The early years of rock and roll are filled with hits that seem to defy time itself. They sound just as compelling and infectious in the here and now as they did on the day they were recorded and released decades ago. Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” (1958) comes to mind, as well as The Beatles’ rendition of “Twist and Shout” (1963), or The Spencer Davis Group’s “I’m a Man” (1967). Everyone has a list, and it’s usually long.
“I Fought the Law,” recorded by The Bobby Fuller Four in the fall of 1965, ranks high on mine. Clocking in at a lean two minutes and twenty seconds, it’s one of those timeless classics whose combination of thundering backbeat, churning three-chord guitar pattern and unmistakable Tex-Mex undercurrent is as powerful today as it was more than sixty years ago.
At the helm and the heart of this short burst of musical energy is guitarist and singer Robert Gaston “Bobby” Fuller, a rising star that burned out far too soon.
Fuller was born in Baytown, Texas, in 1942. When he was still very young, his family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, for a few years, then returned to Texas in 1956 and landed in the border town of El Paso. By this time, Fuller had developed an interest in the burgeoning musical phenomenon known as rock and roll, and his two primary idols were Elvis Presley and fellow Texan Buddy Holly.
By the early ‘60s, Fuller was playing guitar in clubs and recording for various independent labels in El Paso and elsewhere in Texas. His lineup of backing musicians frequently changed, but his younger brother, Randy Fuller, consistently played bass with him. Around this same time, Bobby Fuller operated a recording studio that he built in his parents’ garage, where he experimented with reverb, overdubbing and other techniques that were still relatively new in the evolution of rock recording.
Fuller relocated to Los Angeles in 1964 with the latest version of The Bobby Fuller Four, which consisted of himself and his brother, with Jim Reese on guitar and DeWayne Quirico on drums. The band signed with Mustang Records, owned and operated by producer Bob Keane, who had launched the career of guitarist Ritchie Valens a few years earlier.
The band scored their first minor hit with the uptempo “Let Her Dance,” written by Fuller and released in June of 1965. They recorded “I Fought the Law” a few months later in October.
“I Fought the Law” was actually written in 1958 by Sonny Curtis, the guitarist who joined Buddy Holly’s band, the Crickets, after Holly died in 1959 in the same plane crash that killed Ritchie Valens. Curtis and the new lineup of the Crickets recorded their version of the song in the spring of 1959, but the band didn’t release the track until December 1960.
The Bobby Fuller Four’s version of “I Fought the Law” became the title track of a studio album produced by Keane and released on the Mustang label in February of 1966. The song peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in mid-March, and by most metrics of the record business, Fuller was on his way to stardom by the spring and summer of 1966.
Until the afternoon of July 18, 1966, when he was found dead inside a stifling-hot Oldsmobile parked outside his Hollywood apartment, his body slumped in the front seat and doused with gasoline. He was 23 years old.
After a police investigation, an autopsy listed asphyxia due to inhalation of gasoline fumes as the cause of death. The autopsy report included check marks in the boxes designated for “accident” and “suicide,” but both check marks were accompanied by question marks.
In 2008, after decades of speculation about the possibility of foul play, Fuller’s body was exhumed at the request of his heirs. (Fuller had never married, but he fathered two children by two different women.) In the end, the forensics specialist who conducted the reexamination could make no definitive determination about cause of death beyond the original ruling of asphyxia.
Conjecture persists to this day. There are claims that Fuller had been in a romantic relationship with a mysterious woman—someone known by multiple aliases—who had connections to organized crime. There are claims of retaliation by Keane when Fuller threatened to break his contract with the producer. There are claims that the police who conducted the initial investigation at the time of Fuller’s death either accidentally or intentionally mishandled the evidence inside the car and on his body.
Anything’s possible, especially considering the mysterious nature of Fuller’s demise. Randy Fuller, who died in May 2024, co-wrote I Fought the Law: The Life and Strange Death of Bobby Fuller, a 2015 authorized biography that chased down some of the many leads and theories. More recently, author Ron Smith engaged in a similar pursuit with his 2025 true-crime book, He Fought the Mob: The True Story of The Bobby Fuller Four. But as with any story like this one, connecting the dots in search of the truth becomes more challenging with each passing decade.
Although Fuller’s trajectory was short, he left an indelible mark in the rock and pop constellation. Along with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, he was one of the primary architects of the Tex-Mex sound that emerged during the late 1950s and ‘60s and persists to this day. Fuller helped cut the path that artists like Joe Ely, Los Lobos, Joe “King” Carrasco and others would follow years later.
It would be impossible to estimate the number of bands—renowned, obscure, and everywhere in between—that have covered “I Fought the Law” in the years since the Bobby Fuller Four recorded their version of it. The short list of familiar names includes The Clash, The Stray Cats, Steve Earle, Green Day, The Dead Kennedys, Bryan Adams and Bruce Springsteen.
But just as important, and maybe even more so, are the countless other lesser-knowns and unknowns—upstart bands in small towns way off the interstate, taking their first steps in tiny fly-by-night, hole-in-the-wall venues—that have helped to keep the song alive.
“I Fought the Law” is an enduring garage rock anthem of defiance and perseverance, which is what rock and roll bands—especially the young and up-and-coming kind—are all about.