Gene Clark & Carla Olson - So Rebellious A Lover: Extended Liner Notes by John Einarson

Gene Clark’s career had pretty much hit rock bottom by the early 1980s. The former Byrds founder and singer/songwriter, the one out front with the tambourine, left the group in early 1966. Anointed America’s Beatles, a tag the Byrds found near impossible to live up to, the five band mates were never the best of friends. A country boy of simple virtues, Gene was way out of his depth in the fast hustle of the Hollywood music milieu. A combination of reluctance to fly, sniping from his fellow Byrds over his hefty royalty cheques (Gene was the band’s principal songwriter) and ill at ease with the god-like adulation bestowed on the band members, forced Clark to fly the coop. 

Despite consistently releasing critically acclaimed and creatively brilliant albums beginning in 1967 and sporadically thereafter, commercially Gene’s records had largely fallen on deaf ears. At times his frustration at failing to achieve a commercial breakthrough was palpable and nearly erupted into fisticuffs with music mogul David Geffen who financed Gene’s magnum opus, 1974’s No Other, only to leave it twisting in the wind without promotion. It was clear in the music business that Gene Clark was persona non grata, too much of a loose cannon to risk signing. His alcohol and drug use only heightened the unease surrounding him.

By the early 1980s Gene had been dividing his time between touring with fellow ex-Byrds drummer Michael Clarke in a sort of Rolling Thunder Revue of buddies dubbed The Byrds 20th Anniversary Tribute show and recording with a few close friends. To say the Byrds tribute shows, which included at times members of The Band, Beach Boys and Firefall, were ramshackled would be polite. Coked and boozed up, Gene and his band of merrymakers stumbled through a set of Byrds favourites each night. 

In sharp contrast, writing and recording with friends Pat Robinson and onetime Byrd John York at Silvery Moon studios in Laurel Canyon proved to be much more satisfying. As CRY (Clark, Robinson and York, later expanded to CHRY with the addition of pianist Nicky Hopkins), the sessions offered an oasis for Gene and a creative outlet, although his bad habits remained. Unfortunately, there was no commercial interest in CRY and the recordings would languish for several years before seeing the light of day after Gene’s death.

Besides the Byrds tribute debacle, Gene had been touring with his own band under the name FireByrd with a handful of younger players plus buddy Michael Clarke. But by the fall of 1984, FireByrd was running out of tinder.

Clearly Gene needed a lifeline. At what would become FireByrd’s swansong gig at Madame Wong’s West, a club on Wilshire Boulevard in West Los Angeles, Gene would meet singer/songwriter Carla Olson and her manager Saul Davis. 

“Saul and I intentionally went to see Gene that night actually because we had never met him,” explains Austin, Texas-born Carla, who had fronted the Textones. Near the end of FireByrd’s set that night, Gene’s compadre Tom Slocum invited Carla to join Gene onstage. “I didn’t know Tom, but he introduced himself. He said, ‘You should get up and sing with Gene on the encore.’ I replied, ‘That’s okay, Tom. I’m just here to enjoy the show.’” Slocum persisted. “‘They’re going to do ‘Feel a Whole Lot Better.’ When they started to do the encore, he literally grabbed me by the hand and pulled me up on the stage and threw a tambourine at me and said, ‘Sing!’ In the middle of the guitar solo, Gene leaned over and said, ‘Hi, I’m Gene Clark.’ There’s a photo, actually, of that moment, the moment we first met. Then after the show we went backstage and talked with him.”

Carla’s Textones were among a brand-new breed of punkish country-rockers. The early ’80s Paisley Underground revival of 1960s power-pop in Los Angeles had spurred a healthy country-rock/Americana roots scene. This would ultimately spawn the alt.country movement, spearheaded in the late ’80s and early ’90s by such artists as Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, Victoria Williams, the Jayhawks, and Son Volt, among others. These performers took as their guiding inspiration the works of doomed country-rock pioneers like Gram Parsons, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Sweetheart of the Rodeo-era Byrds, and Dillard & Clark.

Carla came out to Los Angeles in 1978 with friend Kathy Valentine and formed the Textones the following year (Kathy later took a spot in the Go-Go’s). Carla’s big break came when she appeared alongside Bob Dylan in the video for “Sweetheart like You” from his acclaimed Infidels album. She would later team up with Rolling Stones guitar great Mick Taylor as well as ex-Manfred Mann singer Paul Jones among others.

“I was aware of who Gene was, certainly with McGuinn, Clark & Hillman,” Carla continues. “He was always kind of the serious guy in the Byrds. He wrote the most beautiful melodies, the most haunting.”

The arrival of Carla and Saul at that particular point in Gene’s life and career, while certainly serendipitous, would prove fortuitous. It gave Gene the chance to return to a more roots-based, acoustic singer-songwriter format—always his strength—and offered fresh, new associations that would recharge his creative batteries.

“Gene had so thoroughly destroyed his name in the music industry by the time that we first met him that it was really difficult to get any opportunities for him,” laments Saul Davis, who would take on managing Gene. 

