Gary James' Interview With
Bob Lind



He's a singer, a songwriter, a novelist and a playwright. His songs have been covered by some of the biggest names in the music business, including Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, Cher, Glen Campbell, Dolly Parton, Johnny Mathis, The Four Tops and Richie Havens to name just a few. He was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall Of Fame in November, 2013. His song, "Elusive Butterfly" became a Top 5 hit in both the U.S and the U.K. The gentleman we are speaking about is Mr. Bob Lind. We talked with Bob about his recollections of the 1960s Folk music scene and what he's doing these days.

Q - Bob, you're still singing and performing these days, aren't you?

A - Wherever they'll have me, yes I am.

Q - And where do you perform?

A - I play Europe a lot. I play Los Angeles and just about wherever they'll offer me. I haven't done any big concerts in a long time. I just don't have the popularity, but I play in arenas all over America. I've been focusing on my playwriting lately, so music has sort of taken the back seat. I consider playwriting, songwriting for adults, (laughs) I guess for a lack of a better word. I don't much care for things I used to care about. People have often called me a one hit wonder, which is kind of a demeaning term. Usually people who use that term are people who never had any hits. The thing is I never expected to have a career like that or expected a career that involved hit records. My idea of what I wanted to do, I know I'm kind of jumping around here 'cause you wanted to ask me about today, but it fits in. The thing I have always cared about is having a body of work. In other words, when I came up there were people like Tom Paxton and Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Dylan. Dylan didn't have any hits. This is pre-"Like A Rolling Stone". These were people who could fill like 800 to 900 seat auditoriums. Not because they had hits, but because people were interested in their body of work, everything that they did. Really I just don't see that much of that anymore for me. Now people are interested in "Elusive Butterfly" and I'm glad they are, but that's not the career I wanted. I never expected "Elusive Butterfly" to be a hit. Neither did Jack Nitzsche. It was on the B-side of "Cheryl's Gonin' Home". They didn't even release it as an A-side 'cause it was so different than anything else that was going on at the time. It's probably too late to make a long story short, (laughs) but I'm much more interested now in playwriting and screenwriting than I am in music, but that changes. You should know that about me.

Q - Now you have your own record label?

A - Let me put it this way, technically I don't. I released a live CD, "Bob Lind Live at the Luna Star Cafe". I just did it independently. It hasn't sold anything. We're still having to eat disc after disc. Basically my label has been the people at Ace Records and they have been wonderful to me. And, I don't have a good history with record labels.

Q - I read this comment by Todd Bruder, manager of Hugh's Room in Toronto, Canada, He said about you, "He is the real deal. Please don't miss any chance to see him play, he may change your life." Wow!

A - (laughs)

Q - Change your life?

A - That's pretty radical isn't it?

Q - That's probably the highest praise you can give a singer/songwriter. What are you doing at one of these venues where you can actually change someone's life?

A - I appreciate this fella's praise, but I definitely think it's an over-statement, even though I welcome it. All I do is stand on the stage and try to tell the truth. I have a certain amount of skills. I'm a good singer. I'm a good performer. I know how to hold an audience's attention. I'm an adequate guitar player. I'm not a good guitar player. I certainly would not place anywhere near the top half million guitar players in the world. I play well enough to carry my songs. My melodies are sort of repetitive. My melody is not my strong suit is what I'm trying to say. I do my best to make sure that people are getting the truth.

Q - Do you ever go on YouTube and watch yourself singing and playing in the early days of your career?

A - No. I'm not much interested in the early days Gary. Let's put it this way, when you reach my age you can talk in larger blocks of time and call it currently. Currently I'm talking about things I've done in the last, this century, 2000s. The rest of that stuff I just feel that I was such an amateur at that point.

Q - In 2009 a concert/documentary DVD was released called "Bob Lind: Perspective". Is that about your entire life?

A - Well, it's been a long time since I've seen it. What it is, it's basically a concert. Then they did a series of interviews around the concert. It introduces me. It introduces some of the people that played in the concert. Interviews with my publicist. It's not a year-by-year, chronological story. It's basically about me. (laughs) It's such a glib answer, I don't mean it that way.

Q - This is your life!

A - (laughs)

Q - You became interested in music when you got to college and not before? Is that correct? Folk music?

