Tim Buckley - Star Sailor

Once I Was – The Folk Years (1966-1969)

Timothy Charles Buckley III was born on February 14, 1947 in Washington DC, and in the early Sixties his family moved him to California. There he took his first steps with the band the Bohemians (whose repertoire consisted of covers of famous pop songs) and with the Harlequin Three, more oriented toward an early fusion of folk music and poetic lyrics, thanks also to the presence of his friend, the poet Larry Beckett, who would later collaborate as lyricist on numerous Buckley compositions. His name began to circulate on the Los Angeles folk circuit, and he was noticed by Herb Cohen, at the time manager of figures such as Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. With Cohen's help, Buckley was introduced to Elektra boss Jac Holzman, who paired him with producer Paul Rothchild (a few months later to oversee the debut of Jim Morrison's Doors) for the making of a first album.

Tim Buckley (Elektra EKS 4004) December 1966

(I Can’t See You / Wings / Song Of The Magician / Strange Street Affair Under Blue / Valentine Melody / Aren’t You The Girl / Song Slowly Song / It Happens Every Time / Song For Jainie / Grief In My Soul / She Is / Understand Your Man)

Backed by a handful of skilled musicians such as Lee Underwood (guitar), Jim Fielder (bass), Billy Mundi (drums), and with the extraordinary contribution of Van Dyke Parks on keyboards, Buckley recorded his self-titled debut album at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. The singer openly declared himself inspired by Bob Dylan, Tim Hardin and Fred Neil, and the music on offer is of obviously folk extraction. Yet not as traditional as one might expect: the opening "I Can't See You" already manages to undermine its breezy folk-rock structure with well-judged, minimal harmonic variations. Particularly beautiful and intense are the waltz with hazy psychedelic tints of "Song Of The Magician", the ballads "Wings" and "Valentine Melody" (featuring lush but never overbearing string arrangements by Jack Nitzsche), and there's no shortage of more ordinary tracks, made out of contractual necessity ("It Happens Every Time", "Aren't You The Girl" with its folk-rock guitar, plus Parks's harpsichord lurking in the background), though never predictable or tasteless.

In fact, Buckley's songs already possess some embryonic elements that set them apart from the folk production of the era: rhythmically varied structures with a soul-leaning feel, a discreet yet original use of instrumentation (Underwood's guitar in particular), and, at just nineteen, an immediately recognizable voice, still far from the incredible evolutions to come but already capable of commanding tone and modulation, able to break free from the sound with brief, unexpected, thrilling flights ("Strange Street Affair Under Blue").

Goodbye And Hello (Elektra EKS 318) dicembre 1967

(No Man Can Find The War / Carnival Song / Pleasant Street / Hallucinations / I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain / Once I Was / Phantasmagoria In Two / Knight-Errant / Goodbye And Hello / Morning Glory)

Exactly a year later, overseen by Jerry Yester (already producer of the Association and a member of the Lovin' Spoonful), his second LP "Goodbye And Hello" was released, which on the surface briefly embraces the hippie sound of the day, presumably in an attempt by the production to ride the wave of similar acts (the album would nonetheless only reach No. 171). While "No Man Can Find The War" gets lost in a somewhat predictable drama, "Carnival Song" is a lovely, warped psychedelic music box, while "Pleasant Street" unveils Carter Collins's congas and a voice desperately trying to break through the song's even meter. The direction to take seems anything but clear; alongside the muddled lysergic haze of "Hallucinations" (reportedly written half-asleep, half-awake), hampered by an uninspired arrangement, sit ballads such as "Once I Was" and "Morning Glory" — the former simple and wonderfully reined in by Tim's vocal timbre, the latter calm and refined (also chosen as a single and covered in fine style the following year on the debut album of Blood Sweat & Tears, where his old friend Jim Fielder had ended up). The monumental, epic title track wrestles with a thousand contradictions, sliding between passages of great lyricism and heavy orchestral arrangements that partly undercut the song's soft psychedelic soul. The album is further enriched by the gorgeous, aching "Phantasmagoria In Two", one of the finest love songs in rock history. And then there's a song, "I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain", which more than any other foreshadows the mature Buckley sound, a genuine declaration of existential independence addressed to his wife Mary Guilbert, with whom Tim had a son, Jeffrey Scott, later known simply as Jeff. The twelve-string guitar and congas lock into a tight, relentless rhythm, inviting the voice to break free from the classic, orderly meter of the folk ballad; but it will take another year and a half, and the overwhelming "Gypsy Woman", before it can finally set out on the path toward absolute ecstasy and emotion.

The Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit SFPS 082) agosto 1991

(Morning Glory / Coming Home To You (Happy Time) / Sing A Song For You / Hallucinations-Troubadour / Once I Was)

The record releases of 1968 were limited to a few singles assembled from tracks already published on the first two albums, and Buckley focused his energy on live performances, backed by faithful Underwood, Collins on percussion, and newcomers John Miller on bass and David Friedman on vibraphone. That year also saw some artistically rewarding trips to England, the first of which produced recordings made on April 2 for the John Peel Show, the popular DJ's radio program on BBC's first channel. In 1991 an EP was released containing material from that session, consisting of beautiful, clear and inspired performances of songs from Goodbye And Hello ("Morning Glory", "Once I Was" and "Hallucinations", in a medley with the previously unreleased "Troubadour"), as well as a fine version titled "Coming Home To You", later recorded for the album Blue Afternoon under the title "Happy Time", and an excellent rendition of "Sing A Song For You", later included on Happy Sad. Besides the singer's ever-present twelve-string, some tracks feature only Underwood's guitar accompaniment, while others are performed as a trio with Collins and his inseparable congas.

Dream Letter – Live In London 1968 (Demon D FIEND 200) June 1990

(Buzzin' Fly / Phantasmagoria In Two / Morning Glory / Dolphins / I've Been Out Walking / The Earth Is Broken / Who Do You Love / Pleasant Street-You Keep Me Hanging On / Love From Room 109-Strange Feelin' / Carnival Song-Hi Lily, Hi Lo / Hallucinations / Troubadour / Dream Letter-Happy Time / Wayfaring Stranger-You Got Me Runnin' / Once I Was)

In the summer of 1968 Buckley returned to England to play his first London concert, and because of travel and accommodation costs, he was forced to bring along only some of his band's members. A splendid record of the event survives in the posthumous double album Dream Letter – Live In London 1968, drawn from the concert of July 10 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, with Tim backed by Underwood on guitar, Friedman on vibraphone, and Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson, who, despite never having played with Buckley before, managed thanks to his natural feel for the style and undeniable class to slot perfectly into the group's sound. The set list includes tracks from Goodbye And Hello, some songs that would later appear on subsequent albums, inventive covers, and a good number of previously unreleased pieces. Of particular interest is the performance of old mentor Fred Neil's "Dolphins", the solitary confrontation with the dramatic "Pleasant Street", which eventually dissolves into Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier's "You Keep Me Hangin' On" (a huge 1966 hit for the Supremes of Diana Ross), a finally stunning "Hallucinations", the beautiful sequences "Dream Letter" / "Happy Time", and (completely unreleased elsewhere) "Wayfaring Stranger" / "You Got Me Runnin'". Live, the spare, captivating instrumental backing and Tim's voice — by now free to break away from the rules of simple storytelling through song, though the future's unprecedented flights without a net or parachute are still unimaginable — offer a view still tied to folk settings, even as the performances are completely unmoored from the genre's clichés, directly anticipating the masterful Happy Sad.

