She Don't Care About Time

"She Don’t Care About Time"
Written by Gene Clark

Hallways and staircases every day to climb

To go up to my white-walled room out on the end of time

Where I can be with my love for she is all that is mine

And she'll always be there my love don't care about time

I laugh with her cry with her hold her close she is mine

The way she tells me of her love and never is she trying

She don't have to be assured of many good things to find

And she'll always be there my love don't care about time

Her eyes are dark and deep with love her hair hangs long and fine

She walks with ease and all she sees is never wrong or right

And with her arms around me tight I see her all in my mind

And she'll always be there my love don't care about time

And she'll always be there my love don't care about time

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A bullet-proof song is impervious to irony, camp, or plain old ineptitude. Whether played by a clumsy bar band or a symphony orchestra, a bullet-proof song loses none of its grace in translation. It is a song wherein the very utterance of its title commands respect and attention. It is a song whose bones are its melody and whose soul lies in the timeless appeal of its lyrics.

It is the perfect song.

Gene Clark was certainly on a roll in 1965, having penned some of the finest moments on the first two Byrds LPs, including the single "I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better," along with the thoughtful melancholy of "Here Without You" and soon-to-be A-side, "Set You Free This Time." Retrospectively then, when one considers that "The Day Walk," "Eight Miles High," "The World Turns All Around Her" and many others all sprang from this era, the tuneful, wistful elegance displayed by Clark (still just into his 20's, mind you), not to mention his batting average, is fairly staggering.

Perhaps better than all of these songs, however, was the immaculate "She Don’t Care About Time," a song so well written that I have conferred upon it Certified Clarkophile Bullet-Proof status. Its construction, both musically and lyrically, has a built-in ability to adapt to times and styles of music without losing any of its original lustre. It is not dependent upon, nor tethered to, a particular riff (with apologies to Roger’s Rickenbacker) or production technique which might prove difficult to replicate in a live setting.

The Byrds’ take on the song is a thrilling piece of proto-power pop masquerading as folk-rock. McGuinn’s distinctive Rickenbacker riff and Michael Clarke’s clumsy-but-serviceable take on Ringo’s "Ticket to Ride" beat are both noteworthy. But it’s those trademark Byrds harmonies, wrapped around Gene’s mesmerizing melody, which command most attention.



In the hands of the Byrds, the song became an harmony showcase for Clark, Crosby and McGuinn insofar that no one lead singer was featured singing solo lead (as opposed to, say, "I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better," which featured Gene as lead singer with Crosby and McGuinn adding backup). The Byrds, whom Crosby once said could sing like angels on certain days, were certainly blessed from above on the day they cut this song.


Musically speaking, the Byrds’ version is, in fact, so glorious that it tends to overshadow the lyrical content, which at first blush appears to be the standard boy-girl fluff prevalent in all pop music. It wasn’t until later versions of the song appeared, first as slowed-down country weeper on the Roadmaster album, then as breezy California MOR with the Silverados on various bootlegs, and its final incarnation as late-80's funereal dirge, that those deceptively simple lyrics finally took centre stage. An early indication of Clark’s grasp of narrative ambiguity--a device which he would use throughout his career to dazzling effect--these lyrics, which appear to be simply a celebration of the irrelevance of time when ensconced with a lover, also embrace, depending on how one interprets the lyric, pre-psychedelic musings, a charming character study of a young woman and/or the suitor himself, as well as more the more lofty pursuit of celebrating romantic love in a metaphysical context.


The image of going up to a "white-walled room out on the end of time" certainly feels like an early stab at psychedelic turn of phrase. Here, time itself has transformed into a physical plain of existence to which the lovers can escape or hide, or simply exist beyond space and time. Everything seems to be divided by what happens within and without the white-walled room, much like John Donne’s transformation of a bedroom into an "everywhere" in "The Good Morrow":


And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.


Here, "an everywhere" carries the same significance as Clark’s "out on the end of time": the private moments shared within the white-walled room sustain the lovers everywhere they go, and through good times and hardship ("I laugh with her, cry with her").
The woman in the song is characterized as calm and confident ("walks with ease"),
understanding and non-judgemental ("all she sees is never wrong or right"), and happily non-materialistic ("she don’t have to be assured of many good things to find").