A - I'd always been interested in music. Other people put the genre labels on it. I just liked the idea of touching a guitar and do something with people's emotions. That always fascinated me. So, I played Folk music because Burl Ives was a very early influence on me. The old Burl Ives, not the Burl Ives that did "Little Bitty Tear" and all that bullshit. It lost it's balls somewhere along the line I think. But basically I started by playing Folk music and played Rock 'n' Roll for awhile. Fortunately, and this seems to be happening more and more, the idea of categories in music is sort of disappearing and I'm not gong to miss it a bit.

Q - The idea of music is disappearing. In the 1960s people were singing more about love and you could actually understand what the singer is singing.

A - Here's the deal: every generation feels that way. Our parents said, "Little Richard, that's not music! That's screaming. Fat's Domino, Chuck Berry, that's just basic. That's primitive. Are you kidding? Elvis?" So there may just be something we're missing, but I agree with you. What they call Rap or Hip-Hop, the whole thing is words and I can't understand the words. I'm with you on that. I don't think it's just my age. I cant' really understand it. I think people aren't pronouncing. But for guys like you and me, it's the easiest thing to accuse people of. It's, "That's not music anymore." We knew music. When we played music it was different. Well, of course it was. Of course it was different.

Q - Bob, I'm going beyond that. The musicianship isn't there. These are what, fifth generation musicians? Everything that can be done has been done. Even with technology, today's musicians have nothing to add. That's what I'm saying.

A - Look, when you come right down to it, what is new? I don't know any of the songs that are played now. What can you say? "She broke my heart." "I found love." "Somebody took my love." "I'm having to leave you." When you look at it in broad strokes there isn't much new. There isn't much to say. But the point is, each person, each artist, his job is not to say something new in my opinion. It's to find a new and personal way to say the things we already know, and to say them in a way that will make people say, "Yes! Yes!" They way Danny O'Keefe does with his writing. They way Richie Havens did with his singing, and Fred Neal. These people were not really doing anything new. They weren't breaking new ground. Even musically they aren't. I'm with you. I don't think technology adds anything. But, it's all in cycles. I'll bet at some point a simple acoustic sound will come back and it'll come back for awhile.

Q - I believe music is cyclical. If we knew what the next trend would be we'd be multimillionaires!

A - Yeah, but why? I'm not being quarrelsome, I'm just saying I've heard that before. People are always saying, "Look, this is what the people want now." Well, fuck that! If the people want it they can find somebody else to do it. As an artist you do what you do and you do it honestly and to the best of your ability as you possibly can. Then, let that current take care of itself. When "Elusive Butterfly" came out there was nothing like it on the air. That's why they released it as a B-side. They never had any belief in it. You can't blame the company for that. The company's aim is to make money. That's what they do. That's their job. They stay alive. They feed their families by how many people like the music they're putting out. I don't blame the industry for trying to follow trends. I do however blame artists. As an artist, what do you want? There are people who do want to be stars. A lot of them I like. A lot of them I'm close to, not these days. Cher is an example. I used to teach songwriting. I use to teach lyrics for awhile before I realized I had no right to teach lyrics. I imposed too much of myself. I used to say decide early in your career, do I want to be an artist or do I want to be a star? Now sometimes these things overlap. I think they've overlapped with Dylan. I think Bob Dylan has seen that overlap. He was true to his ideals even when he was getting death threats for going electric. But for the most part it's a choice you make early on. People like Dolly Parton. Perfectly lovable person. She has chosen to be a star. She doesn't care about art. And Cher is the same way. Cher never wanted to be an artist. Cher isn't an artist. And Billy Joel, I like Billy Joel's music a lot, but basically he has command of a lot of different styles and he knows how to move around new. I guess it's little late to talk about Billy Joel. I that respect. But basically if you want to be a star there's no shame in that. Plenty of people want to be stars. The difficulty happens when people get those things mixed up, when they have artistic decisions to make and then they say, "Okay, which will the people like?" It's a gamble, like you say. If people knew there'd be a lot more stars. But we don't know. It's like William Goldman says about screenwriting, nobody knows anything. So then you make a decision. For every commercial decision you make, it goes against your instincts, your art. For every one of those decisions you make something suffer, and usually the people who only want to be popular wind up the most unpopular. There's just some people who have the knack and some people don't. So, it's just a personal choice. I've chosen to be an artist. It has hurt me in some aspects and helped me. I'm very well respected by a very small amount of people. Other people are loved by a lot of people. I don't care much about that. I don't want the responsibility. It's a tremendous responsibility. Somebody asked Dolly Parton, "Why do you think you're a star?" She said, "Very simply because I know how to be one." I don't know and never did.

