Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic David Lindley, a virtuoso guitarist and multi-instrumentalist best known to many for his work with Jackson Browne, as well as a recording and touring artist in his own right, died Friday at age 78.
No cause of death was immediately given. The musician had been known to have been ailing for some time. A family member posted late last year that Lindley had been repeatedly hospitalized for kidney issues, pneumonia and influenza; a fundraiser that had been recently set up for Lindley and his family said his medical issues “seem to have begun with a terrible bout of Long Covid.” “The loss of David Lindley is a huge one,” tweeted Jason Isbell. “Without his influence my music would sound completely different.
I was genuinely obsessed with his playing from the first time I heard it. The man was a giant.” Lindley’s tenure with Browne includes all of that artist’s seminal works from 1973-80, and several more Browne albums beyond that, with his most famous soloing being heard on the title track of the “Running on Empty” album, along with a falsetto vocal on the same record’s “Stay.” He is also known for a series of collaborations with Ry Cooder that began with the “Jazz” and “Bop Till You Drop” albums in 1979-80 and continued into Cooder’s 1980s soundtrack era.
Other longstanding associations include mulitple albums in which he backed Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, David Crosby, Graham Nash and Rod Stewart in the ’70s and ’80s.
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