Everything about Tim Buckley totally explained
Timothy Charles Buckley III (
February 14,
1947 –
June 29,
1975) was an experimental
vocalist and
musician who incorporated
jazz,
psychedelia,
funk,
soul, and
avant-garde rock in a career spanning the late 1960s and early 1970s. Buckley often regarded his voice as an instrument, a talent principally showcased on his albums
Goodbye and Hello,
Lorca, and
Starsailor. His first marriage was to Mary Guibert, with whom he'd a child, musician and singer
Jeff Buckley. They divorced in 1968 and after this Buckley would meet with his son only once more. Buckley married second wife Judy Brejot Sutcliffe in 1970 and adopted her son Taylor.
Buckley's career began with his 1966 debut
Tim Buckley, its mix of
pop and
folk rock drawing on popular influences of the time. His popularity peaked with second album
Goodbye and Hello, a more mature record with avant-garde influences and political sentiments. In the three years that followed Buckley was at his most prolific and experimental, producing four albums of varying styles.
Happy Sad and
Blue Afternoon showed Buckley's
folk roots while
Lorca veered to more
avant-garde styles. The final album of this period,
Starsailor, is a mix of jazz, funk and avant-garde styles, representing his continual evolution in genre. This period, while garnering some critical success, proved disastrous for his record sales as the disparity of his styles caused his
fanbase to all but disappear.
Following this Buckley changed genres again, with 1972 release
Greetings from L.A., which incorporated the
funk,
R&B and
soul sounds of the early
1970s in to his music. However this release and the following album
Sefronia didn't match up to the success of his previous work. In 1974, having alienated much of his fanbase and squandered money made at his peak, Buckley released
Look at the Fool, which was neither well received by the public nor the majority of critics. By this point Buckley had grown disillusioned with the music industry and his
drug abuse of the past seven years had affected him.
In spite of this, in early 1975, desperate for musical recognition and an escape from poverty and obscurity, Buckley dropped his drug dependencies and engaged the musical press regarding a
live album come back. Buckley began performing material drawn from his whole career as a response to the desires of his audience, desires he'd always spurned in the past. However, Buckley's drug use caught up with him and on
June 28,
1975, he
overdosed on
heroin. His wife Judy, having earlier put him in bed, wasn't able to rouse him and paramedics pronounced him
dead on arrival. He was 28 years old and was survived by his wife and adopted son Taylor, and his biological son Jeff.
Biography
Early life and career
Born in
Washington DC, Buckley lived for 10 years in
Amsterdam, New York, before moving to southern
California, initially to
Bell Gardens and later settling in
Anaheim in 1965. His experiences with music were through his family, artists such as
Billie Holiday,
Frank Sinatra and
Judy Garland being particular favourites in the household. During his childhood, Buckley was a fan of
Johnny Cash,
Hank Williams,
Nat King Cole and
Miles Davis, although
country music was his foremost passion. Reflecting this, at the age of 11 Buckley learnt how to play the
banjo, an instrument which his mother had bought to occupy him following a bout of
mumps. He attended
Loara High School in
Anaheim,
California, and, amongst others, made friends with
Don Gordon,
Larry Beckett,
Jim Fielder and future wife,
Mary Guibert. He was an accomplished high school athlete, becoming a
quarterback for the school team in addition to getting a place on the baseball team. During this period playing as quarterback, Buckley broke the first two fingers on his left hand but they never fully returned to normal and made
guitar playing more difficult.
Buckley's first efforts into folk music were with high school friend, Don Gordon, drawing inspiration from
The Kingston Trio. Buckley's musical tastes began to develop and, at sixteen-years-old, frequented the
folk clubs that littered
1960s
California and internalised the
rhythm and blues and
folk-rock sounds he heard. The trio also formed a separate band consisting of the same members, the
Harlequin 3, and when performing as this outfit they'd incorporate
spoken word sections and
beat poetry in to their
gigs. Buckley's child, Jeff, would also later become a noted musician in his own right.
