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THE STREET SINGER
CLIFF DE YOUNG
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Left: Cliff in action at Thompkin's Square Park NYC 1967
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I am sure you still get a lot of interest in your time with Clear Light, even though it formed just a brief part of your career.
When people ask me about that now, and a lot of them do; mostly they want to know about Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, ya know, all the dead people. I say it was a great time, so much fun. The only problem was we were so busy being pissed off that we weren’t headlining instead of opening that we sort of missed it. We were living the life but there was always this underpinning of “why aren’t we breaking through, what’s the secret?” Paul Rothchild always said, try this, try that, and we thought he had the secret. He had the Doors, he had Love and whoever else he produced so we thought he had the secret, but he didn’t. So when push came to shove, I think it was Paul’s idea to get rid of Bob, and then it was Paul’s idea to get rid of me, and then the whole thing went up in smoke.
I worked with him afterward; I did a movie with Cheech Marin called “Rude Awakenings” and Paul was the musical director on this film. So we used to have these long lunches where I would say to him, “you used to be really a prick!” If I knew then what I know now, I would have said get rid of this fucking guy; let’s go and play some music. He was always trying to tweak it, do this and do that, you gotta do this and you gotta do that. So you had all these rebellious guys and you had this stern schoolteacher guy saying “I know what’s right, you have to do this and you have to do that.” So we were trying to toe the line so we could be rock stars, but it was against our natures. It was a weird situation to be in. It was very funny going to see the Doors movie with this guy in the control room playing Paul Rothchild with this big head of hair; Paul was bald since he was 18 years old! And I thought, you know, Paul must have cast this guy “I don’t care what he looks like as long as he has a lot of hair.”
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So, how did you come to get involved with Clear Light?
I met my wife Gypsi through Clear Light. She was with the drummer Michael Ney, and I was at Cal State and had been in some bar bands with Michael. They (Clear Light) got the deal with Elektra and they went into the studio and they were trying to do some kind of harmony, like the Turtles or something, with Bob and Doug, and it sounded like shit next to the music. So they needed a singer. They already had a deal, so they were auditioning singers at their house. They all lived in a house on Franklin Avenue, which is right opposite a house of a friend of mine now, so whenever I go by I salute!
So Gypsi, my wife, describes it as they were having all these guys coming in singing and then Michael called me and said we’re looking for a singer. So I walked in, I had short hair and white socks, and she said “Oh, this guy...???” So then I got the gig.
That’s interesting as I always assumed that Paul Rothchild had brought you into the group.
Well I think Paul had put out the feelers, and I had worked with Michael in a bar band called the GFG, they must have said call all the singers you know and Michael called me. I think that was how it happened, he was my connection to the group as I had worked with him before. I dropped out from school and went pretty much right into the studio. I got rid of the white socks and started growing my hair, to fit in and all that stuff. Then Gypsi broke up with Michael and she had some friends going in and out of the house. I had a lot of girlfriends and two of them showed up at the house at the same time and they didn’t know about each other and it was very, very upsetting. I snuck out the back window because I didn’t want to see them and was kind of sneaking around in the front yard. And Gypsi was sitting there because her friend was going to see Bob but she didn’t want to see Michael so she was hanging around outside. I saw her and she asked me where I was going and I said well they showed up and I gotta leave. She said she didn’t wanna go in so I said then let’s go together. We got in the car and drove off and we’ve been together ever since.
So you met Gypsi and Bob met his wife Nancy during the Clear Light days.
Yeah, we met Nancy in New York on our first tour she was great person. She worked for Elektra and we were always going up there asking for something or another because they put us up in the Albert hotel and didn’t give us any money and we were always lacking stuff to eat. We were continually going up to Elektra begging for things, and Nancy was our interlocutor with those people. She would come to the concerts and hang out and bring friends and she and Bob hit it off. Then when we came back to LA all of a sudden Nancy showed up there and she and Bob were together and still are to this day.
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