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Robert Pollard
Robert Ellsworth Pollard Jr. (born October 31, 1957) is an American singer and songwriter. He is the frontman and leader of indie rock band Guided by Voices, of which he is also the only constant member. He has also released 22 solo albums.
He has nearly 3,000 songs registered to his name with BMI. In 2006, Paste magazine listed him as the 78th-greatest living songwriter. In 2007, he was nominated for the Shortlist Music Prize.
Pollard was born in Dayton, Ohio, where he has lived all his life. During most of his childhood and adolescence, sports were his main interest. When Pollard began to show interest in music during high school, his father tried to discourage this. Pollard attended Northridge High School in the Dayton suburb of Northridge, followed by Wright State University in Fairborn, Ohio, where he once pitched a no-hitter for the baseball team.
As a teenager Pollard was in a heavy metal cover band called Anacrusis, and went to arena shows which he likens to those featured in the documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Pollard has said that much of the inspiration for his songwriting has come from time spent hanging out with his high school friends from Dayton, a group he calls "The Monument Club". Pollard said of his teenage years:
Growing up, I didn't really have any musical talent. I could always sing, but that's it. So I started hanging around with all these weirdoes from Northridge who could play guitar. And I would just watch them, 'Wow, I've got to learn how to do that.' That song 'Hank's Little Fingers' (on Devil Between My Toes) – Hank (Davidson) is the guy that inspired me to play the guitar. He had a deformed hand with these little bitty fingers.
After graduating from high school in 1975, Pollard bought a guitar with his graduation money. In college, he began singing in rock bands. Although throwing a no-hitter in college, he eventually abandoned athletics realizing that he wasn't quick enough to be a professional and that his character was too independent to be obedient to the strict athletic program. "I was sick of people snapping their fingers and expecting me to move." When he heard the news, Pollard's father withdrew his financial support, forcing his son to get a job washing dishes. Towards the end of his senior year at Wright State University, Pollard married Kim Dowler, a home-town girl he had been dating for seven years. Dowler did not go to college herself, but started working right out of high school.
After Pollard's college graduation, Dowler supported him for a little while, but he then got a job as a school teacher. It was a job with a lot of vacation time and this meant Pollard was able to pursue his music. But the job rubbed off on him, and Pollard has stated that his years as a teacher inspired songs such as "Gold Star For Robot Boy", "Teenage FBI" and "Non-Absorbing". Pollard has worked at all levels of primary school, from elementary school to middle school to high school. He found the most difficult assignment to be teaching physical science to junior high schoolers. Eventually he settled on teaching fourth graders.
He said of his teaching years: "I never went to the teachers' lounge. But the teachers liked me. In elementary school, there aren't a lot of male teachers, so they liked the fact I was around. They'd say, 'Why don't you come down and hang out with us in the teachers' lounge?' But I would go off and take a nap to try to get rid of my hangover. I had 14 years of that."
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Robert Pollard
Robert Ellsworth Pollard Jr. (born October 31, 1957) is an American singer and songwriter. He is the frontman and leader of indie rock band Guided by Voices, of which he is also the only constant member. He has also released 22 solo albums.
He has nearly 3,000 songs registered to his name with BMI. In 2006, Paste magazine listed him as the 78th-greatest living songwriter. In 2007, he was nominated for the Shortlist Music Prize.
Pollard was born in Dayton, Ohio, where he has lived all his life. During most of his childhood and adolescence, sports were his main interest. When Pollard began to show interest in music during high school, his father tried to discourage this. Pollard attended Northridge High School in the Dayton suburb of Northridge, followed by Wright State University in Fairborn, Ohio, where he once pitched a no-hitter for the baseball team.
As a teenager Pollard was in a heavy metal cover band called Anacrusis, and went to arena shows which he likens to those featured in the documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Pollard has said that much of the inspiration for his songwriting has come from time spent hanging out with his high school friends from Dayton, a group he calls "The Monument Club". Pollard said of his teenage years:
Growing up, I didn't really have any musical talent. I could always sing, but that's it. So I started hanging around with all these weirdoes from Northridge who could play guitar. And I would just watch them, 'Wow, I've got to learn how to do that.' That song 'Hank's Little Fingers' (on Devil Between My Toes) – Hank (Davidson) is the guy that inspired me to play the guitar. He had a deformed hand with these little bitty fingers.
After graduating from high school in 1975, Pollard bought a guitar with his graduation money. In college, he began singing in rock bands. Although throwing a no-hitter in college, he eventually abandoned athletics realizing that he wasn't quick enough to be a professional and that his character was too independent to be obedient to the strict athletic program. "I was sick of people snapping their fingers and expecting me to move." When he heard the news, Pollard's father withdrew his financial support, forcing his son to get a job washing dishes. Towards the end of his senior year at Wright State University, Pollard married Kim Dowler, a home-town girl he had been dating for seven years. Dowler did not go to college herself, but started working right out of high school.
After Pollard's college graduation, Dowler supported him for a little while, but he then got a job as a school teacher. It was a job with a lot of vacation time and this meant Pollard was able to pursue his music. But the job rubbed off on him, and Pollard has stated that his years as a teacher inspired songs such as "Gold Star For Robot Boy", "Teenage FBI" and "Non-Absorbing". Pollard has worked at all levels of primary school, from elementary school to middle school to high school. He found the most difficult assignment to be teaching physical science to junior high schoolers. Eventually he settled on teaching fourth graders.
He said of his teaching years: "I never went to the teachers' lounge. But the teachers liked me. In elementary school, there aren't a lot of male teachers, so they liked the fact I was around. They'd say, 'Why don't you come down and hang out with us in the teachers' lounge?' But I would go off and take a nap to try to get rid of my hangover. I had 14 years of that."