Beach House, Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes and a Bunch of Other Cool Bands Paid Tribute to The Byrds’ Gene Clark

Gene Clark’s LP, in full

Okay Grammys, you did good getting Stevie Wonder on stage for “Get Lucky,” and making all the remaining Beatles perform for Yoko. That Madonna mass wedding was cool too, I guess, but while the music world set its sights on the glamorous happenings on the West Coast this past Sunday, another supergroup inordinately more musical Imagine Dragons (poor Kendrick!) took the stage over in Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg. They were the Gene Clark No Other Band, a musical powerhouse made up of members of Beach House, Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, The Walkmen, Lower Dens, Celebration, and Fairport Convention, who spent the last week touring a full rendition of a lost Gene Clark album that’s been resurrected some 30 years after it went out of print.

Gene Clark is one of those characters from rock’s history whose Wikipedia page will make you weep. A songwriting genius who suffered from all sorts of classic rock vices, he was the original songwriter and founding member of The Byrds, and spent most of the 70s in a Ross/Rachel situation with the band. At one point, he was fired for a fear of flying, and told, “You can’t be a Byrd if you can’t fly.” He then went on to have an unsuccessful solo career, and died young believing the album he considered his masterpiece, No Other, was unknown and unloved.

After witnessing Sunday’s performance, the word I would least use to describe his album is unloved. In fact the only possible way to talk about the show, which was sold out two nights in a row, is as a loving tribute by a bunch of people who really, really love Gene Clark, to a bunch of people who feel exactly the same way. A big ol’, loving, circle jerk—the good kind—culminating in total celebration of the man and his music.

The night kicked off with a short intro from Bella Union’s Mark Byrne, label manager for Beach House, Fleet Foxes, and The Walkmen, and a 12 minute excerpt from a Gene Clark documentary, The Byrd Who Flew Alone, in which lots of elderly bearded men in the early stages of liver failure said things like, “Cocker was digging it,” and “We just looked at each other and knew it was the take.” Then the band took the stage to perform the album’s eight tracks in order. It soon became clear that the job of lead singer was a relay, and anyone who wasn’t upfront filled in the music with the band. It was like The Last Waltz, but without any visible signs of coke usage, and with the main artist already dead.

Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes was first up to bat, with “Life’s Greatest Fool.” Noisey scoop alert—he recntly shaved and was rocking a hot, yet approachable teacher’s assistant look, proving once again that there is sex appeal lurking in corduroy grooves. Get on board people. His outfit, and the general ease with which he performed, served to highlight the sheer contrast between the Grammys and this low-key affair, which means I have an excuse to print this photo of Noisey Style Editor Kim Taylor Bennett at the Grammys, next to this photo, of Pecknold in cords.

Robin Pecknold at Music Hall of Williamsburg and Noisey’s Style Editor, Kim Taylor Bennett, at the Grammys.

Pecknold handed the microphone to Fairport Convention’s Iain Matthews, the senior member of the No Other band, whose output undoubtedly has a place in the scatter diagram of influences that lead to the birth of Fleet Foxes. He sang and played guitar on the acoustic-led “Silver Raven,” then Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen came onstage for the title track, with the quartet of backing vocalists filling the song with lush energy. In the minimal pop landscape of 2014, there’s not a lot of rich, four-part backing vocals—the likes of which used to fill the airwaves in the 60s—so a night like this is a rare treat for both the audience and the band.

At this point, I realized that Rossen was the guy who I cut in front of in the line outside the venue. He obviously channeled his emotions over this into his performance. I spied rage. I also spied some bongos, being hit by Tony Drummond of Celebration.