Bob Neuwirth Remembered by His Friends T Bone Burnett, Steven Soles and David Mansfield

variety.com:

Randy Lewis Where to begin in assessing the multi-faceted life and career of Bob Neuwirth, the singer, songwriter, visual artist, mentor, creative catalyst, restless collaborator and provocateur who died May 18 in Santa Monica at 82?As good a starting point as any comes from three longtime friends and collaborators who agreed to share their reflections on Neuwirth’s legacy with Variety: multiple Grammy-winning  producer-songwriter-guitarist-singer T Bone Burnett, producer, songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Steven Soles and multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer David Mansfield.Typical of so many artists whose paths intersected with Neuwirth’s, the threesome entered his circle independently, but once there found common ground with one another.

With significant credit going to his frequent role as instigator, they came together as the critically acclaimed Alpha Band in the late 1970s, and subsequently moved on to prolific solo careers.

The Alpha Band emerged out of their parts in the musical ensemble that backed Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn and numerous others who shared the spotlight during Dylan’s wild and wooly Rolling Thunder Revues of 1975 and ’76 — a venture, Mansfield suggests, that was as much a product of Neuwirth’s influence behind the scenes as Dylan’s out front.Neuwirth released a handful of solo albums over the span of a quarter-century, and contributed to countless other musicians’ recordings for more than half a century.

His final solo album, released in 1999, was “Havana Midnight,” for which he and producer Soles teamed with Cuban composer and pianist Jose Maria Vitier in assembling a disparate group of musicians for a characteristically inspired collaboration that yielded exquisite.