Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

Gene Clark sings Woody Guthrie

Byrds biographer Johnny Rogan interviewed Gene Clark’s childhood friend Jack Godden for Requiem For The Timeless: Volume 2 , in which it is recalled that Gene and his father would always be on the porch “playing Woody Guthrie-type songs. Gene got real good, and his voice sounded fantastic.” After Gene graduated from high school in 1962, he performed as part of a folk group called the Rum Runners. His affinity for that type of music never waned, and its influence can be heard on his songwriting throughout his career. As John Einarson writes in Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life and Legacy of the Byrds’ Gene Clark, “Gene found himself drawn to the simple virtues of folk music… singing of the verdant fields of colonial America, Appalachian mining disasters, or Civil War glories.” On his final album, with Carla Olson, he goes back to one of the greatest primary sources of them all.