Original released on LP A&M SP-4292
(US, August 1971)
Gene Clark's
1971 platter, with its stark black cover featuring his silhouette illuminated
by the sun, was dubbed "White Light" - though the words never appear on the
cover - and if ever a title fit a record, it's this one. Over its nine
original tracks, it has established itself as one of the greatest
singer/songwriter albums ever made. After leaving the Byrds in 1966, recording
with the Gosdin Brothers, and breaking up the Dillard & Clark group that
was a pioneering country-rock outfit, Clark took time to hone his songwriting
to its barest essentials. The focus on these tracks is intense, they are taut
and reflect his growing obsession with country music. Produced by the late
guitarist Jesse Ed Davis (who also worked with Taj Mahal, Leon Russell, Link
Wray, and poet John Trudell, among others), Clark took his songs to his new
label with confidence and they supported him. The band is comprised of Flying
Burrito Brothers' bassist Chris Ethridge, the then-Steve Miller Band-pianist
(and future jazz great) Ben Sidran, organist Michael Utley, and drummer Gary
Mallaber. Clark's writing, as evidenced on "The Virgin," the title
cut, "For a Spanish Guitar," "One in a Hundred," and
"With Tomorrow," reveals a stark kind of simplicity in his lines. Using
melodies mutated out of country, and revealing that he was the original poet
and architect of the Byrds' sound on White Light, Clark created a wide open set
of tracks that are at once full of space, a rugged gentility, and are
harrowingly intimate in places. His reading of Bob Dylan's "Tears of
Rage," towards the end of the record rivals, if not eclipses, the Band's. Less
wrecked and ravaged, Clark's song is more a bewildered tome of resignation to a
present and future in the abyss. Now this is classic rock.
