Lyle Lovett Biography
Lyle Pearce Lovett, 1 November 1957, Klein, Texas, USA. Singer-songwriter Lovett grew up 25 miles north of Houston in the rural Klein community (an area largely populated by farmers of German extraction), which was named after his grandfather, Adam Klein. During his teenage years, as Houston's borders expanded, Lovett was exposed to more urban influences, and attended Texas A&M University where he studied journalism and then German. During this period (late 70s), he began writing songs; his early heroes included Guy Clark (who later wrote a dedication on the sleeve of Lovett's first album), Jerry Jeff Walker and Townes Van Zandt. Having visited Europe (to improve his German) in the late 70s, he met a local country musician named Buffalo Wayne (who apparently took his name from his favourite western heroes), and remained in touch after returning to Texas - when Wayne was organizing an event in Luxembourg in 1983, he booked Lovett, and also on the bill was an American band from Phoenix whose members included Matt Rollings (keyboards) and Ray Herndon (guitar), who were later involved with Lovett's albums.
Lovett worked the same Texas music circuit as Nanci Griffith, singing on two of her early albums, Once In A Very Blue Moon (1984, which included one of his songs, "If I Were The Woman You Wanted") and Last Of The True Believers (1985), on the cover of which he is pictured. When Guy Clark heard a demo tape by Lovett in 1984, he passed it on to Tony Brown of MCA Records, and by 1986, Lovett had signed to MCA/Curb. His self-titled debut album was idiosyncratic, to say the least, including both the song covered by Griffith and "Closing Time", which was covered by Lacy J. Dalton, as well as a fine song he co-wrote with fellow singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen Jnr., "This Old Porch". However, his acceptance was slow in US country music circles, and Lovett first received substantial critical acclaim when the album was eventually released in Europe. The follow-up, Pontiac, was released in 1987 after Lovett had successfully toured Europe backed only by cellist John Hagen. The album made it clear that Lovett was rather more than a folk or country artist, with songs such as the surreal "If I Had A Boat" and "She's Hot To Go", while guests on the album included Emmylou Harris. By this time, Lovett was talking about both recording and touring with what he called His Large Band, with several saxophone players and a female backing singer, Francine Reed, as well as a regular rhythm section, and his third album, released in 1989, was indeed titled Lyle And His Large Band. Including an insidiously straight cover version of the Tammy Wynette standard "Stand By Your Man", and a version of the R&B oldie "The Glory Of Love", this again delighted critics by its very humour and eclecticism, but further confused record buyers, especially in the USA, who were unsure whether this was a country or jazz record or something quite different. At this point Lovett moved away from Nashville, where he was regarded as too weird, and as a result, his fourth album, produced by Los Angeles heavyweight George Massenburg, was not released until early 1992. Its title, Joshua Judges Ruth (three consecutive books in the Old Testament, but meaning something very different if read as a phrase), was symptomatic of Lovett's intelligence, but perhaps equally so of his idiosyncratic approach. As usual, critics loved it, although it included hardly any traces of country music, and seemed to portray him as a Tom Waits-like figure - ultra-sophisticated, but somewhat off the wall. In 1992, Lovett was chosen as the opening act for many of the dates on the first world tour during the 90s by Dire Straits. This exposed him to a huge international audience, but seems to have done little to extend his cult following. In the same year, Lovett met Hollywood actress Julia Roberts on the set of The Player, a high-grossing movie, in which Lovett played the role of detective DeLongpre. They married in June 1993; the following year their marriage was floundering, and by 1995 it was over. Lovett resumed his career as one of the sharpest and wittiest songwriters to come out of America in recent times. He performed "You've Got A Friend In Me' with Randy Newman for the soundtrack of the hugely successful movie Toy Story. His 1996 studio album The Road To Ensenada mixed Lovett's razor wit with pathos. Long-standing observers of Lovett's lyrics read much into this album and pontificated for hours about their relevance to his relationship with Roberts. On the 1998 follow-up Step Inside This House, Lovett performed revelatory cover versions of 21 favourite Texan songs. Following another covers collection (Smile: Songs From The Movies), Lovett made a welcome return to original material with 2003"s excellent My Baby Don't Tolerate.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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