A rare Byrd rediscovered
Lists of “lost classic” albums are usually undermined by unworthy entries. Obscurity doesn’t necessarily equate to quality.
However, there’s a case for No Other by Gene Clark, which was released in 1974.
But poor sales saw it deleted by his record company within a couple of years.
Clark, one of The Byrds’ better songwriters, quit the band in early 1966 for a career increasingly propelled by booze and cocaine and hindered by a reluctance to perform live. After three small-selling but critically acclaimed solo albums, he embarked on No Other, which he intended as his major statement.
The assembled players were the cream of Los Angeles studio musicians and fellow travellers in what we might call cosmicpsychedelic-country rock. Clark was on a similar wavelength as post-Monkees Mike Nesmith and Gram Parsons, but much further out.
Whatever ice picks were in Clark’s poetic and sometimes pessimistic imagery, they were wrapped in warm, somewhat overegged arrangements for multiple guitars (pedal steel, of course), keyboards, strings and backing vocals.
The commercial failure of the album wounded him and, although others followed, he died at the age of 46, in 1991, after decades of substance abuse.
No Other is spiritual, funky, dark and disturbingly beautiful. It deserves its place in the annals of lost classics. Now remastered and reissued, it reappears after nearly 46 years.
NO OTHER, by Gene Clark (4AD/ Rhythmethod)