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Bob Lind (born Robert Neale Lind, November 25, 1942, Baltimore, Maryland) is an American folk music singer-songwriter who helped define the 1960s folk rock movement in America and England. Lind is best known for his transatlantic chart hit single, "Elusive Butterfly", which reached #5 on both the US and UK charts in 1966, but continues to write, record and perform throughout America and Europe.
More than 200 artists - including Cher, Glen Campbell, Aretha Franklin, Dolly Parton, Eric Clapton, Nancy Sinatra, The Four Tops, Richie Havens, Hoyt Axton, The Kingston Trio, Johnny Mathis, and Petula Clark - have recorded songs written by Lind.
In 1965, Lind signed a recording contract with Liberty Records' subsidiary, World Pacific Records, and it was on that label that he recorded "Elusive Butterfly." The single might have done even better on the UK Singles Chart had there not been competition from established Irish recording artist Val Doonican, who released a cover version of the song at the same time. In the end, both versions of "Elusive Butterfly" made #5 in the UK in the spring of 1966. Lind also wrote the cult standard "Cheryl's Goin' Home," which was covered by Adam Faith, The Blues Project, Sonny & Cher, John Otway, The Cascades and others. It was Faith's last British hit.
Plagued by drug and alcohol problems, Lind gained a reputation in the business for being "hard to work with." In 1969, Lind severed ties with World Pacific. Three years later, Capitol Records released Since There Were Circles, an album that was well received by critics but not commercially successful. Lind dropped out of the music industry for a number of years.
In 1988, he moved to Florida. He wrote five novels, an award winning play, and a screeenplay, Refuge, which won the Florida Screenwriters' Competition in 1991.
For eight years he was a staff writer at the satirical supermarket tabloids Weekly World News and Sun.
Lind returned to music in 2004 when, at the urging of his friend Arlo Guthrie, he played The Guthrie Center in Beckett, Mass. Since then Lind has been touring nonstop, playing England, Spain and Canada, as well as L.A., San Francisco, New York, Denver, Miami, Knoxville, Tennessee, Green River, Wyoming, and various cities in New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida.
Lind established an official website in 2006. That same year, RPM Records re-issued the album Since There Were Circles, and Lind self-released the Live at Luna Star album featuring performances of new material. In 2007, Ace Records (UK) released Elusive Butterfly: The Complete 1966 Jack Nitzsche Sessions.
The British band, Pulp, have a song named after him: "Bob Lind (The Only Way Is Down)", from their album, We Love Life. A Lind recording, "Cool Summer" was also included on the compilation album, The Trip, compiled by Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey.
In 2009, filmmaker Paul Surratt completed a concert/documentary DVD called Bob Lind: Perspective.
In October 2012, 41 years after the release of his last studio album, Lind issued a CD of new music that some critics hailed as his best work ever: Finding You Again, produced by veteran rock guitarist Jamie Hoover of The Spongetones and released by Ace Records.
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