Q - Dolly Parton and Billy Joel cannot only sing but they can write as well and they can put it across. Bob Dylan can write, but a singer? I don't think too much of his voice.

A - A lot of people don't. You see, when he came along nobody was singing like Dylan. Bob Dylan, who doesn't have the chops as you say, he doesn't have the pipes, but he invented a style of singing that even good singers are imitating. When you hear Mark Knopfler, I don't even know where to start, the whole raft of people who sing like Dylan. Dylan did it, when he came along there was nobody like him. Nobody dared to put out a record with a voice like that. So, you almost had to listen to what he was saying because his voice was so unique and so interesting. I think that's to Dylan's credit. A lot of people don't like his singing. We grew up listening to pretty voices, you and I. Vic Damone. Eddie Fisher. Kind of the bridge before Rock 'n' Roll. So when Dylan came along he did not have the chops, but now I guess you've heard the record with Dylan where he does the Sinatra things. It's so interesting. It's so fascinating to me to hear him. I'll tell you one thing about Dylan's voice, it's honest. He's putting it out there and he's saying, "If you don't like the tonality, if you don't like the pitch, if you don't like the timbre, fuck you! I'm trying to tell you the truth with the equipment that I have." To me, that's captivating. That's commanding.

Q - In 1965 you signed your first record deal. How did that happen? Did someone see you performing in a club and approach you?

A - Let me tell you something, it was dead easy. I was playing in Denver. I was playing coffee houses. Just me and my acoustic guitar. At that time, early '64, the coffee house scene was thriving there. They had six or seven of 'em there and they were packed every night. People were playing acoustic music. There were Peter, Paul And Mary imitations, Limeliters imitations. These kind of things. And then there were also people who played Blues and just played acoustic music. Well, what happened is the fad ran out. It evaporated. Al Chapman had a coffee house and he made a tape of my stuff. As the coffee scene started to dry up in Denver I said, "Okay, it's still alive in San Francisco," so I went to San Francisco for awhile. Then I said it's just a hop, skip and a jump down to Los Angeles. First company I went to was Liberty Records and they had just bought a Jazz subsidiary called World Pacific and it was run by a guy named Dick Book. I came in and gave him the shitty, little tape I made at The Analyst in Denver, the coffee house. Three days later I had a contract. Four months later, I'm not good with chronology, I had a record out called "Cheryl's Goin' Home" and "Cheryl's Goin' Home" got a lot of play, but it tanked. It was dying. A d.j. in Florida turned it over and on the B-side was "Elusive Butterfly". When Jack Nitzsche and I recorded four songs they asked me what song should be the A-side released as a single. I said, "Anything but 'Elusive Butterfly'" because there was nothing like "Elusive Butterfly" out there. There were no songs like it. Later, more songs became, for lack of a better word, poetic with lyrics. "Okay, we'll put 'Cheryl's Goin' Home' out and to avoid split play we'll put the weakest song on the B-side," and that's what they did. It didn't work because some d.j. in Florida turned it over said, "That's a pretty song," and started playing the B-side. It became a hit in Florida. It became a hit in some other areas, other major markets, and pretty soon there it was. Getting signed was the easiest thing in the world. I never had to fight that battle. I never had to go to this label or that label. I never had a manager. I never had an agent. All I had was a tape and a desire to get my music to people.

Q - Bob, that is an unusual story. Most of the people I interview have such a struggle to get that initial recording contract.

A - My struggles happened after I got famous. (laughs)

Q - And for some people the struggle never ends! How long did it take you to write "Elusive Butterfly"?

A - A night. It was five verses long originally. I used to take a lot of uppers, smoke a lot of dope and drink just enough so I wouldn't go to sleep, and then I would stay up all night. There's a line between sleep and wakefulness and always my best songs were written in that period of time. My conscious mind was a little bit dim, but I could make decisions, but was basically informed by this dreamlike state that I was in. So, I wrote five verses of a song and it didn't feel any better or worse than any other songs I was writing at the time.

Q - The year that "Elusive Butterfly" became a hit was 1966. Right around the corner was 1967 when another change in music would happen. Were you aware of the pending San Francisco sound?

