Robin Lane

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Lane found her way to Cambridge in the late 1970s. She is the daughter of Ken Lane, who was the accompanist for Dean Martin and wrote the hit “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.”  Robin grew up in Hollywood and became part of the late 60’s Laurel Canyon rock scene. There she honed her craft among the luminaries of the nascent folk and rock stars like Tim Hardin, Steve Stills, Arthur Lee, and many others. She lived for a time with Neil Young and contributed to the duet vocal on the song “Round and Round (It Won’t Be Long)”. For a brief time, she was married to guitarist Andy Summers of the Police. 

In the 1970s, she came to Boston, partly for the Christian music scene, and quickly became one of rising stars of the Boston/Cambridge music scene. She wrote prolifically and eventually started her band, The Chartbusters. The name was a riff on Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. Enamored of the passion and rebellion of punk/new wave music, she conscripted Jonathon Richman‘s guitarists Leroy Radcliff and Asa Brebner. She then added local journeymen Scott Baerenwald on bass, and Tim Jackson on drums. Soon they had a Warner Brothers contract. They toured extensively and became the 11th band to be featured on the MTV network. Warner’s dropped the group after three albums. Minus Radcliff, they continued playing sporadically through the decades. They released two more albums, the Heart Connection EP in 1984 and Piece of Mind in 2003. Lane also released a solo album called Catbird’s Seat in 1995.

In the 2010’s she began a foundation called Songbird Sings, which held songwriting workshops for women survivors of trauma. The project resulted in a CD in 2013 called A Woman’s Voice. She has a new solo album due in 2020 produced with bassist John Pfister at his Ringo Studio in Marblehead.

Her drummer, Tim Jackson, who is also a filmmaker, made a feature film about her life called When Things Go Wrong: The Robin Lane Story. 

Published on December 28, 2012