I wasn’t gonna write a piece about David Lindley but then I thought to myself, If I don’t write about ‘Mr. Dave’ why do I even bother?
We lost David Lindley yesterday, a further punctuation in a season of loss.
The great Jeff Young, as well, passed away just last week, another band member of Jackson Browne’s musical family and a man I admired beyond words.
The loss of both men leaves an enormous hole in the musical landscape and in those who loved them.
I had the supreme honor of serving as road manager to both of these men on tour with Jackson - and my life was made immeasurably richer for it.
David Lindley is the reason I love music as much as I do.
His slithery melodic acoustic lines and haunting slide work form the capillary system in my musical brain.
His notes are embedded in my subconscious.
I saw David Lindley play with Jackson Browne at my very first concert, a benefit for Jerry Brown, along with Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles.
I went with my parents and it was one of the very few memories of them doing anything together, as they spilt up not long after.
I spent most of the rest of my childhood as the only child of a single mom - so music became a constant companion, a balm for the loneliness and source of inspiration.
Music helped explain the world to me and offered hope for the future…I needed that sort of North Star in my life. I still do.
The magic that Jackson and David created together, both on record and in live performance, was one of my first experiences of true artistic beauty existing in this world.
Watching Lindley pull out his fiddle and decorate and buttress a melancholy ballad with deep resonance and harmony was like seeing a neon sign on a foggy night.
Images of California sunshine, orange groves and oceans, flooded into my grey East Coast childhood.
I saw Jackson and David play at the National Mall for Sun Day in 1978, a festival-like celebration for Jimmy Carter’s initiative advocating for the use of solar power.
It was a deeply impactful moment for me, seeing so many coming together for a righteous cause and being served a buffet of musical wizardry as a reward.
I was hooked on the power of music and the excitement, unity and empathy it could produce at a precociously young age.
They played ‘For A Deluge’, a masterpiece of a song, and hugely poignant in its message of environmental awareness.
During his fiddle solo, David called out to the audience his trademark, “DO YOU WANT IT LOUDER?” - working the crowd as well as any guitar god of the era - and doing it with an acoustic instrument.
A mighty feat that ‘Mr. Dave’ pulled off with ease and delight.
And when he did go electric, his searing lap steel tone is one of the single most exciting sounds in the rock and roll cannon: if you don’t believe me stop reading this right now and listen to ‘Running On Empty’. Enough said.
The night that song and its companion, ‘The Load-Out/Stay,’ were recorded, my mom and uncle dropped me off at my grandfather’s townhouse in Columbia, Maryland, to be baby-sat while they went to the show at the Merriweather Post Pavilion. Later I found out I had missed out on being in the audience for rock and roll history (even though I was too young to attend).
I told David that story once, as we stood on the side of a festival stage somewhere in Europe.
He just smiled, looked me deep in the eyes and said, “But look where you are now”.
My childhood and teen years were filled with the sounds of David Lindley’s playing.
Most notably his playing on the Jackson Browne albums ‘For Everyman’ and ‘Late For The Sky’ - along with the beautiful harmonies of Graham Nash and David Crosby, and of course the perfection of ‘The Section’, who counted Lindley among their peers, and played on countless sessions that helped shape the ‘SoCal Sound’ that helped define the era.
I have had the pleasure of knowing and working as a road manager for a lot of the folks who came to fame in that era, later in their careers of course.
David Lindley’s playing always stood out and he was always spoken of with a certain level of awe.
David was ‘a musician’s musician’ which is, in many ways, the highest praise one can give of the players who are often cast as sidemen but are integral to the creation of the music we all love.
He occupied a frequency all his own and had an unmistakable genius.
He was also the kind of musician who would cover Bruce Springsteen songs playing a bouzouki or an oud, or a 1960’s Teisco electric.
David loved to play instruments that were made in Japan and had been designed to be sold at Sears.
He eschewed the sort of fetishisms and gear-snobbery of many of his peers and coaxed stunning tones out of anything he picked up.
If it had strings on it and stayed in tune, ‘Mr. Dave’ could play it.
It’s not the wand but the wizard who wields it.
And the tunings…Lindley had a vast knowledge of music and instinctually knew the exact variation a particular instrument needed to become something truly special in his legendary hands.
I bought a bouzouki one day in Bristol, England, at a shop called Hobgoblin Music.
I had the day off on my first tour in the U.K. & Europe and I could see what looked like part of a castle on a hill overlooking the city, from my hotel window.
If memory still serves, I believe it was Cabot Tower.