Elektra released two
singles promoting the debut album, "Wings" with "Grief in My Soul" as a
b-side was released in december and "Aren't You the Girl" with "Strange Street Affair Under Blue" in January the following year. Buckley's manager Herb Cohen suggested that Buckley should work with producer
Jerry Yester and Elektra's demand for a new single represented their first challenge. Buckley and Beckett planned a songwriting session and listened to the radio relentlessly in search of making a
hit record. The results were "Once Upon a Time" and "Lady Give Me Your Key". The former wasn't well regarded by the pair but they felt the latter had much potential. Despite this, Elektra decided not to release it as a single and the songs are assumed to remain in Elektra's record vaults. However,
Rhino Records searched for the songs in the hope of including "Lady Give Me Your Key" on and the songs were not found in time for it's release. Underwood himself contradicts this with a 1977 article he wrote for
Down Beat Magazine chronicling Buckley's career - he states that Buckley's heart wasn't into the
Blue Afternoon performances and that the album was a perfunctory response to please his business people.
Neither album sold well, with the near-simultaneous release of each seemingly "cancelling out" the other.
Lorca was viewed as a failure by many fans who, shocked by its completely different style, found the vocal gymnastics too abstract and far removed from his previous folk-rock rooted albums; while
Blue Afternoon was seen by some as uninteresting and tepid - one critic went as far as to say that the album "wasn't even good sulking music."
Blue Afternoon was the last Tim Buckley album to hit the
Billboard charts, reaching #192. After the lack of success for both records, Buckley began to focus more on what he felt to be his true masterpiece,
Starsailor.
Starsailor
Vocally and instrumentally haunting, the album was unlike much else at the time. The textures were done in a free jazz style, but over that, Tim's most extreme grunting and wailing vocals to date. At times his voice sounds disturbed and depressed. Different from his first three albums, this personal album shared the same response as Lorca. Impervious to Buckley's avant-garde style, few of his fan base were aroused, with the majority disliking it. It included the more accessible
Song to the Siren, later covered on record by both
This Mortal Coil and
Robert Plant.
After the failure of
Starsailor, Buckley's live performances degraded to insincere chores and he eventually ended up unsellable. Unable to produce his own music and almost completely broke, he turned to alcohol and drug binges. He also looked to become an actor, with the unreleased low-budget group therapy drama
Why? from 1971 being the only film completed (it was actually shot on the new technology of videotape), Ironically, it was the fact that Buckley had tempered his drug habit that meant his tolerance was reduced, thus causing him to misjudge the dose. Long time friend and lead guitarist, Lee Underwood, has stated that "on many previous occasions Buckley had ingested considerably more alcohol and drugs than this".
Buckley's untimely death came as a shock to many of his friends and relatives. The drugs-related death was in stark contrast to how people had seen him at the time. The sound recorder at Buckley's last show noted "someone offered him a drag off of a
joint and he refused. He didn't appear strung out in anyway. He was very together both physically and psychologically". Reportedly, on the evening of
June 29,
1975, a friend heard Buckley's last words: "Bye, bye, baby",
[ perhaps alluding to a the line in Ray Charles' "Driftin' Blues".
]Posthumous success
Buckley's premature death hasn't stinted his influence on musicians and neither reduced his critical appreciation nor popularity. There have been a number of posthumous releases, ranging from live albums and retrospectives to tributes and covers of his material. Jeff Buckley's success, and later demise, also stoked interest in Tim Buckley's catalogue. Much of his catalogue has been re-released since the mid 1990s onwards.
Discography
Studio albums
Live albums
(1990)
Peel Sessions (1991)
Live at the Troubadour 1969 (1994)
(1995)
Once I Was (1999)
Copenhagen Tapes (2000)
Compilations
The Late Great Tim Buckley (1978) Released in Australia only.
The Best of Tim Buckley (1983)
Morning Glory (1994)
Works in Progress (1999)
(2001)
(2001)
Tim Buckley/Goodbye and Hello (2001) Compilation of first two albums.
Take 2: Greetings from L.A./Tim Buckley (2005) Compilation of the two albums.
Other releases
Thin Wires In The Voice (1999) A 120 page booklet with a 3 track CD EP included.
(2007) DVD of filmed live performances.
Books
, (1997). Barrera, Paul.
, (2001) Browne, David.
, (2002). Underwood, Lee.
Tribute albums
(2001)
(2005)
References and notes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Tim Buckley'.
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