Bob Lind

Bob Lind built a substantial cult audience on the strength of a limited catalog. Between 1966 and 1971 he issued just four albums—one consisting of demos never meant for release—and scored only a single Top 40 hit. Even so, he stands among the central figures of the 1960s folk-rock surge, with more than two hundred artists eventually interpreting his compositions. The 1966 hit “Elusive Butterfly” offered a light, breezy sound touched by psychedelia and sunshine pop, while his other recordings from those years, later gathered on The Best of Bob Lind: You Might Have Heard My Footsteps, display meticulously shaped folk-rock informed by pop instincts. For Since There Were Circles in 1971 he shifted toward country rock; upon resurfacing with Finding You Again in 2012 he incorporated Baroque flourishes into the arrangements crafted by Jamie Hoover of the Spongetones. A darker, more cynical perspective then shaped both Magellan Was Wrong in 2016 and Something Worse Than Loneliness in 2022.

Robert Neale Lind entered the world in Baltimore, Maryland on November 25, 1944. Frequent family relocations marked his childhood, yet he put down roots in Denver, Colorado during adolescence and began performing rock & roll and rhythm & blues while still in eighth grade. At high school he assembled the Moonlighters; later, at Western State University in Gunnison, Colorado, he fronted Bob Lind & the Misfits, a group devoted to early rock covers. When a fresh wave of songwriters arrived on the folk circuit in the early 1960s, Lind began composing and performing at local coffee houses. He moved to San Francisco to continue writing and playing intimate rooms, then traveled to Los Angeles in 1965, where an audition at World Pacific Records, a Liberty subsidiary, led to a contract. After securing a publishing agreement with Metric Music he met producer-arranger Jack Nitzsche, who admired the material and joined the project. Nitzsche’s imaginative settings complemented Lind’s emotionally direct songs so effectively that World Pacific anticipated strong results from the debut single “Cheryl’s Goin’ Home.” Several disc jockeys instead favored the B-side, “Elusive Butterfly,” which climbed to number five on the Billboard singles chart in 1966.

Don’t Be Concerned, Lind’s first album, appeared soon afterward and included the follow-up single “Remember the Rain” b/w “Truly Julie’s Blues,” which reached number 65 in the United States. Photographs of Feeling, again produced by Nitzsche, came out on World Pacific before year’s end, while Verve-Folkways released The Elusive Bob Lind, an album of early unreleased demos that received new overdubs without the artist’s participation. Lind later acknowledged that the success of “Elusive Butterfly” sparked heavy alcohol and drug use, rendering him volatile and uncooperative; he ended his association with Nitzsche and lost his World Pacific deal after two unsuccessful singles. He briefly withdrew from music and settled in New Mexico, only to record again in 1971 at the urging of Doug Weston, proprietor of the Los Angeles venue The Troubadour. The resulting Since There Were Circles presented polished folk-infused country rock, yet Capitol Records invested little promotional support; once the album failed commercially, Lind again stepped away from the industry.

He relocated to Florida, overcame his addictions, and pursued writing, producing novels and screenplays while contributing to the Weekly World News. Other performers kept covering his songs, and his modest output cultivated admirers both domestically and overseas; Jarvis Cocker saluted him in “Bob Lind (The Only Way Is Down)” on Pulp’s 2001 album We Love Life, and Richard Hawley has named him an influence. Lind kept composing during his absence from the public eye, and in 2004 he arranged a modest appearance at the Luna Star Café in North Miami. Positive response led to an invitation from longtime friend Arlo Guthrie to play the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Regular touring resumed across U.S. clubs as well as U.K. theaters and festivals, while most of his catalog received CD reissues. A limited-edition live set, Live at the Luna Star Café, documented one of his Miami performances in 2006. After new recordings with Jamie Hoover of the Spongetones, Finding You Again emerged in 2012. Four years later Magellan Was Wrong reunited Lind with Hoover and introduced jazz and R&B artist Greg Foat alongside experimental noise musician Frank “Rat Bastard” Falestra; the album also revealed a harsher, less forgiving lyrical stance that persisted on Something Worse Than Loneliness in 2022, Lind’s third project with Hoover.