RIP David Lindley

As far as David Lindley was concerned...

...I came pretty late to the party. I was aware of the name, as a session player and as a member of Kaleidoscope, but it wasn't until a friend lent me his copy of the recently-released "El Rayo-X" album that I started listening to him and then chasing down everything he played on that I could find. This guy was special - very special indeed.

In a way, I'm glad that his solo work was my first proper introduction to him, as it meant that I never viewed him as someone who only brought their skills and talent to bear on someone else's work, but as someone who was a stellar performer in their own right, with their own sound and their own approach to music.

Lindley could play anything with strings - bowed or plucked - and not just the usual fiddles, guitars, mandolins or banjos. He took up more exotic instruments like the oud, saz and bouzouki and it was all grist to his mill. He also had a knack of combining such ethnic instruments with American roots music. I mean, who else would think of using an 11 string fretless oud to play "New Minglewood Blues"? Indeed, who else could make such a combination sound good?

There were basically three strands to Lindley's five decade post-Kaleidoscope career - as a session player and sidesman, as a band leader and as an acoustic performer.

His work with other people is very well-documented and, as I pointed out above, perhaps overshadows his own projects. So, I'm not going to cover this aspect of his career. If you look through your music collection and consult Discogs.com, you'll find that you've probably already got some of his work with others. 

Lindley's own band - El Rayo-X - featured him on electric and acoustic steel, standard electric and the occasional ethnic instrument. With a pretty much constant line up of  Bernie Larsen on guitar and vocals, Ian Wallace on drums and vocals and Jorge Calderon on bass and vocals, and, later on, George "Ras Baboo" Pierre on percussion and vocals and William "Smitty" Smith on organ, El Rayo-X were a class live act who were guaranteed to give you a good time, as this 1982 gig shows.

El Rayo only lasted from 1981 to 1989, with occasional reunion gigs, and Lindley's live shows henceforth were mainly either solo performances or as a duo with percussionists Hani Naser (no slouch on the oud himself), and then Wally Ingram. This meant that the atmosphere at gigs was more intimate, and this allowed Lindley to embroider his set with jokes and anecdotes and develop into something of a raconteur. The clip below is part one of three and describes his experience with some very bad backstage food...it's extremely funny and his playing on the Weissborn is phenomenal.

It may not have escaped your notice that he liked garish polyester clothes and he and his wife would comb charity shops (thrift stores) for the loudest examples for him to wear on stage. Indeed, he was known as the "Prince of Polyester".

So, goodbye to an immense talent and a consummate performer - we will never see his like again.

No question today - just a couple of live shows - linked to below in the comments - by which to remember him.