If you don’t recognize him by his impressive sideburns, you’ll recognize him from his work in bands like Kaleidoscope and El Rayo-X. There were few musicians who were big in the later decades of the 20th century that had the pure instrumental talent that David Lindley had. And the legend himself was born on this day, March 21, 1944, in San Marino, California.
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Let’s honor the legacy of David Lindley by taking a look back at his storied career… and the nearly endless list of instruments he played as a “maxi-instrumentalist,” as Acoustic Guitar magazine once put it.
Remembering the Music of David Lindley
David Lindley was born on March 21, 1944, to a musical family in San Marino, California. Lindley’s father was an avid collector or 78 RPM records.
As a child, Lindley first dove into music by learning to play the violin, the ukulele, and the banjo. By the end of his life, it was reported that Lindley could play dozens of instruments. His forte was string instruments, including the dobro, acoustic and electric guitar, zither, lap steel guitar, and more. Interestingly enough, Lindley was known for using particularly cheap instruments, often from Sears department stores. He also collected rare and somewhat strange instruments from around the world. A writer in the mid-90s, Steve Rosen, visited Lindley’s home and described it as full of “instruments scattered out, guitar cables coiled on the floor like rubber snakes and picks covering every surface like it was some kind of fallout.”
“I guess somebody had to be the keeper of all these strange and exotic instruments and who better than David Lindley?” Rosen noted.
Lindley is best known for his work with the band El Rayo-X, which he founded. As a soloist, he released most of his solo material and work with El Rayo-X in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. He was also a founding member of the psychedelic outfit Kaleidoscope, which was active in the 1960s. Lindley performed with Kaleidoscope for much of the mid-to-late 1960s. Lindley worked with dozens of other musicians as a session musician, including Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, Bob Dylan, Joe Walsh, Dolly Parton, and many more. In the 1970s, he worked extensively with Terry Reid and Jackson Browne, specifically.
David Lindley passed away on March 3, 2023, following a long illness. He was 78. He lived a truly musical life, one that audiophiles and multi-instrumentalists alike might just envy.
Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
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