We can also infer from these lines a great deal about the narrator’s character. Clearly he appreciates these qualities in her, the first two for obvious reasons, and the last presumably because he simply cannot afford to provide her with expensive gifts. It’s pretty much the same idea (roles reversed) that McCartney tried to communicate in ‘She’s a Woman’ ("My love don’t give me no presents/I know that she’s no peasant"), only Clark accomplishes it without using such crude language. McCartney’s line had none of Clark’s poetic lilt or inherent respect for his love interest.


The single greatest line in the song comes at the end with the payoff line, "And with her arms around me tight, I see her all in my mind." The meaning of this line in the context of the Byrds’ version felt like the narrator’s juvenile description of the all-consuming thoughts of his lover, but in later versions it’s clear that "her all" means, in fact, her being, her very essence.


Juxtaposed with the immediacy of a specific moment in time "And with her arms around me tight"—a line rooted in the immediate now— "I see her all in my mind" transcends the immediacy of being physically held by her with the more spiritual idea of holding someone’s essence for all eternity, and thus, out on the end of time.

‘She Don’t Care About Time’ is an early indication of Clark’s true facility with words, not as instruments of wordplay or dead-end pseudo-philosophizing, but as tools to communicate complex ideas through imaginative manipulation of space and time as material objects.
In this respect, the song is as bullet-proof as they come.

All I Want from This Byrd Has Flown

‘All I Want’
written by Gene Clark/Tom Slocum/Shannon O’Neill
from This Byrd Has Flown
recorded in 1987

In 2000, Volkswagen successfully enlisted Nick Drake’s starkly elegant ‘Pink Moon’ for a very effective TV ad campaign. For Drake cultists, this canny move had the effect of transforming their cherished private icon into, comparatively speaking, a virtual household name. Drake, hardly a radio-friendly unit shifter during his all-too-brief lifetime, had overnight become a posthumous superstar. Sales of his CDs soared; his music was subsequently featured in films such as The Royal Tenenbaums, Serendipity, and Garden State.

Now, in 2008, with the CD era apparently dying a quick death–plunging sales would tend to indicate this–musicians are, in increasing numbers, turning to television ads to get their music heard by the masses. Music by the Who, Queen, Bob Seger and countless others have been featured to sell cars and cruise lines. Townshend’s licensing of ‘Baba O’Riley,’ ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ and ‘Who Are You’ to the CSI franchise doesn’t scream "The Who sell out!" as much as "Pete Townshend is no dummy!" Townshend’s music is still being heard, still making money; the same cannot be said of many of his contemporaries from the 1960's and 1970's.

All of this has led me to wonder if there could be similar posthumous success for a Gene Clark song. Like Drake, Gene never had a solo hit single, but Gene lived long enough to record much more music than Nick, increasing the amount of material from which to choose a likely candidate for possible posthumous success. So what Clark solo song from the years 1966 to 1991 would have commercial–-as in TV commercial–-potential to create renewed interest in my own personal cherished cult icon?
I have many songs I’ve cherry picked from Gene’s canon which might successfully accomplish this, but the song which I think currently has enough commercial oomph to get Clark some exposure is ‘All I Want,’ a bonus track from the 1995 reissue of 1984's Firebyrd (inexplicably, embarrassingly retitled This Byrd Has Flown upon its re-release in 1995). Co-written with Gene’s buddy Tom Slocum, with added touches to the final arrangement by Shannon O’Neill, ‘All I Want’ boasts a warm, echoey vocal from Gene, with an impressive list of backing musicians, including 'Sneaky' Pete Kleinow, Rick Marotta, Albert Lee and Jeff Porcaro.

The verses of the song feature Gene’s usual stately-sounding solo vocal, which on this occasion conveys equal measures of pain and world-weariness typical of his '80's material. The chorus is lush, unabashed AOR; its lyrics, simple and universally accessible: "All I want is your love, all I want is your kiss, all I want is to hold you."

So far so good, right? Can’t miss, right? The song, however, ultimately falls flat on its face during the bridge due to some ill-chosen lyrical ideas:

"I know that you know a million Casanovas, lover

And you know that I know a million bitches too

But there ain't a hundred of them gonna snow you under

Or blow your cover or make you feel blue."

Ugh. Awkward, sexist, metaphorically confused and downright unpleasant, these lyrics are pure dreck. Perhaps not surprisingly, in the liner notes to This Byrd Has Flown, Tom Slocum alludes to some disagreement between the co-writers: "As a song it was and is, lyrically and musically, an even split, but we both had some reservations about it. He wasn’t sure about my ‘bitches’ line and I wasn’t quite happy with the ‘blow your cover’ bit."
Well, at least I know who to blame for that awful "bitches" line. It’s a shame that a line filled with such gratuitous and needlessly inflammatory language should appear on a Gene Clark album, but it pleases me no end to discover that Gene himself disliked it. Whenever I hear the song, I imagine Gene singing that line through gritted teeth. (Listen to it: he even pauses after singing "a million" before finally spitting out "bitches," as if he dreaded every moment of it.)