Happy Sad (Elektra EKS 74045) July 1969

(Strange Feelin’ / Buzzin’ Fly / Love From Room 109 At The Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway) / Dream Letter / Gypsy Woman / Sing A Song For You)

After a year and a half of virtually no new releases, Happy Sad was finally published in the summer of 1969, produced by Lovin' Spoonful members Jerry Yester and Zal Yanovsky under Jac Holzman's supervision. For the recording of the material included, much of it ready for months, Buckley was backed by the same group used for live shows (Underwood, Collins, Miller and Friedman). Besides being Buckley's best-"selling" record (No. 81 on the charts!), Happy Sad is a pivotal work in the evolution of his music: the folk foundation remains dominant, but in many songs a clear jazz influence creeps in, at times limited to certain aspects of the arrangements, in others more pronounced and dominant ("Strange Feelin'"), drawn largely from Miles Davis's "Kind Of Blue" and reinforced by the excellent use of acoustic instruments such as vibraphone and double bass, as well as Underwood's refined, original electric guitar technique. Buckley's tonal vocal control is superb, indelibly shaping the overall sound. On this record Tim stretches out the songs' running times and expands the scope of his own creativity. Alongside tracks that harken back to his folk beginnings ("Buzzin' Fly" and the excellent "Sing A Song For You"), there is room for chamber-like compositions such as the long, refined "Love From Room 109 At The Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway)" and the gorgeous, melancholy "Dream Letter", addressed to his son Jeff, whom Tim would meet only once in his life. But it is with "Gypsy Woman" that Buckley's creative transformation is truly completed. Over an insistent percussive bed that rises out of nowhere, a tribal rhythm takes hold, in a kind of enveloping, suffocating folk-blues, a spiral that allows for no easy way out. The voice is no longer that of the folksinger: now it screams, screeches, moans, barks, twists upon itself to summon up its most hidden energies, shifts register with dizzying ease, becoming an instrument in its own right.

Live At The Troubadour 1969 (Demon EDCD 400) marzo 1994

(Strange Feelin’ / Venice Mating Call / I Don’t Need It To Rain / I Had A Talk With My Woman / Gypsy Woman / Blue Melody / Chase The Blues Away / Driftin’ / Nobody Walkin’)

That Tim Buckley's music was undergoing a complete creative shift in direction is also evident from the precious live document gifted to us in 1994 by the CD Live At The Troubadour 1969, an important record of two performances held on September 3 and 4, 1969 at the Los Angeles Troubadour. Buckley appears with a new lineup featuring Underwood, Collins, bassist John Balkin and drummer Art Tripp (aka Ed Marimba), formerly of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band and later, in the Seventies, of the excellent Mallard. Also previously unreleased are the tangled, jazzy instrumental "Venice Mating Call" and the hallucinated ballad (if it can still be called that) "I Don't Need It To Rain". The rest of the repertoire consists of inspired performances of songs from Happy Sad and other compositions destined for the two studio albums that would follow.

Of Blue Afternoons and Songs for the Siren (1970-1971)

As early as the start of 1968, Bob Dylan realizes that "there's too much confusion, I can't get no relief" and looks for "a way out of here" ("All Along The Watchtower"). His personal way of escaping from too many drugs, muddled philosophies of life, and the fading afterglow of the so-called summers of love is represented by a decisive turn toward dry, stripped-down country forms - a painful but necessary surrender, essential to somehow close the book on the dangerous follies of the Sixties. Buckley, a solitary spirit who never fully belonged to his contemporary generations - be they psychedelic, flower children, or Woodstock - instead chooses the path of radical extremism in music: the unusual, sinister and at times disturbing lines of Lorca, a work not coincidentally positioned between the two wonderful extremes of his art, the masterpieces Blue Afternoon and Starsailor. Something tremendously and frighteningly close to the human soul and human emotion.

Blue Afternoon (Straight STS 1060) February 1970

(Happy Time / Chase The Blues Away / I Must Have Been Blind / The River / So Lonely / Cafe / Blue Melody / The Train)

