Echoes (Gene Clark)

20 SEPTEMBER 1966


Singer-songwriter Gene Clark recorded the song ‘Echoes’ during this month in 1966. It featured on his 1967 debut ‘solo’ album 'Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers'. Gene had recently departed the Byrds because of ongoing conflict within the group and his noted fear of flying, and as that band's senior songwriter and handsome frontman with a haunting baritone voice he might well have expected further success.

'Echoes' was the kind of mature, melancholic, baroque pop that Scott Walker would soon be recording, but it was not typical of Gene's future career, which lay in country-rock. Unfortunately his first album - released around the same time as the Byrds' 'Younger Than Yesterday' - failed to chart. He never again experienced the dizzy heights of commercial success he enjoyed with the Byrds, although he gained immense respect as an artist and some of his albums are now considered cult classics. He died in 1991, aged just 46, after years of alcohol and drug abuse.

Echoes (Gene Clark)