This is not a line Gene Clark would have ever written. From the get-go, Gene’s lyrics filtered man-woman relationships through a respectful, if unrelentingly melancholic, chivalric code. I have no idea if Clark led his life according to this code, nor do I particularly care, but this "bitches" lyric is antithetical to Gene’s personal style of songwriting. To his credit, he does not pull off the "bitches" line very well.

With a different set of lyrics, ‘All I Want’ might have been a late-period classic for Gene. As it stands, some intrepid commercial ad person may wish to snip the chorus in all its lush AOR glory and use it in some advertisement to sell toilet paper or life insurance.

Mark my words, if this were to occur, Gene Clark would finally have that solo hit single that eluded him during his career.

You heard it here first, folks.

DELAY IN NEXT INSTALLMENT

Due to some unforeseen problems with my home computer, the next installment of my blog will be delayed for a week or so. As soon as I get things straightened out, I'll be back in business with a new piece on one of my favourite Gene Clark songs.
Thanks.

Silent Crusade

"Silent Crusade"
from Two Sides to Every Story (1977);
also available on 2-CD Flying High compilation

written by Gene Clark

I am told that my life is a clipper

The sea of time has tossed about

And I know that there's only one skipper

Who can guide that ship about

Do the wakening eyes of the wondering soul

See within and then without?

Silently the truth speaks more loudly

Than what falls from my mouth

Seems my dreams are the wings of a spirit

This vessel’s sails can't fill without

From its wind comes the light of inspiration

And the darkness of doubt

Gales of anger that wane into the calm

Please take me drifting far away

From the wordy and worldly explanation

Of the space we call today.

Sail away

Sail away from the shore.

Situations, weigh the anchor once more.

Sail away

Sail away from the shore.

Situations, weigh the anchor once more.

1977's Two Sides To Every Story appeared three years after the commercial failure of Gene’s grand artistic statement, No Other. In a perfect world, Two Sides would have been welcomed as a triumphant follow-up to its ambitious, critically acclaimed predecessor, and serve to galvanize Clark’s status as a songwriting force to be reckoned with, ultimately catapulting Gene into the forefront of 1970's singer-songwriters, and overdue superstardom.

Alas, it was not to be. Two Sides To Every Story sold poorly and was slammed as "plodding," "lame," and "lugubrious to the point of laughableness" by Paul Nelson in Rolling Stone (RS 239).

It was also Gene’s final album for a major label (RSO).

So what happened with Two Sides? There are no shortage of possible explanations, but here’s my take on it. Thomas Jefferson Kaye’s production--so crucial to the Spectoresque bombast and breadth of No Other--was, on this occasion, flaccid, lacking spirit, grit or vision, unable to coax anything resembling energetic performances out of the assemblage of musicians. The ill-chosen rock tracks, "Mary Lou" and the inexplicable remake of "Kansas City Southern", did not rock, and in fact sounded like a very average pub band playing to an empty house on a Tuesday night. The more laid-back tracks, like "Hear the Wind," seemed sluggish, bogged down in what I would characterize as late-‘70's burnout. I still maintain the position that if this song had been performed in more sprightly arrangement, in, say, the style of Neil Young’s early ‘70's hits like "Old Man" and "Heart of Gold," it would have been a breakthrough hit for Gene.

The failure of No Other must have devastated Gene. He wrote or co-wrote the entire album, with the exception of one song which was co-written with Doug Dillard. It’s my theory that in the period after the failure of No Other Gene suffered a crisis of self-confidence which left him doubting the value of his own writing and, by extension, his own value as a person. Why else would he ditch impressive songs like "Wheel of Time, "Denver or Wherever" and "The Daylight Line" in favour of recording three covers, only one of which succeeded ("Give My Love to Marie")? "Wheel," "Denver," and "Daylight" were superior to any of the covers and the majority of Clark originals on the finished album. I’m unsure if "Crazy Ladies" was written prior to the recording of Two Sides, but if it had been, this would be a further evidence that Gene had simply lost the ability to objectively gauge the value of his songwriting skills.

