Happy Endings

In 1971, Kent Lavoie was sure that a song he’d written, a hippies-on-the-road tale called “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo,” was going to be a hit, but he was wary of being typecast as a singer of hippies-on-the-road tales, so he recorded it under the name Lobo, which led many listeners to think Lobo was a band. The song made it to Number Five in the late spring of 1971, but it didn’t exactly mark the beginning of Lobomania. His next three singles all missed the national Top 40, although the double-A sided “She Didn’t Do Magic” and “I’m the Only One” made the Top 10 in Oklahoma City and Dallas.

It’s possible to listen to a long string of Lobo’s hits as chapters in a broader story. It starts with the shimmering ballad “I’d Love You to Want Me,” which peaked at Number Two this week in 1972, in which he’s in love and everything’s great—”When I saw you standing there/I ’bout fell off my chair”—although it’s worth noting that the girl never says she loves him. In chapter 2, “Don’t Expect Me to Be Your Friend,” his love remains unrequited. In fact, she doesn’t see him romantically at all: “You smile at me, you take my hand and then/Introduce me to your latest lover/That’s when I feel the walls start crashin’ in.” But in the next chapter, “It Sure Took a Long, Long Time,” the girl is finally changing her mind: “Now you’re comin’ round puttin’ yourself down/Telling me I always was the one.” By chapter 4, “How Can I Tell Her,” things are going well enough that he’s started cheating on her: “We can talk of tomorrow/I’ll tell her the things I want to do/But girl, how can I tell her about you?” In chapter 5, 1974’s “Standing at the End of the Line,” he’s single again and on the prowl, but he’s not scoring: “You looked right at me and smiled one time just last week/And what that one look from you did to me/It kept me in my seat.” That line comes as close to encapsulating Lobo the lover as anything he ever sang—much of the time he’s either failing at love or expecting to fail. And just when you think he’s figured out the whole love thing, with his cover of Cymarron’s “Rings” or the post-coital “Don’t Tell Me Goodnight,” his final Top 40 hit brings romantic complications again: “Where Were You When I Was Falling in Love.”

Lobo hasn’t been back to the American singles charts since “Holdin’ on for Dear Love,” which had a brief chart run early in 1980. He’s still quite a big deal in the Far East, however, and he released a new album earlier this year called Out of Time. He’s got a MySpace page with some new recordings of his old tunes. My favorite Lobo fact is that at age 17, he was in a band called the Rumors with Jim Stafford and Gram Parsons, the later-to-be-esteemed singer/songwriter and member of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Lobo and longtime partner Phil Gernhard also produced some of Stafford’s mid-70s hits, including “Spiders and Snakes” and “Wildwood Weed.”

I once wrote that Lobo made a career out of being in love with unattainable girls, so there was no chance that I wouldn’t become a fan. In his songs, he always seemed to love harder and suffer the worst possible disappointments as a result, which is something I could always relate to. But in the songs where he’s happiest, like “I’m the Only One” and “Rings,” there’s the promise that even confirmed losers can find the promised land if they just hang on.

PS: Watch for a new edition of One Day in Your Life later today at Popdose.

“Don’t Expect Me to Be Your Friend”/Lobo
“Rings”/Lobo (buy all of yer Lobo hits here)