A - No. It didn't much interest me Gary. I didn't have that kid of view of my career where, "What else is happening?" I was way too self-centered and still am. Remember this, at the same time "Elusive Butterfly" was on the charts, so was "Dirty Water" by The Standells. There's all kinds of music. People talk historically now about music in waves. The Brit Invasion came in at this time. While the Brit Invasion was coming in, Vikki Carr had a hit with "It Must Be Him". These are broad, sweeping generalizations that we can see later. At the time all I wanted to do was tell the truth, move people the way Ray Charles moved me when I was seventeen years old. That's what I wanted to do for other people. I wanted to make people go, do that little involuntary thing that audiences do sometimes. It's the best thing audiences can hear, "Yeah! I love that." When I caa arouse that in an audience man, its the pinnacle. That's what I do it for.

Q - That's what that guy was talking about when he said he may change your life!

A - Yeah, maybe. (laughs)

Q - Did you tour behind "Elusive Butterfly"?

A - No. Mostly what I did in the '60s was television shows. They were called lip-synch shows. (laughs) It was the stupidest idea. The union wanted to be paid if you sang on TV. So, the TV didn't want to pay people to sing. What they had people do was move their mouths to records that were already made. It was the stupidest, most moronic thing. You might as well just stand there and smile as to move your lips. I didn't know that was wrong for me. I was too young. I had managers, Green And Stone, and a record company that had done the same thing with every artist that came down the pike. They said, "Okay, let's get you on the talk shows, Hullabaloo, Shindig!, Dick Clark, Casey Kasem. Got on these shows. I had no idea that was wrong for me. There was a show, one of these millions of shows that took place out in L.A. And it moved around a lot from one setting to another. Sometimes they would film in a park. Sometimes they would film in an auditorium. There was this place called Jungleland. it was sort of a cross between what is now a zoo and Lion Country Safari. They had animals there. They had us all lip-synching. So there was a song I did called "Mister Zero". Now "Mister Zero" in an intricately worded, lyrical love song. It has to do with loss. It has to do with a relationship. I mean ongoing. So I lip-synched to "Elusive Butterfly" and then they had me lip-synch this one. They said, "Let's put him here. We're going to put you on a stool," and then they brought this thing on a leash called an ocelot. It's basically a wild animal. It's between a leopard and, I don't know, a lynx, whatever. And they said, "Okay, we're going to put this lynx here at your feet. You're going to lip-sync this song. I said, "Listen, this is a wild animal." They said, "Just don't make any sudden moves." So, I'm sitting there, lip-synching "Mister Zero" with this animals. None of this has anything to do with the song. It was the first time I said, "What the fuck am I doing here? What is this? This is ridiculous! This is nothing to do with what I set out to do. This is not my vision of myself." Very soon I stopped doing those lip-synch chows and I just stopped caring. There was no place for me that I could see in the Pop music scene. And that's all there was at the time, the Pop music scene. There was nothing else. Jazz was out. Folk was out. There was not a real market for artists who weren't at least in the acceptable boundaries of some genre and it didn't fit me at all.

Q - Did you ever cross paths with Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix?

A - I never knew Janis Joplin. We all sort of knew Jim Morrison because we used to go to The Troubadour all the time. He just carried the stink of death all over him. Anybody could see the guy was not going to live long. We were all doing drugs. We were all drinking. We were all crazy, but he was a level way past that. You know, he was always getting busted for showing his dick. He was not crazy delightfully eccentric, crazy like needs help crazy. But of course when you're an artist at that level, nobody is going to tell you, you need help. I never knew Hendrix. I never met Hendrix. I had seen Janis Joplin in the early days. I'll never forget the first time I saw her. I was at the Fillmore, seeing Jefferson Airplane. And they said, "We have a guest we'd like to bring up." This is where everybody stood up at concerts. Half a dance, half a concert at the Fillmore days. They said, "She's the lead singer for Big Brother And The Holding Company, Janis Joplin!" I turned around and there's the ugliest woman I'd ever seen, making her way up to the stage. As she walked, every step she took I could see her transforming. She was this drab, little nothing when she started to walk up to the stage, but as she got closer and closer, this energy, if I believed in mediums I would believe she was possessed. Something came over that woman and I could see it 'cause I was close enough. She passed right by me. By the time she hit the stage she was somebody else. They think Marilyn Monroe was did that often, not that Marilyn Monroe was ugly. Please understand how I use the word ugly. I mean, she (Janis) was absolutely the last woman you would hit on at four o'clock in the morning when the bars were closing. And yet, when she got to that stage the electricity just shot out from under her. It was just pure magic.