Whether due to modest record sales or the artistic direction he'd taken, Buckley's contract with Elektra was quickly drawing to a close, and he needed a label that would grant him maximum creative freedom. The opportunity came courtesy of the ever-present Herb Cohen, who, together with Frank Zappa, was working to launch the new Straight label - the same one on which, just to give an idea, Captain Beefheart had recorded the legendary "Trout Mask Replica" a few months earlier. Blue Afternoon, produced by Buckley himself with the usual exquisite backing of Underwood, Collins (featured only on "Blue Melody"), Friedman and Miller (plus drummer Jimmy Madison), is a work of hushed, sad and poetic tones, possessed of an intrinsic emotional power that allows for an engrossing, melancholy encounter with the artist's soul. The journey opens with the excellent "Happy Time" (long a staple of Buckley's live repertoire), presented here in a sober, elegant form. "Chase The Blues Away" is a blues serenade led by Tim's sepulchral voice and embellished by Underwood's guitar. A superb song, among his most classic melodies, "I Must Have Been Blind" (recently covered by Brendan Perry) condenses the artist's passionate force into just a few minutes, which is then fully expressed in the following "The River". Buckley's voice is at the peak of its expressive powers - not yet unleashed and wild as it will be on Starsailor, but beautifully modulated, rising and falling in tone in the blink of an eye, deeply moving as it traces the song's melody; by this point the sparse instrumentation (Friedman's exquisite vibraphone) serves as an admirable sonic complement. While on "So Lonely" Underwood's jazz guitar livens up the cadence, the whispered tones of "Cafe" and its own otherworldly guitar cast a melancholy spell, while the seductive "Blue Melody" comes across as a song for a smoky jazz club. A surprise ending arrives with the remarkable "The Train", which harks back (albeit more restrained and with clear jazz touches) to the fiery, wild folk of "Gypsy Woman", foreshadowing the partial return of that kind of sound on the following Lorca.

Lorca (Elektra 74074) October 1970

(Lorca / Anonymous Proposition / I Had A Talk With My Woman / Driftin’ / Nobody Walkin’)

One album remained to be delivered to Elektra to fulfil the expiring contract, and Buckley devoted himself to a singular tribute to the poet Federico García Lorca, from whom the entire record - produced by Herb Cohen - takes its title. "Lorca" is a track with an unsettling, arcane psychedelic tone, defined by John Balkin's organ and Underwood's electric piano, which conjure a hallucinatory, elusive atmosphere over which Buckley's expressive voice glides. There's no commercial concession here, no comfortable creative relaxation; after all, the artist had long been devoted to an unprecedented and reckless exploration of tone and harmony, and a final record for Elektra was certainly not going to make him change course. "Anonymous Proposition" is jazz, a quiet vocal exercise from Tim underscored by upright bass and guitar. Still, Lorca comes across as a transitional record that, on its second side, falls back on folk harmonies already explored elsewhere, though far removed from traditional clichés; Collins's congas resurface, the rhythm occasionally regains intensity ("Nobody Walkin'", again with Underwood's piano), and the poetry of Buckley's singing keeps the quality of the songs high throughout ("I Had A Talk With My Woman", "Driftin'").

Starsailor (Straight STS 1064) November 1970

(Come Here Woman / I Woke Up / Monterey / Moulin Rouge / Song To The Siren / Jungle Fire / Starsailor / The Healing Festival / Down By The Borderline)

