CHRIS HILLMAN - "CLEAR SAILING"

Clear Sailin' (Chris Hillman - Richard Marx - Rick Roberts) - 4:31  rating: ***** stars

Chris Hillman's always struck me as having been The Byrd's forgotten secret ingredient. That didn't do him much good surrounded by the likes of Gene Clark, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, and Gram Parsons, but at least some of us noticed his talents.

His solo work is uniformly good, but to my ears mid-'70s  country-rock  quickly starts to suffer from a sounds-the-same  slickness.  That's certainly the case with much of 1977's "Clear Sailin'".   Luckily the title track is one of the exceptions.  Yeah, your life many not need another mid-tempo ballad, but this one has a beautiful melody and the lyrics are actually  rather  thought provoking.  Nice guitar solo from John Brennan.  

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