1. Dennis Linde was an American musician and songwriter based in Nashville who has had over 250 of his songs recorded.
33 Facts About Dennis Linde
1. 2.
Dennis Linde is best known for writing the 1972 Elvis Presley song, "Burning Love", an international hit that has been featured in at least five motion pictures.
3.
In 1994, Linde won BMI's "Top Writer Award" and received four awards as BMI's most-performed titles for that year.
4.
Dennis Linde never liked publicity, and shunned awards shows to the extent of having family members collect his awards for him.
5.
Dennis Linde wrote both words and music for most of his songs, rarely collaborating with co-writers.
6.
Dennis Linde wrote "Goodbye Earl", a gold single for The Chicks in 2000.
7.
Dennis Linde died in 2006 at age 63 of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
8.
Dennis Linde was born in Abilene, Texas, but lived in St Louis from age 13 to age 26.
9.
Dennis Linde's stepfather was a sales executive with Colgate-Palmolive company.
10.
Dennis Linde's family was not especially musical, but they all loved to sing.
11.
Dennis Linde's grandmother had given him a guitar at that age and he taught himself to play.
12.
Dennis Linde graduated from St Louis' Normandy High School about 1960.
13.
Dennis Linde did not attend college and knew he was a prime candidate for the military draft.
14.
Dennis Linde drove a Corvette and at age 24 he had so many speeding tickets that his driver's license was revoked.
15.
Dennis Linde played in a band with St Louis bandleader Bob Kuban who saw promise in Dennis Linde's songwriting abilities, and suggested he explore songwriting in Nashville.
16.
Dennis Linde visited there several times and pitched his songs to Bob Beckham, the CEO of Combine Music Publishing.
17.
On one of his several visits, Dennis Linde caught the eye of Beckham's daughter Pam, who happened to be home from college.
18.
Dennis Linde's first hit about feeling alienated from the cultural and political polarization of the late 60s was "Where Have All the Average People Gone" recorded by Roger Miller.
19.
Dennis Linde had just bought a set of drums and was putting a drum track on tape at his home studio, sort of learning to play them, and the words and melody came to him.
20.
Dennis Linde then overdubbed the other instruments and vocals on his four-track machine and created a demo of the song.
21.
Dennis Linde credits the inspiration in part to the fact that he was a newlywed at the time and said " 'Burning Love' was a great newlywed title".
22.
Dennis Linde recorded the album Linde Manor on the Intrepid Label, a short-lived subsidiary of Mercury, but it was not a commercial success.
23.
Dennis Linde then recorded Trapped in the Suburbs on Asylum Records in 1974.
24.
Dennis Linde was co-leader of the rock band Jubal, consisting of Alan Rush, Rob Galbraith, Terry Dearmore, and Randy Cullers.
25.
Dennis Linde kept a self-created map depicting a fictional town where the characters in his songs lived.
26.
Dennis Linde wrote two songs for the soundtrack of the 1982 film, Grease 2 ; these were "Cool Rider" and "Reproduction".
27.
Dennis Linde was known as one of the more reclusive figures on the Nashville scene, rarely attending industry events and preferring to be neither photographed nor interviewed.
28.
Chicago Tribune music writer Jack Hurst said, "[Dennis Linde] is no morose, unkempt hermit inhabiting some artistic garret".
29.
Rather, Dennis Linde was upbeat, jovial and nattily dressed, living in a custom-built suburban home.
30.
Dennis Linde's daughter, Mary Elizabeth, was an actress married to Hollywood actor James Marsden.
31.
The couple sponsored a benefit for the Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis in 2009 to honor Dennis Linde, entitled "A Night of Burnin' Love" that included Rascal Flatts, Montgomery Gentry and Mark Chesnutt and others.
32.
Lisa Dennis Linde filed for divorce in 2011 after ten years of marriage.
33.
Dennis Linde died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2006 at the age of 63.