Bob Welch: He didn't want to be a burden

“I’m not going to do this to you.”

-Bob Welch in his suicide note

Bob Welch

The job of a musician is to bring beautiful noise to an ugly world.

However, the onslaught of the aging process on the human body, or disease, or disability, can take the gift of making music away, and the effect it can have on a musician is devastating. It can be traumatizing. It can even drive you to end your life.

Consider the case of legendary guitarist Bob Welch, who once was a member of the incomparable Fleetwood Mac and also had several hit albums and songs on his own. Bob Welch took his own life on June 7, 2012. Yes, his death was a few years ago, but the circumstances that led to his end are what is causing me to write about him today, as I was unaware of them at the time of his death.

As a musician, someone who has lost a family member to suicide, and someone who struggles with his own personal phantoms who fight to take him down the same path, I am doubly saddened when I hear of a musician who has taken his own life. When I found out why Bob Welch took his own life, it scared me, because it is similar to something that is affecting me not emotionally, but physically. You see, he was suffering from chronic back pain and received spinal surgery three months before his death, and that surgery was unsuccessful.

But first, for the readers who do not know who Bob Welch is, let me introduce you to him.

As a youngster, Welch learned clarinet, switching to guitar in his early teens. He had received his first guitar at the age of eight. The young Welch developed an interest in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock music. After graduating from high school, Welch eschewed attending Georgetown University, where he had been accepted, to move to Paris, professedly to attend the Sorbonne. Welch told People in a 1979 interview that, in Paris, "I mostly smoked hash with bearded guys five years older." He spent time "sitting in the Deux Magots café" rather than attending to his studies, and eventually returned to Southern California, where he studied French at UCLA.

Welch was struggling as a guitarist in his own band, Head West, when he was brought into the British blues band Fleetwood Mac in 1971. The band decided to hire Welch after a few meetings with him, without even hearing him play or listening to anything he recorded! Welch's debut album with the Mac was 1971's Future Games, and his second album with the band, Bare Trees, was released six months later. One of the songs recorded on Bare Trees was a Welch penned tune entitled "Sentimental Lady", which would later play a huge part in his solo career.

Bob Welch (center, in glasses) with Fleetwood Mac. Courtesy of ABC News

Three more albums with Fleetwood Mac would follow, Penguin and Mystery To Me, both released in 1973, and Heroes Are Hard To Find, which was released in 1974. However, the touring and the recording had taken its toll on Welch, who's marriage was failing and he had also felt he had reached his creative plateau with the Mac. Replacing Welch in Fleetwood Mac was a young guitarist named Lindsay Buckingham, who also brought in his girlfriend Stevie Nicks as a second vocalist. The rest, as they say, was history.

Unless you are a die-hard fan of Fleetwood Mac, it seems that the name Bob Welch has been forgotten other than being known as "the guy who was in the band before Lindsay Buckingham". Yet, the earlier material of the Mac was still quite good, especially from the era that Welch was part of, and it deserves a good listen. Unfortunately, when Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Welch was not invited. Welch himself is quoted as saying in an interview with the Plain Dealer "My era was the bridge era, It was a transition. But it was an important period in the history of the band. Mick Fleetwood dedicated a whole chapter of his biography to my era of the band and credited me with 'saving Fleetwood Mac'. Now they want to write me out of the history of the group. It hurts. Mick and I co-managed the group for years. I'm the one who brought the band to Los Angeles from England, which put them in the position of hooking up with Lindsey and Stevie. I saw the band through a whole period where they barely survived, literally."

Yet, Bob Welch did find greener commercial pastures with the release of his first solo album French Kiss, which was released in 1977, and featured contributions from Mick Fleetwood, Lindsay Buckingham, and Mac vocalist/keyboardist Christine McVie. It was certified Platinum, reached #12 on the Billboard charts in 1978, and yielded three hit singles; "Sentimental Lady" (chart position #8), "Ebony Eyes" (chart position #14), and "Hot Love, Cold World" (chart position #31). In 1979 the album Three Hearts was released, which reached Gold certification and spawned another hit single "Precious Love" (chart position #19).

                                         Promo video for "Sentimental Lady"

                                          Promo video for "Ebony Eyes"

Welch continued to record and release albums into the 1980s, but developed an addiction to cocaine and heroin, which he was able to overcome in 1986 with the help of rehab and the support of his new wife. Welch then focused on writing music for others, but did return with an experimental Jazz/loop based album called Bob Welch Looks at Bop in 1999. He also released two albums where he re-recorded his material from his Fleetwood Mac days.

You are probably expecting me to say that things would continue to get better for Bob Welch, but sadly that was not to be. He had undergone spinal surgery earlier in 2012, but his doctors told him that he would not fully recover, which made him very depressed. He was in constant pain, and he didn't want his wife to have to care for someone who was an invalid. One of the sentences in Bob's nine page suicide note read "I’m not going to do this to you." Welch had watched his mother care for his invalid father for years and apparently didn't want the same fate for himself, or his family. So, on June 7, 2012, at approximately 6:00 AM in his family's Nashville home, Welch took a shotgun and ended his 66 years on Earth with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

I remember when Welch committed suicide, because I was a Fleetwood Mac fan and I also remembered songs like "Sentimental Lady" and "Ebony Eyes" from hearing them on classic rock radio. So, of course I was saddened by it. It was not until recently that I discovered why he killed himself. He could not deal with making his family care for someone who would be practically helpless due to his spinal surgery being unsuccessful.

His issues made me think of my own back problems, and the possibility that I may end up in a wheelchair someday or worse, which would make my family have to wait on me hand and foot. That would be a hard load to bear, and I pray to God that I do not end up in his position. I don't want my family to just live to take care of me, especially if I was just lying around useless.

However, you have to also imagine that the loss of the ability to play music really contributed to Bob Welch wanting to take his own life.

People who aren't artists or musicians do not understand how much having that talent means to you as a person. You feel as if you were touched by God or a higher power to have a gift and to share it with others, to entertain people, to make people cheer and smile. Now, take that away from them...the Lord has just rendered you mute. You cannot share that talent with the world anymore. You cannot bring joy to people anymore. Add that to the fact that you have been rendered invalid due to disease, an accident, or a botched operation, it is easy to see how someone could be made to feel worthless.

I constantly worry about being one twist or turn away from a major spinal problem and ending up in a wheelchair. I constantly worry about losing my ability to play music. Losing that gift could be a blow that sends me over the edge like it did for Bob Welch. I just want to keep working to make sure that the day never comes where I have to lay my sticks aside for good.

I think people like Bob Welch or myself would benefit from a support group of musicians that are dealing with a disability. I think it would do a lot of good for musicians who are struggling with physical pain and/or loss of the ability to play like they did before. It would help to know you are not alone. Heaven knows there are days I just want to quit and throw in the towel and it would be good to have other musicians with the same struggles to reach out to.

Rest in peace Bob Welch. Thank you for the wonderful music you left your fans here on Earth. Like everyone who has died from suicide, I wish you had someone to help you out and someone to talk to when times got tough. I pray one thing I can do in this lifetime is help those who are hurting and in pain.