“We got together quite often at Gene’s house for business,” Carla recalls, “and I would hang around while Gene and Saul did business or we were waiting around for Gene to make one of these huge dinners. He used to love to make these big meals. Gene would start to play guitar and other people would come over like Tommy Slocum and we’d all be playing guitars and singing. I can’t remember who came up with the idea of recording this stuff. I have never really felt comfortable with my voice and I felt so honored that Gene allowed me to sing with him. He was just so totally giving that way. He never looked down his nose at anybody that was singing. He never put anybody down.”

Two songs ultimately destined for the album emerged out of those impromptu kitchen sessions. “One time I remember we were sitting there,” Carla recalls, “Gene and me and Saul, Michael Clarke, and somebody else, and we got on this ‘Hot Burrito’ kick. Gene just started playing it on acoustic guitar. I just was singing harmony under my breath. He played something else, too, then he said, ‘I’ve got this great song that my brother wrote. Listen to this.’ I thought it was a Woody Guthrie song from the 1930s. I just fell in love with it. He and Rick wrote it together.” The song was “Del Gato,” one of the highlights of the album, a poignant tale of early California history. “When we were living in Mendocino with Gene,” Rick explains, “we didn’t have a TV. That’s how we ended up writing ‘Del Gato’ because I was reading about the early history of California. That’s how the idea for ‘Del Gato’ came about and we wrote it in one evening.”

After a few trial runs singing with Gene and sharing songs plus recording with member so the Textones as well as The Long Ryders, in early 1986 Gene and Carla began sessions for their duet album, So Rebellious a Lover (the title taken from the lyrics to “Del Gato”) at Control Center studios in Los Angeles with drummer Michael Huey producing. Michael had previous drummed for Glenn Frey, Juice Newton, Joe Walsh, and Chris Hillman when Saul approached him with the offer to produce Gene and Carla. “I came of age in the 1960s with the Byrds,” states Michael. “Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I would be in a recording studio producing Gene Clark. He was one of the fathers of modern rock ’n’ roll. And lo and behold he’s out in the studio with Chris Hillman! That pretty much blew me away, personally. The engineer and I just kept looking at each other all day long going, ‘I can’t believe it!’ It was pretty amazing to have these two guys there. Gene was such a wonderful man, too. Never aloof or arrogant, a pretty down-home kind of guy. He had the aura about him, but he never played on it. He was just a very charismatic guy in a kind of quiet way.

“Actually, it was the four of us—Gene, Carla, Saul, and myself—who steered that album through,” insists Michael. “We ploughed through a lot of material before we picked those eleven songs. We knew that the album was going to be rather dark because that tended to be Gene’s style. There were some uptempo, happier, rockier songs but they just didn’t seem to fit on that album. He really, really loved those down songs. That’s what he listened to, that’s what he wrote, and that’s what he played. Great songs, but any time we had something uptempo, he didn’t like it. He just didn’t like fast songs or to rock that much. That’s truly the way he was. So, we knew it was going to be kind of a dark and introspective album and we decided to go with it because it seemed to fit. That style wasn’t so much Carla. That was more Gene, as far as the direction, more of a Gene vibe, although Carla had a lot of input.”

Using a stripped-down, back-to-basics approach and framing the songs in a rootsy folk/country context, Michael managed to create the perfect setting for Gene and Carla’s songs. While Gene dominates the material, Carla holds her own, contributing such standout compositions as “The Drifter” and “Are We Still Making Love.” 

For the sessions, Michael assembled a solid backing band whose talents complemented Gene and Carla’s musical vision. “We had pretty much an all-star rhythm section,” he states. “In Los Angeles musicians’ circles they were quite well known. We had Otha Young on acoustic guitar from Juice Newton’s band, and Skip Edwards did a lot of keyboards on it. He later worked with Dwight Yoakam.” Long Ryders guitarist Stephen McCarthy added dobro and lap steel. Michael provided the drums. Chris Hillman (who appeared on almost every album Gene released throughout his career) guested on mandolin on several tracks, demonstrating once again his long-standing support for Gene.

Despite the stellar supporting players and stressless studio vibe, Gene endured considerable personal discomfort throughout the sessions. As Michael remembers, “He was going through heavy stomach problems and intestinal problems and he was in pain a lot of the time we were recording and had to be taken to the hospital on one occasion. He would double over in pain. He was popping a lot of aspirins and Tylenol and drinking monumental amounts of coffee and smoking. I think that helped to speed up his death because all of that stuff pretty much ate a hole in his stomach. But he wasn’t drinking alcohol. He was on the wagon, or at least he was not drinking around me.”

Carla credits Gene for providing her with a musical education. “Gene taught me so many things about singing,” she recalls, “He used his voice like a woodwind or a cello, with subtlety. Gene showed me that I had to back off the mic — not just belt it out — to make every word count. Because he had played solo so much, I had to find my place in the songs, whether to use a different inversion of a chord, or find a harmony that fit. Many times I opted for a unison part but an octave above. That seemed appropriate to create a single voice on some lines.”

