For better or worse…and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s for worse…there really isn’t much from the back catalog of Gary Clark’s work as a solo artist or band member that couldn’t comfortably fit within the “Hooks ‘N’ You” column. As a member of the Scottish trio Danny Wilson, who made their lone mark on the Stateside charts with the immortal “Mary’s Prayer,” Clark easily earned my admiration, so much so that I made a point of following his post-DW career and spending arguably way more than I should have to pick up copies of his subsequent solo album (Ten Short Songs About Love) and the one-off effort by his next band, King L. It ended up being a bit cheaper to purchase the debut / swan song of the next group, Transister, but that’s not exactly what you’d call a compliment, either. Still, it must be said that every one of these albums has found repeat spins in my player, and if I’m perhaps a bit more partial to those two Danny Wilson albums (Meet Danny Wilson and Bebop Moptop), well, so be it. All in all, Clark’s prowess as a singer and a songwriter has been more than sufficient to keep me following his career. These days, he’s spending far, far more time writing and producing for others, but perhaps that’s a good thing, as it means that he has more free time to trade the occasional E-mail with me on Facebook…and, perhaps more important, to put up with a phone interview for Popdose.
Popdose: So how did you and your brother Kit first get started playing music? Did you grow up in a musical family?
Gary Clark: Not really. My grandfather played accordion…well, not really played, but he played at parties and stuff. Everybody was kind of a good singer. Like, my mum and dad would sing, again, at parties. It’s kind of a Scottish thing: we’d only sing at New Year’s Eve parties and stuff. But my mum and my dad were quite good singers, and…actually, I guess Ged (Grimes) and I started working together first, ’cause Kit’s younger than me by about five years, and Ged and I are about the same age. So we had a school band and stuff, and it kind of developed from there. He and I stayed together through a few different things until we worked in Danny Wilson with Kit.
You guys were originally called Spencer Tracy. Did you just get, like, a cease-and-desist order from his estate?
Yeah, we did. (Laughs) The album was done, the artwork was done…it was a real last-minute crazy, fearful moment. Basically, the US label checked it out here, and I believe that because Spencer Tracy had lived and died in California…in this state, you can copyright a person’s name. So we were just told, “If you try and use this, you will be sued.” And so the label just went, “Nope. Change it. Now.”
So how quickly did you come up with the new name, Danny Wilson?
Unbelievably quick. I mean, we’d sort of gotten used to the idea that the band had a person’s name, and so I guess that was the next train of thought. Kit came up with it, as it was a movie that my dad used to always talk about as being one of his favorite Sinatra movies…usually when he was complaining that they didn’t show it on TV anymore. (Laughs) So Kip had that idea, and it just really fit with the album being called Meet Danny Wilson, which was the name of the Sinatra film.
Only recently did I finally get a chance to see that film, when it came out on DVD not too long ago.
Me, too! (Laughs) All through that period, I never saw the movie. Not until much later.
So how surprised were you when, after a couple of tries, “Mary’s Prayer” finally became a hit for the band?
Well, it kind of happened in the States before it happened in the UK, and because of that, it triggered the UK label to re-release it. By this time, I was going, “No, please, no…” I thought it was flogging a dead horse. But the third time we released it, it was…it was Radio One, which was the biggest station there and still is, but at the time, when it got to the end of the year, Christmas or whatever, they had a phone-in vote for people’s favorite songs that missed the chart or whatever, and “Mary’s Prayer” won by quite a big margin. And that, combined with the fact that it was doing really well over here in the States, convinced Virgin to release it for the third time. They did a remix on it, but it was essentially the same record. And this time, it just went all the way pretty quickly. By the second week, it was #2 or #3 or something like that. So that was exciting.
It’s one of those songs that, even now, remains one of the great ’80s songs that everyone remembers but no one remembers who did it.
(Laughs) True! Well, that’s okay. I get to keep my anonymity. (Laughs)
