Bands choose their members for many reasons, but you’d like to think the ability to play would be towards the top of the list. It didn’t quite work out that way in the summer of 1964 when the Byrds, one of rock’s most influential bands, were finalizing their lineup. With four highly talented members already in place, they lacked only a drummer. Fate struck when they spotted Michael Clarke strolling by the Troubadour club in LA. “We didn’t care whether he could play drums or not,” Roger McGuinn recalled the other day with a laugh. “He looked like two of the Rolling Stones rolled into one!”
Specifically, Clarke boasted the dense bangs of Brian Jones and the lush lips of Mick Jagger, not to mention the slim physique of all the classic rockers of the day. The mere fact that one of music’s most consequential and respected bands would prize features like those so highly proves conclusively the power looks, style and fashion hold in popular music. While that may be obvious in the world of contemporary pop, such elements were far more rarely acknowledged in the rock’n’roll world of the 60s, when the mantra was “it’s all about the music, man.”
