The David Lindley Interview
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- Опубликовано: 29 окт 2021
- The First Bouzouki
I was a fan of classical Indian music from my dad’s record collection. He had Yehudi Menuhin records. He bought Ravi Shankar’s first album on World Pacific, Ragas & Talas. My dad was very hip about all kinds of stuff. He would listen to stuff that was really pretty serious. He was a corporation lawyer for 20th Century Fox. He played piano and loved different kinds of music from all over the world.
The first bouzouki playing I ever heard was a soundtrack to some film. He loved the film because of the traditional Greek music, Rembetika. I had never heard anything like that. I asked him, “What is that instrument?” He said, “It’s kind of like a mandolin with a long neck.” There was a picture of it, and I noted, “Oh, one of those.”
The wheels started turning, and there were some great players in those days, too. Because of that, I went into playing different kinds of folk music. Playing bluegrass, I had been listening to Earl Scruggs and Don Reno. I had also been listening to Sabicas, the Flamenco guitarist.
Hillbilly
Jim Keltner and I shared a studio for a while at Berry and Grassmueck Music. I’d get a Coke from the Coke machine and I’d put it on his snare drum. One day I spilled Coke into this priceless old Ludwig. He got really pissed off.
The snare drum was prominent. There were other drums in there, too, but the snare drum was being used for rudiments and marching.
Keltner used to work behind the counter downstairs and sell stuff every once in a while. I never got to do that. Management kind of had this idea about me, “He’s not a real guy, he’s a folk musician,” which was not a bona fide musician. “Oh, he plays five-string banjo: that’s hillbilly music.”
Cat’s Pajamas
Ed Pearl, who was the owner of the Ash Grove in Los Angeles, would have people come in. He would make sure these Mississippi sharecroppers had the transportation, had a place to stay, and he paid them really well to come to The Ash Grove and play for a week. We all went there and we’d hear these guys play and go, “Holy sh**!” It was all people of a certain age: me, Ry Cooder, Al Marian, Sandy Mosley, David Cohen, we’d learn all this stuff and we had our version of it.
Jim Kweskin was the resident guru at The Cat’s Pajamas in Arcadia, where I played all the time. That was the first time I heard Kweskin. He was getting together a jug band and he was looking around for people in East LA. There were a lot of fantastic players there.
I used to go see Mike McClellan every time he played. He played the twelve-string like Leadbelly, he played the banjo like Ralph Stanley, and he sang. I’d go see him all the time.
It was the folk process. You didn’t go to school, you went to the club. You absorbed and you learned how to steal. 
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RIP David Lindley. Passed away. A GIANT I tell you, a GIANT!
great show
I was lucky to stumble upon DL without knowing anything about him, a friend said El Rayo X is playing our local Thousand Oaks Ca. bowling alley. I didn't know who they were and was told it features the lap steel guitar player from JB band. Boy was I blown away! David was such a personality and a showman, it was like unbelievable that this talented of a band was playing a bar gig in a bowling alley. The bar was packed and they got the house rocking.
I never heard any of their tunes and man was I looking for their records right away. I wore those El Rayo X albums out, playing them everyday. Every time they played in our county I tried to catch them and then when he toured with Grissom too. Always a hoot.
You knew that you were seeing someone specially talented every time.
What an amazing body of work he accomplished, I wonder if he ever slowed down or did he die playing one of his many instruments?
Thanks for doing this. So nice to hear the stories. I've had several occasions to talk with him over the years. He convinced me to open up my Trinity College Bouzouki to add a Jim Kaufman Sunrise pickup. He said "cut it open, you'll never look back" He was right. So i did it again on zouk #2. I miss him touring as does the rest of world. Thanks again. -Kevin
If there is a Part II to this interview, I sure would like to hear it! [Edit: I found Part II on your channel, but it doesn't get as far as ElRayo-X---- we need a Part III !]. When did this interview take place? I'm glad you were able to get David to talk about Kaleidoscope a bit; Dave has said elsewhere that those days were "full of hardship" and painful to talk or think about. Anyway, I hope to hear him talk about Ry Cooder and their collaborations, and ElRayo-X, and how he transitioned from a full band to doing duets with Hani Naser, and Wally Ingram. David really should write a book, and Ry should too, even if they just the covered the period from the 60's up to, or hopefully through, the 80's; their memories of those days should be preserved. (As Richard Thompson did with his fascinating memoir BeesWing, which chronicles his formative years but mostly ends around 1975). I was born in New England in '57 and so I am just a bit too young to have personally experienced any of that counterculture, especially what took place on the West Coast. I do consider myself very lucky to have seen ElRayo-X 4 times, also David and Ry several times, once with Joaquim and Flaco, and Dave with Hani or Wally. I hope to be able to see David play again, when it's medically safe to do so!
Somewhere on RUclips there is an audio only bootleg of David playing with Richard Thompson and Steve Morse in Europe. I interviewed Morse by phone many years ago many years ago for a hifi magazine; Steve referred to the tour as comprised of "two extroverts and one introvert" but didn't say which was which (my guess is that Thompson was the introvert); he also said "everybody held up their end of the bargain quite well". Back in the 1980s I also talked to Chris Darrow at length by phone.. I had approached the record collector's magazine Goldmine to write an article about Lindley and ElRayo-X, but they were primarily interested in Kaleidoscope and not Lindley/ ElRayo-X. Chris Darrow found me somehow and phoned me out of the blue at 1 a.m. Eastern time; I was pretty groggy and wasn't set up to tape the phone call, and my barely legible, scribbled notes were lost in a subsequent move. The editor at Goldmine was a bit of a prick and sucked to deal with anyway, and their "style guide" was like a manifesto of do's and don'ts, and so I shelved the project. A couple things I remember Darrow saying, straight up: "We were the best band in Southern California", and also that the "Beacon From Mars " record was supposed to be titled "Bacon From Mars", but the record company screwed up.
Thanks. Great to hear about Sugarcane. It was David's playing on "Before the Deluge" that made me pick up the fiddle 45 years ago. It's been very good to me.
Very cool!
Jake, thanks for taking the initiative to record these interviews with Mr. Dave!
I'm really enjoying hearing the names of Dave's influences, some I know of, and some I don't... yet ;)
❤
Glad you like them!
R.I.P. MAESTRO
VERY sadly, it was Covid that got him. He got it in 2020 and it became long term. When I learned
that my heart sank. RIP to an incredible musician and an amazing soul.
no it was the Vaccine or booster if anything the hospitals get 4 times the amount of money if they list it as covid thats fraud and they are murderers.
plain and simple they will be held accountable for it and likely hung or spend the rest of their lives in prison...
I heard vague rumours when he cancelled shows that he had tinnitus then I heard he had Lewy Body dementia. I've never read his cause of death.
@@c.s.mcleod7383 It's on Wiki
@@c.s.mcleod7383 , It wasn't Lewy Body Dementia that forced Lindley to stop gigging and ultimately killed him, it was complications of long covid that morphed into chronic pneumonia and kidney failure. Back when David stopped touring and folks were wondering where he'd gone to, some blogger wrote something about Lindley's music, and then transitioned awkwardly to his own dealings with Lewy Body dementia, and so I think in people's minds the two got conflated and they thought it was Lindley suffering from that neurological disease. Anyway when he passed away it left his widow with tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt and so Lindley's friend, music promoter Douglas Reynolds, set up a charity t-shirt sale and donation drive to help David's widow, ultimately raising about $70K to help her. (I bought a couple of t-shirts and gave a modest donation as well).
The animal feeds itself
Jakes playing Devils advocate......I'm sure he was aware of Lindley playing fiddle.