4AD are thrilled to announce the reissue of Gene Clark's 1974 masterpiece No Other - one of the American singer-songwriter and Byrds founding member’s finest works - coming out on November 8th 2019.
Beyond his achievements as a founding member of the Byrds, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Gene Clark was one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of the rock era. After his passing in 1991, fans began lobbying for the release of known studio recordings that had been locked away for decades. They eventually got their wish with the release of The Lost Studio Sessions: 1964-1982, a collection of rarities from the personal archives of the Byrds’ first manager, Jim Dickson. This title was released in several limited-edition formats in 2016 by Sierra Records. Mining this same cache of treasures, a six-song EP entitled Back Street Mirror followed in 2018 for Record Store Day.
Though Clark didn't live to see it, No Other has attained cult status as a visionary recording that employs every available studio means to illustrate the power in Clark's mercurial songwriting. He and producer Thomas Jefferson Kaye entered Village Recorders in L.A. with an elite cast that included Michael Utley and Jesse Ed Davis, Butch Trucks, Lee Sklar, Russ Kunkel, Joe Lala, Chris Hillman, Danny "Kooch" Kortchmar, Howard Buzzy Feiten, and Stephen Bruton. Clark's vocalists included Clydie King, Venetta Fields, Shirley Matthews, the Eagles' Timothy B. Schmidt, and Claudia Lennear. These musicians all brought their best to the material. As a whole, No Other is a sprawling, ambitious work that seamlessly melds country, folk, jazz-inflected-gospel, urban blues, and breezy L.A. rock in a song cycle that reflects the mid-'70s better than anything from the time, yet continues to haunt the present with its relevance…