SAN DIEGO — David Lindley may not have been a household name for most music fans, but he most certainly was for his fellow musicians. Witness the classic albums that featured this masterful guitarist, who died last week at the age of 78.
Lindley’s many album memorable credits included Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like a Wheel,” Rod Stewart’s “Atlantic Crossing,” James Taylor’s “In the Pocket,” Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again,” Bob Dylan’s “Under the Red Sky” and almost any release you can think of by Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon or Graham Nash.
Lindley — who was nearly arrested onstage at his 1982 San Diego show at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay — was just as memorable playing on a host of albums by artists who didn’t match Ronstadt or Taylor for name recognition.
Some of the best examples of his multi-instrumental prowess include such classic or near-classic albums as Ry Cooder’s “Bop ‘Til You Drop,” Jennifer Warnes’ “Famous Blue Raincoat,” Ian Matthews’ “Some Days You Eat the Bear and Some Days the Bear Eats You” and Terry Reid’s “River” and “Seed of Memory.”
Then there was the borders-blurring “World Out of Time: Henry Kaiser & David Lindley in Madagascar” and the first two albums Lindley made in the early 1980s with his superb band, El-Rayo X. The group’s performances at the Rodeo in La Jolla during that same time period were so electrifying that I vividly recall them to this day.
Lindley stood out on guitar, violin, banjo, lap-pedal steel and such Middle Eastern instruments as the oud, bouzouki and saz. He never overplayed or showed off, preferring to enhance the music at hand, and he sang in an agreeably reedy voice that was free of any artifice or affectation.
“Making music is like making a sculpture,” Lindly told me in a 1984 San Diego Union interview. “It’s a matter of taking things away until you get it right, and also of building it up. … Anything else is frosting on the cake.”
A native of San Marino, Lindley was born March 21, 1944, and began winning awards as a teenager for his instrumental prowess. He embraced and started to fuse music from around the world at an early age and rarely looked back.
No matter the setting, Lindley always provided exactly the right touch, be it on Jackson Browne’s “Running On Empty,” Terry Reid’s “Faith to Arise” or “No More” by The Blind Boys of Alabama, to cite just three examples.
I first interviewed Lindley backstage at the SDSU Open Air Theater, and he was a delight — witty, thoughtful and able to say as much with a perfectly raised eyebrow as with any words. He was equally thoughtful in a subsequent phone interview, during which he paused at one point to gently admonish one of his children about the dangers of placing electrical objects in close proximity to water. Even over the phone, I could hear his eyebrow being expertly raised.
Lindley also took great delight in discovering new or old musical instruments and making them own. I fondly remember the look of delight on his face in the Rodeo’s backtage dressing room, where a visitor showed him a rare, gold-sparkle German electric guitar.
The instrument’s unusual shape suggested a collision of several different guitar designs that didn’t really belong together. Lindley chortled with glee as he examined it.
Onstage and off, he had a penchant for very loud shirts and colorful vintage shoes. His concerts never failed to captivate, whether he was performing solo, in a duo, with his band or with one of his famous admirers.
Like few others, Lindley infused each note he played with equal joy and conviction. His music, and his listeners, were all the better for it.
As for Lindley nearly getting arrested while performing a San Diego concert, the incident in question took place in 1982 at the then-fledgling Humphreys Concerts by the Bay.
Lindley recounted what happened in our 1984 Union-Tribune interview. It appears below in full.
Lindley’s music is joyful
By George Varga
Feb. 4, 1984, San Diego Union-Tribune
The last time David Lindley performed an outdoor concert in San Diego, he nearly ended up in jail.
Appearing at the second of two October 1982 shows at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island, the veteran guitarist and his band were less than 20 minutes into their set when approximately 50 harbor police — wearing riot helmets and armed with clubs — closed down the performance, citing complaints of noise from nearby Point Loma residents.
“I thought it was not really a good setting for a concert,” recalled Lindley in a recent interview.
“It was fun to play out there, but the instruments kept going out of tune because of the moisture in the air. Then again, you have to think about the people who live near by. We got carried away (with the volume). We were having too much fun.”
Consequently, each of Lindley’s subsequent appearances in San Diego have been just as rousing, but they have all taken place in the more insulated, and, potentially less arresting, confines of the Rodeo club in La Jolla. The acclaimed musician will perform there tomorrow at 9 p.m.
If “too much fun” resulted in the premature conclusion of Lindley’s Shelter Island concert, the phrase accurately sums up the Los Angeles native’s work. His joyous music exudes tremendous warmth and vibrancy that appeals equally to the ears and feet.
Using rock, blues, soul and reggae as the foundation for his songs, Lindley has fused an unusually eclectic assortment of adventurous musical styles and approaches.
After all, this is the same David Lindley who played such exotic Middle Eastern stringed instruments as the bouzouki, oud and saz when he was a member of the pioneering 1960s’ rock group Kaleidescope; the same man who won the Topanga Canyon Banjo and Fiddle Contest five times running, beginning at age 18, by applying flamenco guitar techniques to the banjo and playing finger-breaking instrumentals like “The Arkansas Traveler” with one hand; the same poll-winning instrumentalist whose concerts feature back-to-back readings of a Jamaican highlife version of The Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love” and a Cajun fiddle rag.
“When I was a teenager, I liked people like Duane Eddy and Johnny and the Hurricanes, and I also liked flamenco guitar and Arabic music,” explained Lindley, who rose to fame as the accompanist for a bevy of stars, including Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, James Taylor and Rod Stewart.
“For a period, one style would take over from the other. Then I realized it was all the same, and I started to mix them together. It was like a form of cross-pollination.”
As a result of his diverse musical background, Lindley is much in demand as a studio sideman. The lavish praise he has received from his past employers attests to his remarkable instrumental skills and his unerring ability to play exactly what a song calls for.
Lindley earned a very comfortable living as Browne’s principal accompanist for eight years, yet in 1980, he decided to strike out on his own.
“At a concert with Jackson, I was sitting on stage, and heard a song done differently in my head,” he recalled.
“I thought that it would be neat to do it that way, (but) I feel that the person who writes a song has a much better idea of how it should go. So I felt I had to do it on my own.”
Thereafter, Lindley formed his own group, and has since released two superb albums, “El Rayo-X” and “Win This Record.” His technical prowess and the sheer exuberance of his playing sets him apart from, and above, nearly all of his contemporaries.
What makes both records especially rewarding is their sense of structural balance, and Lindley’s ability to strike a perfect balance between raw vitality and polished precision is commendable.
“Making music is like making a sculpture,” opined Lindley.
“It’s a matter of taking things away until you get it right, and also of building it up. The first germ of an idea for a song is usually the best. Anything else is frosting on the cake.”
Would it be accurate, then, to assume that Lindley tries to avoid adding frosting to his songs?
“No, I don’t avoid the frosting. The frosting has all the sugar in it! There’s a big part within the frosting, or the ego, that can have even more of a spark than the original idea.”
As enticing as his music is, though, Lindley staunchly refuses to gear his material to a specific market, and while his records are categorized as rock, he acknowledges that his stylistic eclecticism has caused some confusion.
“Everyone has a tendency to put things in a category that makes it easier for people to understand.
People do understand it a little better, but it’s unfortunate because it puts music into a Babylonian thing where record companies say: ‘We can sell this to these people, and that to those people.’ I’m trying to bring out that there aren’t those divisions.”
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