Talk To Me Of Mendocino: Gene Clark and his country dream

There never seemed to be only one Gene Clark. At any time, there seemed to be two, at least. Often they were in a configuration Robert Louis Stevenson would recognize: Dr. Eugene and Mr. Geno. The shy, affable country boy from Tipton, Missouri and the sportscar-driving, heavily drinking star from L.A. By late 1969, the two warring sides had already taken its toll. Heavy drinking united Gene and partner in crime Doug Dillard, the two pillars of Dillard & Clark, but it also helped exarcerbate tensions, especially when Dillard's paramour Donna Washburn started to take on a more Yoko Ono-like role while Dillard himself pushed the group into a fast bluegrass direction in which there was no place for Gene's patented mid-tempo ballads. So by the end of 1969 Gene was out of the group he founded, and he needed to recharge and rethink. And he found the perfect place to do so in Mendocino, or more precisely in Little River, a tiny rural commune just outside of it. Here, he could just be Harold Eugene Clark, songwriter and soon after hippie husband, then budding family man; not Gene Clark, ex-Byrd and rock'n'roll star. 

Mendocino became a place for a spiritual rebirth of Clark. Far from the distractions and temptations of the big city, he was as prolific as he was ever going to be. He wrote more than two dozen songs there from late 1969 to early 1971. Some of these turned up as Clark's self-titled (by accident at the printer's!) second solo album, although among fans (and pretty much to everyone these days) it is known as White Light. It was a markedly stronger outing than his merely okay solo debut With The Gosdin Brothers, with not a single weak song in the bunch and featuring several classics such as "For A Spanish Guitar" (that Bob Dylan himself complimented), "With Tomorrow", "Where My Love Lies Asleep" or "Because Of You". Certainly one of the strongest singer/songwriter of the period, or any period really, though due to - among other things - Clark's unwillingness to promote the record it sold little, the story of Clark's life as a solo artist. But what is also amazing about White Light is what didn't end up on the record. From a number of outtakes from the album, to the string of demos he recorded in early 1971 in preparation, the quality of his work at the time was uniformly strong. 

Which is where the album of the day, another One Buck Records exclusive comes in. Mendocino Dream is assembled from the acoustic solo demos published on The Lost Sessions, the demos of songs that weren't on the album from Here Tonight: The White Light Demos and the outtakes from the album. Considering the sparse production of the album, they all go marvelously together and Mendocino Dream is almost as strong as the White Light album itself. Other artists would kill for a collection of songs that rival these outtakes! The album opener sets up the credo for Clark's Mendocino dream, as he proclaims to go "Back To The Earth Again". From there we go through the excellent outtakes "Opening Night" and "Winter In", which arguably could have and should have been on White Light, as well as his cover of "Stand By Me", that in turn was wisely left off the album at the last second. The solo demos, guitar and voice for the earlier ones and a bunch of tracks with harmonica for the later ones, reveal among some trademark delicate balladry one of Clark's most obvious Dylan homages/imitations, "Please Mr. Freud". The cover art is based on a watercolor painting of Mendocino village around 1970 by Gerald Gleeson. 

Clark's constant battle against himself meant that his Mendocino dream couldn't last, a couple of years after the release of the album he left Little River and for all intents and purposes the family he raised there. And that very battle within the man also took his toll on his recording career, as his days at a major label were pretty much done by the time he left his dream house in Little River, though it is immortalized on the cover of 1978's Two Sides To Every Story. The messes he got himself in of course also mean that Clark fans will be left with numerous fragments of the roads not taken, a situation both exciting when a bunch of new demos or outtakes finally released and incredibly frustrating, when one realizes how much great music was left on the table because Clark couldn't help himself but to repeatedly sabotage his career.

And yet we have reminders of what could and should have been, reminders like Mendocino Dream, chock full of the melodicism, beauty and mystery Gene, the country dreamer up there in Mendocino, was known for. Let's join him in his dream for a while...