I’d heard the Windbreakers, Bobby Sutliff’s band, but it was long ago Only Ghosts Remain, the album in question here, is a good reminder of how much I liked what I heard back then. I’m glad to own this album for that reason alone.
Tim Lee, Bobby's band mate, was kind enough to answer a few questions for me.
Andrea Weiss: What are your memories of Bobby?
Tim Lee: So many of them. The story goes that Bobby and I met as teenagers on the front row of an Alice Cooper concert during Suzi Quatro’s opening set. Bobby was talking about guitars, but I was too busy staring at Quatro’s leather jumpsuit to notice. It’s mostly true. We were friends for so many years, and we hung out and played in each other’s bands even when we weren’t doing the Windbreakers. In latter years, when we weren’t living near each other, we still talked on the phone every couple weeks.
AW: How did the Windbreakers form?
TL: Bobby and I were hanging out a bunch, listening to records and playing guitars, when the band I was in broke up. Soon thereafter, Bobby left his band and called me up. We grabbed up a couple other guys we knew and started learning a bunch of songs: lots of Beatles, Byrds … 60s-type stuff along with punk and power pop stuff. From the beginning, we were working in our own songs, which was pretty rare at the time in Jackson, Mississippi. One guy left, we did some recording, I left, I came back and eventually the Windbreakers became just me and Bobby and whoever else we brought on board.
AW: Who were the Windbreakers’ influences?
TL: All kinds of stuff from rockabilly to punk rock and soul music. Our favorite stuff was mostly 1960s pop rock like the Beau Brummels, Bobby Fuller Four, Left Banke, the Byrds, Beatles, etc. Like most aspiring indie rockers of that era, we were really into Big Star and the Velvet Underground as well. Early independent power pop singles and EPs by Sneakers, Chris Stamey, Shoes, and others were the inspiration to start making records.
AW: How did Only Ghosts Remain come about, including Mitch Easter producing it?
TL: By the mid-‘80s, Bobby had left the Windbreakers because he wasn’t in a position to go out and tour, so for a while it was just my band. But he was still writing songs and making home demos, so Howard Wuelfing and Marty Scott at Jem records got him hooked up with a record deal. The Windbreakers had been recording with Mitch from early on, so it was a natural thing for Bobby to call him up. The two of them were a good team, and that record shows it.
AW: What kind of Rickenbacker guitar was he playing? And Mitch?
TL: Oddly enough, Bobby didn’t really play a lot of Rickenbackers. He had a blonde 360 for a little while and a really janky 12-string for even less time, but back then he was mostly a Fender guy. We both relied heavily on Telecasters back then. Later on, Bobby also got into Les Pauls, I think mainly because of his appreciation for Peter Green. But Bobby was a guitar fanatic, so there probably aren’t many brands or models he didn’t own at one time or another.
AW: All of these songs are about love gone wrong. I've heard that he could be difficult to deal with, so are these his experiences or hypothetical situations?
TL: I’d say they were some of both. There are certain songs he told me were about specific people or events. I don’t know that Bobby was necessarily difficult to deal with, but he was pretty complex. On one level, he was a real go-with-the-flow guy, but he and I both could be hard-headed. So that led to occasional conflicts, but we usually got over stuff pretty quickly.
AW: Are you still playing music?
TL: Yep. I have a band called Bark that still records and tours. We just released our fourth album, Loud, last week.
AW: Is there anything in the works like a tribute concert?
TL: There has been talk of such, but nothing concrete has come together. Bobby’s wife, Wendy, mentioned to me recently that she’d like to put something together, but I don’t know where that stands.