Q - Other people has said that Janis wasn't that attractive, so I've heard that before.

A - Yeah, and I don't mean it in an insulting way. There's a lot of people who are not (attractive) just as Dylan, who does not have the voice, whose personalities give them sex appeal and I guess she was one of them, although she never appealed to me.

Q - In the 1960s Janis was allowed to be herself. If she was starting out today, a record company or management company would want to change her appearance to the extent that Janis Joplin wouldn't look like Janis Joplin.

A - Well exactly, if you're signed to a big company who's putting zillions of dollars into your career who don't understand what's going on, and that's always been true. That isn't now. The music industry has always had executives who don't even like music. It's always been run, with a few exceptions, obviously Dick Bock is an exception, the guy who ran World Pacific (Records). I treated him poorly, but at least he loved the music. There are people who will always try to manage that to you and it's up to you to resist it. I didn't know that.

Q - Was there a follow-up to "Elusive Butterfly"?

A - Yeah. It tanked. It was called "I Remember The Rain", and on the B-side was a song called "I Just Let It Take Me". No, on the B-side it was something else. We, Jack and I, wanted to release "I Just Let It Take Me" as the A-side because we thought it was stronger. But the company fought us on it. It got ugly. By that time I was so sick of it and I was so fucked up with drugs and alcohol that really I wasn't interested. I just didn't care. I didn't care about my career. I just saw such a gap between what I wanted to do and what I was doing and I didn't know how to do what I wanted to do and get any attention.

Q - You then dropped out of the music scene and did what?

A - Nothing! (laughs)

Q - How'd you pay the bills? How'd you live? The royalties must have been pretty good on "Elusive Butterfly".

A - I had two hundred covers of my songs by some of the best artists in the United States. That writing kept me alive. Basically I just lived on my royalties for a long time.

Q - For eight years you were a writer for Weekly World News and Sun.

A - Yes.

Q - I remember seeing those papers at the checkout line at the supermarket. You must have loved that work.

A - I loved it! By the way, when I say I did nothing, that's not true. I wrote novels. I wrote screen plays. My screenplay Refuge won the Florida screen writing competition in 1991. My novel is out. The Weekly World News taught me how to write. I had a friend and he knew I was writing stories. I was writing short stories at the time. I was out of music. I was writing novels. I was writing plays. I just wasn't making any money. He wrote for a paper called Your Health, which was part of what was then The Globe. There was National Enquirer and Globe, and they were in competition. He said, "You should write for the tabloids," and I said, "Oh, c'mon man. I hate all that shit. Who's getting fat, who's fucking who. Gossip. Celebrity shit. I hate all that." He said, "No, no. Everybody thinks that. Everybody thinks there's one generic tabloid and it's called The National Enquirer. It writes about space aliens and stars and ETs." "But," he said, "That's not true. They specialize." And this is at the time. He said, "Sun and Weekly World; Sun for The Globe and Weekly World News for The National Enquirer company, all you do is show up and you learn how to write 'cause it's a very specific way to write. You learn how to write and then you just sit and make up stories all day and laugh until you're sick and go home happy and make money." So, I wrote a few freelance things for Sun that had to be heavily edited because I did not know how to write a newspaper story. Then I went to Weekly World News, I got to fill in for somebody and then finally they put me on staff, but it took me a year to write. They were incredibly patient with me. They taught me how to write a lead, how to write a quote, how to write a story, how to write tight. I'll tell you something. I learned more in that time then any book I ever read about writing, or a class, or a seminar. It taught me how to write exciting and I was able to use that in my art. Obviously there's nothing artistic about this kind of writing. It's not art. It's a skill. It's a craft. But I can apply that craft even to my songwriting. Don't waste time. When I talk I ramble obviously, but in interviews I assume I can do that. I don't have to be tight or edit myself. But when you present something, particularly a screenplay, a screenplay has to be totally lean. So does a story in Weekly World News or any newspaper. And people don't stay with you if you ramble.

Official Website: BobLind.com

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