"Silent Crusade," for those who toughed it out and continued listening as Two Sides limped to its finish, provided a possible explanation for what was happening with Gene in the post-No Other period. One of the recurring metaphors in Gene’s writing is the sea. Here, Gene likens himself to a ship tossed about on the sea of time. If one remembers that since he left the Byrds in early 1966 Gene had been recording and performing sporadically as a solo artist and had failed to log even one commercially successful album (or single, for that matter), this image is quite apt.
Part of Gene’s genius as a lyricist was his ability to convey abstruse concepts in a just a few words, epitomized in a line like, "Do the wakening eyes of wandering soul see within and then without?" Posed as a question, Clark accurately conveys the "darkness of doubt" to which he will shortly allude-- the inference being he should be able to look within his soul with the same clarity that his eyes apprehend the world around him. It is common knowledge that Gene’s drinking and drug use escalated during the 1970's--after all, what musician’s intake did not?--but his lyrics hint at something uglier: addiction.

"Silently the truth speaks more loudly than what falls from my mouth" is a line which fascinates me. I think it’s an reference to the kind of delusional games that substance abusers play with themselves. Gene finds that there is a disconnect between the honesty going on within him, the concern that his drinking might very well be a serious issue (he may have even been told this by concerned friends and family members: "I am told that my life is a clipper...")–-and the actual words which he speaks, perhaps in denial of these same concerns.
The inner voice recognizes both the "light of inspiration" which obviously serves to fuel his songwriting, as well as its dreaded opposite, the "darkness of doubt", which I take to be an allusion to writer’s block possibly exacerbated by alcohol use.

But where is the calm in all of this? Where is the sense of inner peace and contentment? The wind propels the ship into waters where the light is conducive to writing, or headlong into "gales of anger."

There seems to be only feverish work or chronic desperation to choose from.

These are the two sides to the story.

Clark’s awareness of the need for inner peace leads to the crux of the song. He pleads for "this vessel"–his soul, to be taken to seas of calm, seas which transcend "worldly explanation." This desire is initially posed in the guise of a weary supplicant, but immediately becomes a direct command–a silent crusade--inside himself: "Sail away from the shore."
The heartbreaking final image, "Situations weigh the anchor once more," constitutes a denial of the hoped-for deliverance, and an ominous indication of how deeply the self-doubt (and quite possibly addiction) ran in Gene during this time. The use of the word "situations" is obviously a euphemistic catch-all phrase for all of his problems, from his disintegrating marriage to his slumping career, to his ever-growing abuse of booze.

"Silent Crusade" documents a quest for self-awareness and self-reliance growing impotent under the tightening grip of addiction.

"Kathleen" from Gypsy Angel

"Kathleen" written by Gene Clark

from Gypsy Angel (2001)

When Gypsy Angel was quietly released in 2001 on the small British Evangeline label, Gene Clark’s reputation and place in rock history had, for better or worse, already been sealed: he was the principal writer of "Eight Miles High"; a member of the original Byrds line-up who had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1991, less than six months before his death at the still-young age of 46; he was the once-handsome Byrd who sang centre-stage with the "Prince Valiant" haircut whose features had, through decades of substance abuse, deteriorated into the haunted, deathly stare of a man thirty years his senior; and he was the 21-year-old young man whose abrupt, seemingly bizarre volte face from the limelight in early 1966 led to an erratic solo career marred by an ultimately lethal combination of underachievement, booze and pure bad luck. (1)
So the appearance of twelve rough acoustic demo recordings (circa 1983-1990)--the vast majority of which were titles which had never graced an official album released during Clark’s lifetime--seemed an unlikely place to find songs of distinction, or anything which might have the effect of posthumously elevating Clark’s stature.
Predictably, some of the songs on Gypsy Angel--"Mississippi Detention Camp," "Rock of Ages," and "Freedom Walk," for example--are lengthy, occasionally meandering, woodshedding workouts; Gene is clearly working on the fly, simultaneously experimenting and documenting his song ideas. (2)
But the third song, "Kathleen," is unlike anything else in the Clark canon: a cinematic character study of loneliness, despair and lost-at-sea love set in Ireland, all from the perspective of a female. To anyone familiar with Clark’s work, songs about loneliness, despair and lost love are nothing new; it’s really business as usual. (One is reminded of Byrds manager Jim Dickson’s comment that David Crosby-- the mischievous pragmatist in stark contrast to Clark’s chivalric Straight Man--would make comments to the effect of "Well, as soon as he [Clark] breaks up with her we’ll get another song.") Rarely, however, did he venture into story-type songs without inserting himself into the action in the first person.

