David Lindley, a virtuoso guitarist and multi-instrumentalist finest identified to many for his work with Jackson Browne, in addition to a recording and touring artist in his personal proper, died Friday at age 78.
No explanation for demise was instantly given. The musician had been identified to have been ailing for a while. A member of the family posted late final 12 months that Lindley had been repeatedly hospitalized for kidney points, pneumonia and influenza; a fundraiser that had been lately arrange for Lindley and his household stated his medical points “appear to have begun with a horrible bout of Lengthy Covid.”
“The lack of David Lindley is a big one,” tweeted Jason Isbell. “With out his affect my music would sound fully totally different. I used to be genuinely obsessed together with his taking part in from the primary time I heard it. The person was a large.”
Lindley’s tenure with Browne consists of all of that artist’s seminal works from 1973-80, and a number of other extra Browne albums past that, together with his most well-known soloing being heard on the title observe of the “Working on Empty” album, together with a falsetto vocal on the identical document’s “Keep.” He’s additionally identified for a collection of collaborations with Ry Cooder that started with the “Jazz” and “Bop Until You Drop” albums in 1979-80 and continued into Cooder’s Eighties soundtrack period. Different longstanding associations embrace mulitple albums by which he backed Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, David Crosby, Graham Nash and Rod Stewart within the ’70s and ’80s.
Further session work included taking part in with Emmylou Harris, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Leonard Cohen, Dolly Parton, Little Feat, the Bangles, John Prine, Shawn Colvin, Amy Grant, America, Bread, Eddie Cash, Bob Dylan, Ben Harper, Aaron Neville, Terry Reid, David Blue and plenty of others.
Lindley additionally had a longstanding profession as a frontman, first with the band Kaleidoscope, which issued 4 albums in 1967-70, then within the Eighties because the chief of what he known as a “party-rock” group, El Rayo-X, with whom he had a minor hit with the basic track “Mercury Blues” in 1981.
In later years, Lindley did much less studio work and took to doing solo exhibits underneath his personal identify, generally specializing in his signature guitar taking part in however ultimately drifting extra towards much less standard devices just like the oud, a 12-string Persian cousin to the lute.
After beginning out as a bluegrass participant with the group the Dry Metropolis Sct Band, Lindley had his first band of actual renown with Kaleidoscope, which Jimmy Web page was stated to have described whereas he was nonetheless with the Yardbirds as “my favourite band of all time — my very best band.”
Lindley began out taking part in five-string banjo, rising up in San Marino, Calif. — taking part in actually within the closet. “My mother and pop had been disturbed by their son, the hillbilly musician,” Lindley laughed in an interview. “It was very a lot a classical music household, so what did I get involved in? Hillbilly music, dammit!” Finally, although, “I simply had this burning curiosity in any instrument that had strings on it.” His early influences ranged from Duane Eddy to the Kingston Trio to Segovia, with no small help from an uncle who was a live performance pianist taking part in on the Hollywood Bowl, to not point out a father who listened to classical Indian people music.
His consideration turned again to the guitar. “I additionally went to a celebration in Balboa and there was a man there with a guitar simply strumming chords, you understand, and there have been all these ladies hanging round him,” he stated in a dialog with ToneQuest. “Then a lightweight bulb got here on… Hey, hey… Lindley… come on… wake the fuck up! Examine this out! So I did, and boy, did it work.”
Lindley’s multi-instrumental talents quickly made him a well-liked session participant as a result of I performed every little thing. I can keep in mind having conversations about that with everyone. You wish to be in a band? Oh, oh, they have already got a five-string participant. Nicely, let’s see… I’ll play the fiddle.” Nonetheless, he stated, “I didn’t study it so I may work. I explored all totally different sorts of stuff and I’d take strategies from one instrument and put them on one other. And I began listening to singers, and that’s the place the lap metal got here in. The lap metal was my means of singing— of taking part in a vocal.”
Browne recalled first listening to of Lindley whereas visiting the Topanga Canyon Banjo and Fiddle Contest, the place his future bandmate had been made a decide after profitable “about 5 instances in a row.” He informed Ben Harper in an interview he didn’t really get to see Lindley play till he noticed his band Kaleidescope carry out on the Ash Grove membership in Santa Monica, the place he was impressed by the musician “taking part in harp-guitar and electrical devices, but additionally actually steeped in people music.”
Though followers most related him with the slide guitar, Lindley had little curiosity in assembly these expectations of what instrument he ought to be taking part in. Within the 2005 ToneQuest interview, he stated that he was taking part in slide guitar for the Blind Boys of Alabama on the time, and would deliver it out for periods, however when he went out to do his personal exhibits, his pursuits had moved on elsewhere, to extra unique devices. “You recognize, there was a time after I was taking part in 5-string banjo and I’d sit in with totally different bands and play with my very own band, and I used to be referred to as a 5-string banjo participant. Then I’d be out doing one thing else and they’d ask me after I was going to play the 5-string banjo once more. ‘Nicely, I’m doing this now’,” he recalled. “I’m obsessive about the oud now, and I’m obsessive about the strategy of taking part in the saz. I’ve a saz now that’s strung up like it’s alleged to be with 9 strings and it feels like a whole orchestra.”
He went out on a band tour with El Rayo X for a half-dozen exhibits in 2003, however in any other case in later years had principally caught with solo gigs, when it got here to headlining. The economics of full-band excursions weren’t working for him, but additionally, “It’s rather a lot simpler going out on my own, and I additionally get extra out of it as a result of I get to play the stuff I’m into reasonably than recreating what I used to do.” Expressing a choice for acoustic live shows, he added, “A variety of the folks in my viewers can’t go to loud live shows anymore… Now we now have 23-year-old youngsters with the listening to of an 80-year-old man.”
Lindley’s curiosity within the oud dated again to his late ’60s work with the band Kaleidoscope. ““It was the sound, and the method,” he stated of his fascination with the oud in an interview with the Santa Barbara Unbiased. “There aren’t any frets, so you’ll be able to play all these microtonal scales that you just discover in Persian Turkish and Center Japanese music.”
Different aspect journeys in Lindley’s wild experience via totally different musical types included recording six albums of Malagasy music Madagascar with guitarist Henry Kaiser, one among which earned a Grammy nomination, and two information with Jordanian musician Hani Nasser.
Lindley had settled again in Claremont, Calif., close to the Claremont Folks Middle, which had been one among his touchstones rising up in San Marino. He’s survived by his spouse, Joan Darrow, and daughter, Rosanne.
