Goin' Downtown: McGuinn, Clark and Hillman leave for the city

It's McGuinn-Clark Hillman week here at One Buck Records! Might as well get the whole shebang out of the way in the next days. And since I did a monstrous write-up for the first album, the next two will be way shorter, promised!

The McGuinn-Clark-Hillman (and then, briefly McGuinn-Hillman) era was of course considered a failure, but such blanket criticism and received wisdom doesn't tell the whole story. It is for example rarely acknowledged that the trio's second album City was actually a good album. Not a work of genius, not something to rival the Byrds' legacy, but a good mainstream/AOR rock album, with a number of discernible Byrds-ian features. For one thing, cGuinn's Rickenbacher was back! Bit since the first album was so royally botched artistically, something that we rectified here at One Buck Records, folks weren't necessarily willing to give the group a fair shake for the rest of their tenure, especially considering the controversy concerning Clark's limited participation, then sudden exit from the group. 

City is actually so good, that only some very mior surgey is needed. The one big issue of the album wasn't what was on the album, but rather what wasn't on it: While Gene Clark had co-dominated (with Hillman) the first album, he was now relegated to 'featuring'-status and a mere two songs, one of which, "Painted Fire", sounded terribly out of place with its odd Fats Domino-piano style and confused and thus confusing lyrics. "Painted Fire" still sticks out, but considering that the idea was to get more Gene Clark on here, not less, it had to stay. And I added "Little Mama", which eagle-eyed viewers have seen I left of my alternate version of the trio's first album. With its elaborate production it fits right in with the rest of City, even if the song's orchestration maybe doesn't a hundred percent. And of course, Geno's other song, "Won't Let You Down", is one of the finest of the era and a definite highlight of the album. 

But what really makes City a quality album is that everyone steps up their game: Hillman's rock songs have more bite and are more memorable than their sometimes feeble predecessors, and as a bonus he goes back to the country ballad well mined during his Flying Burrito Brothers tenure and delivers the lovely "Let Me Down Easy". And Roger McGuinn, so uneasy on the first album, delivers some of his better songs from the era in the title song, "One More Chance" and "Givin' Herself Away". Only the ridiculous novelty" Skate Date" has been dropped to make way for "Little Mama". Plus new sequencing and new artwork courtesy of the "Don't You Write Her Off" single. But hey, it's our three heroes. In...wait for it...the city. Easy pickings, folk, sometimes you gotta take 'em. 

City deserved to rival the first album's success, as it's a much stronger album than the released version (not of my re-imagining, he says without a dash of humility) of their debut. But the album did nothing and with Clark gone, thing weren't looking bright for the remaining duo of McGuinn and Hillman...