I was listening to a Gene Clark album this morning. Clark was an original member of the Byrds. (There was also a Clarke, and later a pair of Parsons. Say what you will about their music, the Byrds were great at attracting performers who would later make rock historians pull their hair out.) The group broke up in 1973, having reached their apotheosis with 1968’s “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.” Some time after that, Clark got back together with Roger McQuinn for some performances, and I saw the pair live downtown at a club called the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village. Clark played a six-string and McQuinn played a twelve string, and they ran through a whole slew of their Byrds hits. I had always been a big Byrds fan, and still am, which is why I was catching up on Clark’s post-Byrd career this morning. Thinking about that concert brought me back quite a bit—that was in the 70s, when the club was already music ground zero for a lot of people. What the thought of it made me reminisce about was, of all things, Country Music magazine.
In the 70s I was an editor at Doubleday & Co. I started there as a lowly intern and slowly shuffled my way up to full Editor. I spent a decade at the place before moving to Reader’s Digest, which turned out to be a good move for me. In those Dday years I handled some interesting books, and worked with some interesting authors. At one point, I got involved with Country Music. I’ve talked about country music here in general before. In the 70s, country was transforming from a particular kind of music enjoyed by country fans into the mainstream of popular music overall. There was disco, there was the birth of hip hop, there was the end of the 60s guitar bands, and there was country emerging into and engulfing the mainstream. This wasn't any great insight on my part; all you had to do was pay attention. As an acquisitions editor, one of those people out there trying to find new books to publish, I got involved with Country Music. I worked with the magazine’s editor to put together proposals for a few things that ultimately would become a set of 3 oversized trade paperbacks on individual aspects of Country (one on Western swing, one on the Country outlaws like Waylon and Willie, and one I can’t remember), plus a big mother of a hardcover on the history of Country music overall. I remember that Nick Tosches was going to the the Outlaws book, Doug Green (AKA Ranger Doug of the Riders in the Sky group) would handle probably the Western book, or maybe the big history—I forget which. The magazine editor and I hit it off, and enjoyed the usual publishing lunches back then, and since he was a bona fide journalist, he had access to the Bottom Line, and we saw at least one show there together. It featured Link Wray (my ears are still ringing, but I was introduced to the song “Red Hot” which became an instant favorite), and the editor and I sat in the back with the other critics/writers, food and drinks comped because, well, Publishing. There may or may not have been other shows we saw together.
The high point of my Country Music slash Bottom Line period was seeing Dolly Parton. She was, till this point, Country only. But her promoters were pushing her to the mainstream, and a gig at the Bottom Line in New York City was key to it. Critics outside of Nashville would hear her, many for the first time, opening all sorts of doors for her, and New York itself would welcome her in high City style with a big celebrity bash at Windows On the World at the top of the World Trade Center, marking her own entree into the world of big celebrity. And I was there. First, there was the show, where I, like many others, was introduced to her for the first time, discovering a whole batch of great music I’d never heard before. And then I was literally introduced to her at the restaurant; for a while there was talk of doing a biography, which is why I was there in the first place, with the intended author who had already gotten close to the singer. As it turned out, the party was the event of the social season. Everyone who was Anyone was there. I noted when Mick Jagger arrived that he didn’t enter the room, he made an Entrance. As probably the biggest star there, his coming pulled the spotlight away from the SNL folks who had gotten there earlier. Mick was noticeably tiny, which I hadn’t been aware of previously, and noticeably accompanied by a retinue that included some very obvious bodyguards. Around this point in the proceedings, the veal cutlet sandwich I had had for lunch decided to do its worst, and I had to beg out with a roaring case of food poisoning just as the party was getting going. Don’t you hate when that happens?
The denouement of all this was disappointing. The Powers that Be at Dday didn’t agree with me that Country was the coming thing, and I got no support for my proposed projects, including the Dolly book. One way or another everyone I had met and worked with at or through Country Music went on successfully to other things. So did I, for that matter. Meanwhile Country music went on successfully to subsume all of its roots and rule the pop roost to this day. We could have been in there at the beginning with some great books.
So it goes.
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