White Light (Remastered) Gene Clark

• 1 The Virgin 03:35
• 2 With Tomorrow 02:25
• 3 White Light 03:38
• 4 Because Of You 04:03
• 5 One In A Hundred 03:30
• 6 For A Spanish Guitar 04:57
• 7 Where My Love Lies Asleep 04:20
• 8 Tears Of Rage 04:11
• 9 1975 04:28
• Total Runtime 35:07

Info for White Light (Remastered)

Newly digitally remastered! Gene Clark's 1971 classic "White Light" is a bittersweet and knowing statement from a singer/songwriter at the peak at his creative powers. Having fronted The Byrds, Clark on his own here is stripped down in guitarist Jesse Ed Davis' stark production. The lyrics, singing and guitar playing are so powerful that less production here is immeasurably more musically.

After playing in various teenage groups, Clark was offered a place in the sprawling New Christy Minstrels in late 1963. He stayed long enough to contribute to two albums, Merry Christmas and Land Of Giants, before returning to Los Angeles, where he teamed up with Jim (Roger) McGuinn and David Crosby in the Jet Set. This fledgling trio evolved into the Byrds. At that point Clark was the leading songwriter in the group and contributed significantly to their first two albums.

As founding member of folk-rock pioneers the Byrds, Gene Clark had emerged as a uniquely gifted singer / songwriter and master of the minor key melancholy ballad. His departure from the group in 1966 was met with critical anticipation and commercial indifference. Tiring of the Hollywood fast lane by 1969, Gene and new wife Carlie moved up to Mendocino on the Northern California coast where the tranquility, pastoral beauty and laid back lifestyle of the coastal community appealed to his country boy roots. It inspired a body of songs unlike anything Gene had composed before. Their stark simplicity and stripped down arrangements - acoustic guitar, harmonica and voice - evidence a deeper insight into life and an overall optimism rarely found in his previous body of work.

The resulting album, White Light, produced by renown guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, remains one of Gene's most accessible and much-loved recordings among fans and critics, topping several domestic Best Album of the Year lists and being voted "Album of the Year" by rock critics in the Netherlands. Songs like "For A Spanish Guitar", "With Tomorrow", and "Where My Love Lies Asleep" are delicately evocative while the title song draws on Gene's appreciation for country music. "One In A Hundred" harkens back to his finest Byrds compositions.

Buoyed by his new surroundings, friendships, marriage, a feeling of contentment in his rural retreat and the imminent birth of his first child, White Light reveals singer / songwriter Gene Clark at the top of his game. Rolling Stone declared the folk-based album "a fresh and innovative look at what came before in a new framework. One of the most interesting and exciting records of 1971." Relive that excitement on this Sundazed Edition!

"Gene Clark’s talent deserved far greater reward and recognition than he was able to claim during his lifetime. His story may be considered by some to be a tale of under-achievement and missed opportunities, but his legacy speaks for itself and, amongst the treasure that he left behind (a hoard that includes all those marvellous Byrds songs and the superlative No Other album) is the album that I consider to be the very best of all those that made 1971 the Annus Mirablis of the rock album: White Light." (atthebarrier.com)

"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." (Thom Jurek , AMG)

Gene Clark, vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica
Jesse Ed Davis, electric guitar, bottleneck guitar
John Selk, acoustic guitar
Chris Ethridge, bass
Gary Mallaber, drums
Mike Utley, organ
Ben Sidran, piano
Bobbye Hall, congas, percussion

Digitally remastered

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