Robert Pollard

Robert Ellsworth Pollard Jr. (born October 31, 1957) is an American singer and songwriter who is the leader and creative force behind indie rock group Guided by Voices.

In addition to his work with Guided by Voices, he continues to have a prolific solo career with 22 solo albums released so far.

With nearly 3,000 songs registered to his name with BMI, Pollard is among the most prolific songwriters of his time.

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."

Pollard started playing music in local cover bands in Dayton, and got involved in a songwriters' guild, but he longed to be the leader of a band.

In 1981, he began playing original songs with fellow Northridge High School alums Kevin Fennell and Mitch Mitchell.

For two years they recorded in the basement of Pollard's house, and played out under a variety of names (including Instant Lovelies, Acid Ranch and Coyote Call).

Then in 1983 Pollard eventually dubbed the project "Guided by Voices".

At the time he was working part-time as an elementary school teacher.

Between 1986 and 1992, they released six records in this way, recording, pressing and distributing them at their own expense.

These records got very little response, and although the pressings ran only to between 300 and 1,000 copies of each, the producers were left with many copies on their hands.

In total, Guided by Voices released 16 full-length original albums between 1987 and 2004, as well as a large number of EPs and compilations.

Although known as a lo-fi band that relied on home recordings, in later years the group relied more on professional recording studios and worked with producers such as Ric Ocasek.

Initially, Guided by Voices was a band in name only, its members being a revolving cast of musicians, most of whom Pollard kicked out of the band at one time or another.

"In the early days of Guided by Voices, when no one was listening, I was impatient", Pollard wrote in 2005.

"I used to tire of people in the band very quickly. I had physical altercations with them. I even resorted to bullshit tactics, like telling the band I was quitting and we were breaking up, then forming again a month later with new members."

To finance the band's early recordings, Pollard, his brother, and their manager obtained a loan from the Dayton Public Schools credit union.

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.

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."