The talented singer-songwriter Gene Clark (1944–91) played significant roles in the evolution of several rock music subgenres, including folk rock, psychedelic rock, and country rock. Much of Clark's lasting influence stemmed from his short stint with the Byrds, one of the most important 1960s-era American rock bands. Indeed, as suggested by the subtitle of John Einarson's biography of Clark, many readers will be drawn to this book because of their interest in the Byrds. Clark, often overlooked in recent decades, deserves more credit for his work with that band. A founder of the Byrds and a leader on the band's early demos (recorded at World Pacific studios in Los Angeles) and its initial albums for Columbia Records, Clark was the Byrds' tambourine player, and thus was central to the band (visually and symbolically) in its rise to international popularity after its first Columbia single—a cover of Bob Dylan's “Mr. Tambourine Man”—became a number-one hit. The chief songwriter within the Byrds, Clark contributed numerous excellent songs to the band's first three albums, Mr. Tambourine Man (1965), Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965), and Fifth Dimension (1966); among those songs were the now classic B-side single “I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better” and the psychedelic masterpiece “Eight Miles High.” Additionally, Clark—possessing a singing voice that was low-pitched, dark in tone, and rural-sounding—brought to the Byrds distinctive lead and harmony vocals.

While Clark's career with the Byrds was previously explored in Johnny Rogan's detailed history,¹

Einarson's book contains new information generated during numerous interviews with Clark's former bandmates (including two Byrds, Roger McGuinn and David Crosby, who have overshadowed Clark in the public eye) and with other people who knew the Byrds during the band's early years. Insights obtained from those interviews help to correct some widely held notions about Clark's role in the Byrds. For instance, Mr. Tambourine Man, informed by multiple perspectives, offers a revelatory, nuanced explanation for Clark's decision to “go solo” in early 1966 during the height of the band's popularity. Revising the standard narrative that he departed from the Byrds because of his fear of airplane transportation (a notion that has proliferated probably because it sounded ironic that a rock band bearing such a name was grounded by one member's fear of flying), the book suggests that Clark's leaving the band more likely resulted from his ambition to follow his own musical vision unconstrained by soul-numbing tours and pressures from unsupportive bandmates who resented his songwriting success.

The most valuable contribution of Einarson's biography of Clark is that it reconstructs the full breadth of this musician's unique career (previously, other music scholars, such as Rogan, researched Clark's role in the Byrds but tended to ignore much of his career after he left the band). Mr. Tambourine Man provides a wealth of new primary source material commenting upon the entirety of Clark's career, including transcriptions from Einarson's interviews with Clark's musical colleagues, key friends, and family members. The book is timely because it questions the widespread marginalization of Clark among music journalists and scholars who have ignored, underestimated, or disputed his significance in American popular music. Although several music historians (sometimes grudgingly) have given Clark credit for his roles in sculpting folk rock and psychedelic rock while with the Byrds, few observers before Einarson have adequately acknowledged the extent of Clark's contributions to the popular musical blend generally referred to as country rock. For instance, music historian Richie Unterberger asserted that Clark's work in 1968–69 with his seminal country rock band Dillard & Clark, a band featuring multi-instrumentalist Doug Dillard and other groundbreaking “roots” musicians, including Bernie Leadon and Byron Berline, was markedly inferior to his earlier output with the Byrds. According to Unterberger, Clark's work in the late 1960s “simply was not within miles of the brilliance of his early Byrds songs.”²

A number of other books have extolled Clark's contemporary Gram Parsons, another former member of the Byrds, as deserving most of the credit for the crafting of country rock. Though to date Clark has garnered little attention from music historians (Einarson's is the first book-length investigation into Clark's career, and until recently there have been remarkably few journalistic or scholarly articles on him), at least four books—by Sid Griffin, Ben Fong-Torres, Jason Walker, and the writing team of Jessica Hundley and Polly Parsons—and countless articles have been devoted to Parsons.

An experienced author of biographies that explore the lives and careers of various popular music acts of the 1960s and 1970s, Einarson in Mr. Tambourine Man convincingly challenges Parsons's supremacy in the country rock pantheon. Epitomizing the book's revisionism is a quoted interview from journeyman musician Chris Hillman, a former bandmate of both Clark and Parsons, who authoritatively asserted: “Gene was the better songwriter. Gram could have been a great songwriter, but he lacked discipline. Everybody's going on about Gram, but you should listen to Gene. Here was a guy who was not well-read, but he could write lyrics that would make your hair stand on end” (xi). Einarson's book illustrates how Clark, after leaving the Byrds, played a crucial role in shaping country rock, beginning with his debut “solo” album (which, recorded in late 1966 and released in January 1967 by Columbia, was a collaboration with the country-bluegrass duo the Gosdin Brothers), and continuing in 1968–69 with two legendary albums that Clark recorded for A&M Records as the lead singer and songwriter of Dillard & Clark.

The bulk of Einarson's book explores Clark's post-Byrds career, and though Clark during these years lived and recorded in relative obscurity, his musical output was anything but marginal artistically. After the commercial failure of Dillard & Clark, the musician embarked upon a noteworthy if commercially unsuccessful and critically neglected solo career, generally in the post-Dylan acoustic singer-songwriter vein. Two of Clark's albums from this period have been increasingly embraced in recent years: White Light (A&M, 1971), a stripped-down, understated yet emotionally vibrant acoustic set, and No Other (Asylum, 1974), a highly produced tour-de-force in the mid-1970s confessionalist singer-songwriter mode; the latter album, though initially ignored, has in the past decade or so garnered a passionate following, culminating in multiple reissues in the compact disc format.

In Einarson's portrayal, the last twenty years of Clark's life occurred largely out of the limelight he had known—but ultimately rejected—as a mid-1960s rock star. Despite alcohol and drug abuse, depression, and mental illness, Clark during the 1970s and 1980s continued to compose new songs and make memorable recordings. He also maintained a deep commitment to helping the careers of younger musicians, which perhaps explains why his legend is now spreading quickly—those younger generations remember Clark's kindness, honesty, and talent.