I started up the road; climbing the hill I noticed a shop window filled with dulcimers, mandolins and guitars.
I thought to myself, ‘they have everything that Lindley plays…’.
I walked inside. On a wall of the shop were dozens of acoustic instruments but my eyes were drawn to a bouzouki.
I picked it up, intrigued, as David had been doing a solo set before joining Jackson and the band every night, and a lot of his songs were performed on bouzouki, which I found memorizing.
Having never played the instrument before I picked it up and found it almost intuitively easy to play, as if the music was sitting there waiting inside of it. It began to pour out, and it seemed to be in a tuning that no matter where I put my fingers I would land on the right notes.
It almost felt as if I was remembering how to play the instrument, as if we had met somewhere before. It felt like musical déjà vu and I liked it.
I bought it immediately and made my way up to the tower which was surrounded by a lovely park. I took a seat on a bench in the sun, looking out at the historic charm of the city, with its harbor and docks.
I took out the bouzouki, started to play and noticed a couple sitting on a blanket on the grass.
As I played their date seemed to turn more romantic. I looked away as they began to kiss.
After a while they walked up to me and said they were on a first date - the music I was playing had made it feel special and they thanked me.
As far as I was concerned the instrument had just paid for itself.
I made my way back down the hill. When I walked into the hotel with the black gig bag slung over my shoulder, I ran into the band in the lobby.
Mark Goldenberg, a guitar virtuoso himself, asked me what was in the bag.
I told him it was a bouzouki and he said, “You didn’t get it at Hobgoblin Music did you?”
He then told me that he and David had been in the store that very morning and David was gonna buy that exact bouzouki.
He said Lindley had put it in his special tuning as well. THAT was the reason I had been able to pick it up and instantly make ‘air music’.
The ease with which I was able to play it was another gift from David, as was the music that had serenaded the young lovers.
Lindley was thrilled I had bought the instrument and said it was one of the best sounding bouzoukis he had ever heard.
He would kindly tune it for me for the rest of the tour, always willing to unlock some secrets of the double course instruments he so enjoyed.
Watching David play every night was like a master class in the art of twang.
He was such a wise man, with an almost mystical air about him when it came to the knowledge he possessed.
He had some fascinating stories and regaled us all one night while crossing the Irish Sea on our way to Belfast.
He also rocked the polyester shirt and pants like nobody’s business and could wax philosophical for hours on the aesthetics of the fabric and where to find the best second-hand polyester. (Salt Lake City is still the honey pot of late 70’s sartorial splendor.)
He had an amazing sense of humor, infused with warmth and kindness and mischievous wit.
He once did an impression of a very large dog jumping at the door of his hotel room, as I knocked on it from the hallway. I will never forget it, he sounded exactly like a doberman, down to the nails scraping on the door.
Another time in Seattle, I went to his room to collect his bags and he summoned me inside to tell me about a secret door he had found.
‘Come check this out Grasshopper’; he always called me grasshopper.
He opened the door and I followed him down the stairs and sure enough it opened onto a sort of secret floor beneath his hotel room that felt like a giant apartment. It was huge and untouched.
It made no sense and was completely surreal, like a ghost suite or something - and it was only accessible from his room. It was like being in a scene from ‘Being John Malkovich”.
He seemed to appreciate the absurdities of life - and made music that made it beautiful, poignant and greasy all at once.
Kind of like America itself.
He used world instruments to reinterpret the best of Americana.
Covering artists like Steve Earle, and playing with fellow masters like Ry Cooder for much of his career.
His proficiency, eclecticism and multi-cultural grasp of musical modalities reflected the country itself.
A favorite tune of mine on the 2010 tour was his cover of Springsteen’s ‘Brothers Under The Bridge’, a poignant tale of homeless Vietnam vets evading harassment from law enforcement.
He injected into the song a poignancy that helps music and songwriting do what they do best - which is to explain ourselves and our world to us.
David played on many songs that helped form the soundtrack of our lives.
He will be sorely missed.
A talent like his makes the world a better place. I am deeply grateful for the time I spent with the man, and the music I was fortunate enough to enjoy watching him make.
Rest easy, Mr Dave.
Thank you, thank you for this touching and beautiful missive about David Lindley. I had the pleasure of seeing Jackson Browne and David Lindley on tour many times. David was a masterful artist, and your writing brought me back to those heady days of yore. Thank you again, Noel
I shed a few tears while reading your tribute Noel. David was a magnificent talent. My favourite was his slide, with such power that reaches the heart and soul.