The Hunt For Lewis, Indie Rock's Most Elusive Antihero

Randall Wulff, a.k.a. Lewis, made a fortune on Wall Street, partied with models and musicians, and recorded one of the most beguiling albums of the 1980s. Then he vanished.

- Max Rivlin-Nadler

THE VOICE ON THE TRACK IS MOURNFUL. THE LYRICS ARE MUMBLED and hard to make out, but it’s easy to recognize the feeling. The name of the song, “I Thought the World of You,” says it all. This is the sound of a pain that cannot be reconciled. The singer is looking back on another life, deeply sad, piecing together how it all went wrong.

He called himself Lewis. People clearly remembered the man who’d booked the Music Lab Studios in Los Angeles one afternoon in 1983, laid down 10 tracks over the course of a few days, and then vanished without a trace. They agreed on a few particulars: He was tall and good-looking, his thick blond hair parted neatly on the left. He had a beautiful girlfriend. He drove a white Mercedes-Benz convertible and wore suits to match. He claimed he was staying at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, after losing his house to a mudslide.

In between sessions, Lewis hired a photographer to shoot an album cover. A few days later, he sent the master recordings to a pressing plant and ordered an unknown number of copies, even arranging for a cover sticker proclaiming “This Album Contains the Hit Single ‘Romance for Two,’ Inspired by Christie Brinkley.” As in the supermodel Christie Brinkley. But the album never went anywhere. It’s unclear whether copies ever made it to record stores at all.

That was the last anyone saw of Lewis. Soon the check to photographer Edward Colver bounced. By the time he arrived at the Wilshire to track down the singer, Lewis had already checked out. There were forwarding addresses in Las Vegas and Hawaii, but they were both dead ends. Lewis was gone, and his debut album soon forgotten.