THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

486-Bob Lind-Elusive Butterfly.

1966-Number 5 single.

Best Bit-At 0.51. Don’t be concerned, this will not harm you, it’s just poetry in musical motion.

Robert Neale Lind was born on November 25th, 1942, in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.In 1965 he signed with ‘World Pacific Records,’ which was a subsidiary of ‘Liberty Records,’ recording his first two Albums there, in total he has released five studio Albums between 1966-2016. Although this song remains his only self recorded charting single, his body of work has been covered by more than 200 artists. Lind suffered from drug, and alcohol problems for many years, but has been clean and sober since 1977. Away from music he is the writer of five novels, and an award winning play, and a screenplay called ‘Refuge,’ He was also a regular contributor to weekly tabloid papers for many years. In 2004 Lind returned to music, performing live shows, and releasing new music.

‘Elusive Butterfly’ features on Bob Lind’s 1965 debut Album ‘Don’t Be Concerned,’ with a string arrangement by Jack Nitzsche. Lind has said he wrote the lyrics around sunrise, sometime in 1964. He credits the songs inspiration as coming from the W.B.Yeats (1865-1939) poem ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus,’ first printed in 1897.In the song Lind sees himself as a butterfly hunter, he is looking for romance, but he finds it as elusive as butterflies are to capture. The original version of the song is more of a ‘Folk’ guitar based acoustic recording, and is nearly six minutes long, with more verses, but after being introduced by this songs producer Richard Bock to Jack Nitzsche, (1937-2000) the track was transformed. Nitzsche added a lush string arrangement, thus making the song one of the first ‘Folk/Rock’ songs to feature a string section.

‘Elusive Butterfly’ was initially released as the ‘B’ side to Lind’s first single release ‘Cheryl’s Goin’ Home,’ because the record company thought it was too different from the types of music that were becoming hits at that time, to be successful, but when one of the DJ’s at the Miami radio station ‘WQAM’ began playing it, the track started to get requests from the listening audience. In America on Billboard the song reached Number five in 1966, while although peaking in the same position in the UK, it was stopped from going higher by a rival version from the Irish singer Val Doonican (1927-2015) whose version also stalled at Number 5.

‘Don’t be concerned, it will not harm you, it’s only me pursuing somethin’ I’m not sure of. Across my dreams with nets of wonder, I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love.’