About the author -

Pål Krosby of Oslo Norway, was kind enough to send us his remarks on how he came to know Gene Clark  
His band - Slåbrock
for more information :
http://home.online.no/~pakr/index.html

My father bought a grammophone in 1964. We actually already had a grammophone. It was a part of our "Radiokabinett" which was a huge piece of furniture with a radio and a grammophone capable of playing 78's only. The new gramophone came with a used transistor radio, and if you linked the two, music came out. That is if you had some 45's. I didn't.

In Norway in the early 60ies we had one Government controlled radio channel and one Government controlled TV channel. The TV channel started broadcasting in 1960 and it took some time before we could see TV every day.  My father bought a TV set in the Fall of 1963. With it came an antenna that made it possible for us to see Swedish Television. Oslo is that close to Sweden.

One day late October 1963 we sat watching this Swedish program called "Drop in", waiting for Lill-Babs, the new darling of Scandinavian popular music, to appear. Suddenly four guys with funny hairdos starts singing: Something, Something YEAH YEAH YEAH! I din't know any English then and I didn't catch the name of the group.

My mother was into Economics and she saw that having invested hard earned money in a grammophone, and not having any records to play, in reality was a waste of money. So she went to some record shop and demanded the two most popular records they had. She wouldn't spend money on anything less. As this was the Spring of 1964, it coincided with the time Norway and Denmark discovered The Beatles. The Swedes had discovered them a long time ago, but they're Swedes and don't count. So my mother returned with two Beatles 45's - "I want to hold your hand/This boy" and "Can't buy me love/You can't do that". My life changed.

Although there was mainly one band for me in years, I did listen to music programs on Swedish Radio and on Radio Luxembourg. I even heard a couple of songs by The Byrds, "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn, Turn, Turn". I wasn't too thrilled then. Nothing changed me until December 1967 when I heard Frank Zappa and the Mothers playing live from Stockholm...you guessed it; on Swedish Radio again. Norwegian radio wouldn't play anything rougher than Pat Boone at the time. As a trombone player in the school orchestra, I was stunned by the way Zappa fusioned rock music with my favourite parts of Stravinskij's "Rite of Spring" and "Petrouschka".

I had to import all the already released Zappa records myself. Later I bought every new Zappa record that appeared in the shops. At some point a duo that called themselves Flo & Eddie (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan) started to appear with Zappa. Someone told me they had earlier been members of the Turtles.

In the mid-70ies I came over this "The Turtles' Greatest Hits" LP in some store. I had heard "Happy Together" and "Elenore" before without being too impressed, but there was one song there that I liked; "You showed me". As I am one of those guys who reads a lot of what's written on the record, I found out that the song was written by "G. Clark/J. McGuinn". I didn't know any G. Clark, but I knew J. McGuinn played in The Byrds. But wasn't his name Roger?

So I started to look for Byrds records. In the 70ies they couldn't be found in Norway. Except for a LP called "Preflyte". And "You showed me" was on the record! A faster version than the Turtles'. I found out two things; G. Clark had made nearly all the songs on the LP and G. stood for Gene. But the Byrds didn't quite do it for me...then.

Around 1997 I was in this record shop downtown Oslo. I'm not often downtown, but when I am, I spend my time looking through records. Or CD's by now. I didn't find anything as this was the type of record shops that sells chart toppers. They all are nowadays, aren't they? (Except for the "Let it be" record shop in Minneapolis and a few others.) But they had a big bucket with records on sale. In these shops those are the most interesting. And what do you know; I saw the cover picture first. A handsome guy with long hair looking nearly like an indian. Or native American to be more politically correct. For 49,90 NOK (Norwegian kroner), about 5 USD, I could be the owner of "Firebyrd" by Gene Clark. A fair offer, I thought. And even if I now think this isn't Gene's best recording, my life had changed again.