Featured Album | Alternative Liner Notes

364 | Gene Clark | No Other | Asylum SYL 9020 | 1974

Ironically, Gene Clark’s undoing as a Byrd, was his chronic fear of flying, though the usual petty infighting that goes with a band of giant egos didn’t help either.  After all, Gene Clark was the chief songwriter in the band and as is always a case with these things, the additional income a songwriter receives always has consequences.  So, having penned some of the best Byrds’ original work, “Eight Miles High”, “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” and “Set You Free This Time” amongst them, Clark was released to embark on a number of projects, a solo career being one of them.  After a fairly good start with the acclaimed ‘Gene Clark and the Gosdin Brothers’, followed by the even better “White Light”,  Clark met with a critical and commercial stumbling block with ‘No Other’, the album failing to impress, most notably the label boss David Geffen.  The apathy at the record shop counter was probably due to the fact that Asylum failed to promote the album sufficiently, therefore ‘No Other’ immediately became ‘No Sales’.  As with other such solo careers in the early 1970s, notably that of Nick Drake, Gene Clark’s popularity came posthumously and with it, the interest in this album.  Clark’s move from country influenced folk rock, largely due to the influence of both Stevie Wonder and the Rolling Stones, namely their respective albums ‘Innervisions’ and ‘Goat’s Head Soup’, was probably the reason initial interest suffered, though ‘No Other’ is now considered a classic album and a worthy inclusion in anyone’s record collection.                   

Playlist:

Golf Girl – Caravan (In the Land of Grey and Pink)

They’ve Taken My Racehorse Away – Hedgehog Pie (Just Act Normal)

Life’s Greatest Fool – Gene Clark (No Other)

Theme for an Imaginary Western – Jack Bruce (Songs for a Tailor)

I Won’t Let You Down – Heads, Hands & Feet (Old Soldiers Never Die)

Three Times Seven – Tony McPhee (Two Sides Of)

Split Part 2 – Groundhogs (Split)

Rape of Locks – Budgie (Budgie)

Silver Coin – Bridget St John (Thank You For)

John Blair – Hunter Muskett (Hunter Muskett)

Lady of the North – Gene Clark (No Other)