In "Kathleen," Clark’s omniscient narration has the effect of making Kathleen’s loneliness more palpable: she is, in fact, the only flesh-and-blood character in the lyric. The unnamed sailor-husband—one presumes he is left unnamed to keep the focus on Kathleen—has not been seen "for many years," so it’s difficult for the listener to identify with him. The only other character mentioned in the lyric is the personified Spirit of the Wind, whom Kathleen begs to rescue her husband from "the cruel stormy sea." Clark’s voice, always stirring, provides an excellent example of what I like to call his "quasi-operatic" style, in which his stentorian vibrato frames words with an unabashed flair for the dramatic, wrenching every last morsel of feeling from the lyric before finally moving on.
But at the 4:14 mark the unthinkable happens: Gene’s rugged voice, perhaps exhausted from gigging, drinking and chain smoking, wavers while singing the word "safely" in the song's climactic final line: "Send him safely home from sea/So that love on this isle can bloom again/for Kathleen."
It’s a moment that for any lesser talent would have meant hitting the rewind button on the tape machine and starting afresh, but Clark’s soulfulness carried the day. In quivering on the word "safely" at the final moments of the song--as Kathleen begs the Spirit of the Wind one last time-- the vocal gaffe from our omniscient narrator-singer creates the impression that he, as narrator, is overcome with emotion, which in turn intensifies the suspicion that we, as listeners, have been courting all along: that her husband will not be coming back from sea, but that Kathleen herself remains unaware of this, buoyed by unwavering faithfulness and devotion.
Our narrator may be wavering; Kathleen will not.

Such pathos can ruin a song if laid on too thickly, but it is done with such effortlessness and grace on this occasion that if someone were to ask me for an example of Clark’s genius with lyrics and vocal delivery of same, I would point them in this direction.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Generally, for hard core fans of Gene’s music, his legendary unreleased tracks fall into two groups:
(1) The songs performed live during his lifetime but never commercially released, which over the years became striking bootleg-only releases (e.g. "Crazy Ladies", "Last of the Blue Diamond Miners", "The Daylight Line", et cetera)
(2) Songs which had been celebrated as lost masterpieces by the select few who had the chance to hear them (the Sings for You demos; the song "Communication"), but never booted in any form. Part of what makes "Kathleen" so mysterious is that even among the Clark cognoscenti it had no prior reputation to live up to; it simply appeared, without fanfare and without underground buzz, as if carried on the Spirit of the Wind itself.
Saul Davis, Clark’s ex-manager and compiler of Gypsy Angel, doesn’t even seem to know specifically when the song was written or recorded; the only clue to its vintage is that it was among a raft of songs written for the followup to 1987's So Rebellious a Lover (with Carla Olson). Bearing in mind that the most mundane of lives are these days documented with self-obsessive glee by MySpace and Facebook devotees, all in furtherance of the idea that no shred of information is too trivial, the absence of even the most basic recording details for a work such as "Kathleen" seems preposterous, or, at the very least, difficult to understand and accept.

Perhaps, in the end, Clark’s rare foray into the omniscient narrative style is not the anomaly it would seem. Maybe Gene saw a definite parallel with himself in the tale of a titian-haired, green-eyed young woman who pines in solitude for her lost husband, whose only interpersonal contact comes in the form of entreaties to the unseen Spirit of the Wind. Like the haunted, lonely figure of Kathleen, left alone on the shore while her husband goes off to sea, Gene Clark toiled in relative obscurity for the balance of his adult life, never reconnecting with the 21-year-old boy who watched the rest of the Byrds board that plane to New York without him, leaving him behind as well.

For its protagonist as well as its author, "Kathleen" is a song of fortitude and faithfulness.

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Notes:
(1) It’s my fervent belief that the suddenness of his departure was the manifestation of a debilitating--and subsequently untreated--psychological disorder.

(2) The magnificent "Your Fire Burning", on the other hand, is a fully realized long work; one of Clark’s most complex lyrics and heartbreaking melodies. It will be covered in a later blog entry.

Gene Clark

This blog has been set up for the purposes of documenting my thoughts on the songwriting of Gene Clark (November 17, 1944-May 24th, 1991). Depending on time constraints, I intend to post my musings on a song-by-song basis, with new entries scheduled to appear monthly or bi-monthly.

All comments are welcome.