes/or discarded versions, you can feel the music’s magnificence. As I listened to these recordings, I thought of Bryan Ferry’s The Bride Stripped Bare (1978) because that album sounds like all the musicians are in the same room, which I suspect is way different from the future Ferry recordings. There are also some of the studio outtakes of Beach Boys Smile, where you can hear them working out various parts of the song. I actually enjoy those recordings, then the finished Beach Boys Smile album. So yeah, for sure, get and listen to No Other, but do get the main meal, which is No Other Sessions.
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