Saul secured a recording contract with UK indie label Demon but finding a US deal was difficult given Gene’s tarnished reputation. “Saul was gently trying to convince Gene that people were not exactly knocking down doors to sign him,” states Carla. “But that was hard because Gene always had his ego.” In the end Saul managed to convince Rhino Records, best known as reissue specialists, to put out the album. So Rebellious a Lover presented Gene and Carla’s exquisite acoustic folk/country-based songs with subtle, unobtrusive backing. “Probably it was a part of Gene that everyone longed to hear,” suggests Carla. “Most people never got to hear that on his records because of all the production. The whole idea of doing that record stripped down was to let the voices be heard. Minimal instrumentation was the direction we wanted.” The album found Carla’s songwriting well matched to Gene’s high standards and her rich, full voiced delivery a worthy partner to his melancholy baritone. 

Released by Rhino Records in 1987, the album revived Gene’s flagging career. Standout tracks included the hauntingly exquisite “Gypsy Rider” “Del Gato” and an aching “Why Did You Leave Me Today.” The sympathetic, unobtrusive backing allowed the strength of the songwriting to shine through. Gene’s vocal performance throughout is both compelling and heartbreaking, especially on the tender Gram Parsons-Chris Ethridge country-rock classic “Hot Burrito #1.” While the record heralded Gene’s return, it is as much Carla’s album as Gene’s. Together the two harmonize like a folk version of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris on “Fair & Tender Ladies” and their duet on “Are We Still Making Love” is pure honky tonk heaven.

Critics unanimously heralded the album’s rootsy feel—a precursor to the entire Americana/alt.country movement—and acknowledged the return of Gene to the public eye. Sales, however, were slim. “It got great reviews, but it didn’t sell many,” Michael laments. “It was toward the late ’80s and the groups on the radio were a lot of tight pants and hair, Duran Duran and that Euro pop/rock/disco thing, and this album went against every grain of commercial success you could possibly do at that time. There was no such thing as Americana or roots rock then and also it was prior to unplugged, that MTV show. A year or two after we did the album, for artists to go on MTV and do acoustic versions of their material was a new and exciting thing, so we were ahead of the curve. But there weren’t a lot of marketing dollars behind it.” The album would be Gene’s last official release. (A reissue from Fuel 2000 Records in 2004 added six bonus tracks to the album, four of which are from the 1985 Gene’s sessions with the Textones).

While a tour in support of the album never materialized, Gene’s notorious aversion to flying a well-documented reality, the two managed several key performances including an appearance on CMT’s Nashville Now. As Carla remembers, “There were no agents interested in booking us.” 

“There was some estrangement going on between Gene and a lot of people during that time,” Michael postulates. “Gene was coming out of a real drunk period and Saul had really worked him quite a bit and brought him back career-wise. He hadn’t really been straight long enough for a lot of people to know it yet and people were still kind of afraid to be around him. This was kind of like the coming out for Gene. I took it at the time that this was the first step in a long-range career plan, a comeback. We would do this album and the next one would be a little more rock. That was sort of the plan, all this to try to bring him back.”

“If Rhino Records had gone to town on ‘Gypsy Rider’ and serviced it to country radio, that might have turned into something,” Saul points out. “No one of major stature later in the 1980s or since came across ‘Gypsy Rider’ or ‘Del Gato’ or any of these other songs and made them hits, which may have revitalized his career. Adds Carla, “Gene definitely had the potential to write commercially if he put his mind to it.”

“Maybe in the right genre of music, I guess country, Gene could have had some kind of a hit country ballad,” suggests Saul. “I’ve got a stack of rejection letters where we sent out demos. Gene’s reputation unfortunately hurt him. You would think objectively, in black-and-white, here’s a guy who had been in one of the biggest American bands of all time including a couple of No. 1 records. He’s had songs cut by people like Tom Petty to the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt. He looks good, he writes great songs, good image, and great voice. Obviously, he got shafted for a record deal when you look at it objectively. But then you add all that other stuff surrounding him. So it doesn’t work as scientifically or arithmetically as you would think.”

Coming out as it did in 1987, So Rebellious A Lover was a watershed album often regarded as ground zero for the entire alt. country, Americana, roots music movement of the 1990s. “Gene and Gram Parsons are the fathers of this whole alt. country thing,” Saul insists. “The only category they could put us in for a Grammy was the country category,” notes Carla, “because there wasn’t a category for rootsy acoustic music of this kind and for some reason it didn’t register to people as folk music. And country at that point was pretty much awful stuff except for people like Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett. There was such a Las Vegas thing in country music then.”

Looking back, Carla remains proud of So Rebellious A Lover. “Here we are nearly 35 years later and people are still interested in that album,” she muses. “What an honor.”

John Einarson, author of Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life & Legacy of The Byrds Gene Clark (Backbeat Books).