"Tim did for the voice what Hendrix did for the guitar, Cecil Taylor for the piano and John Coltrane for the saxophone". An exaggeration? Certainly not, because listening with stubborn attention and complete freedom of heart and mind to the monumental Starsailor, Underwood's words of love and admiration prove more than backed up by the facts. Above all, Buckley's voice, freed from every metrical and tonal constraint, manages the rare feat of slipping into the fragile mechanisms that govern human emotion, sweeping away the barriers separating feeling, compassion, hope, despair, love and melancholy from everyday reality. The voice is finally and definitively an instrument in its own right, even more expressive than the traditional instruments that so admirably accompany its reckless flights (Underwood and Balkin, alongside the horns of Buzz and Bunk Gardner and Maury Baker's percussion). The influences of jazz (now also free jazz) and contemporary music (Berio, Ligeti), among many others, are evident, and despite the rigid rhythmic-harmonic structures underpinning the whole work, some tried to claim it was all "thanks to" the drugs that had sent him out of his mind. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The key to understanding it, as with the work of Jimi Hendrix (to stay within the realm of rock), lies in emotion. It's a difficult encounter, capable of delivering peaks of extraordinary intensity alongside moments of tragic disorientation - dangerous, then, but unavoidable. Buckley's stunning vocal performances fit perfectly into furious tribal dances, sometimes free-form ("Come Here Woman", "Jungle Fire", the delirious "The Healing Festival", "Down By The Borderline"), sometimes rock (the frenzied "Monterey"), at other times in agitated moments of symbolic calm ("I Woke Up") or mocking jazz tomfoolery ("Moulin Rouge"). At the opposite extremes (though only seemingly so) sit the touching, poetic and unforgettable folk melody of "Song To The Siren", built on a handful of electric guitar arpeggios and the extraordinary evocative power of Buckley's voice - a definitive rewriting of the very concept of the ballad - and the interstellar journey for sixteen voices of "Starsailor", utterly unmoored from any "normal" song convention. From the best pages of Buckley's music, and especially from Starsailor, artists of considerable stature such as Peter Hammill, Roy Harper, Shawn Phillips, Demetrio Stratos and Alan Sorrenti (the one of "Aria" and thereabouts, certainly not the "son of the stars") would draw heavily in developing their own work.

Have You Ever Seen The Dolphins Smile? (1972-1974)

Starsailor received a mixed reception from critics (some hailed it as an absolute masterpiece, like the prestigious magazine Down Beat, while others wouldn't even consider it), and in terms of sales it proved an outright commercial disaster. For almost two years Buckley recorded nothing at all, embittered and disheartened also by his inability to perform his art live, since every promoter steered well clear of such a "difficult" and "uncompromising" way of making music.

Greetings From L.A. (Warner Bros. BS 2631) ottobre 1972

(Move With Me / Get On Top / Sweet Surrender / Nighthawkin’ / Devil Eyes / Honk Kong Bar / Make It Right)

Having taken in the dazzling experiments of the previous records, the disappointment that accompanies listening to the "new" Buckley direction is considerable. The voice is still great in terms of timbre, but stripped of any chance to fly, subordinated as it is to arrangements leaning toward soul and R&B that feel somewhat forced and, at times, overburdened by excessive orchestration. It's not bland music, to be sure, but it remains far removed from past glories. It can be seen as an extreme (and futile) attempt to gain real commercial visibility, to communicate with the rock'n'roll audience by relying on a more accessible musical language, perhaps throwing in the occasional forbidden punch here and there (the vocal performance on "Sweet Surrender", though undermined by over-arrangement, the decent soul-blues of "Devil Eyes"). Of Buckley's old collaborators, only Collins appears, on congas, on the track "Get On Top".

Honeyman (Edsel EDCD 450) September 1995

(Dolphins / Buzzin’ Fly / Get On Top / Devil Eyes / Pleasant Street / Sally Go ‘Round The Roses / Stone In Love / Honey Man / Sweet Surrender)

Even the final (and creatively lesser) period of Buckley's career can boast a decent live recording, released by Edsel in 1995. It was taken from a concert on 27 November 1973, with Buckley backed by the band that, a few months later, would feature on his new studio LP, Sefronia (Joe Falsia on guitar, Bernie Mysior on bass, Buddy Helm on drums and Mark Tiernan on keyboards). The set is largely drawn from Greetings From L.A. (the driving "Get On Top" and, above all, "Devil Eyes") and from the subsequent Sefronia (a superb "Dolphins", the haunting "Honey Man"), but Tim also revisits a fine, good-natured and carefree "Buzzin' Fly", in an unexpected country style, and the ever-dramatic "Pleasant Street".

Sefronia (Discreet MS 2157) May 1974

(Dolphins / Honey Man / Because Of You / Peanut Man / Martha / Quicksand / I Know I’d Recognize Your Face / Stone In Love / Sefronia-After Asklepiades, After Kafka / Sefronia-The King’s Chain / Sally Go ‘Round The Roses)

Despite the strong live performances, Sefronia turns out to be a rather disappointing record that too often runs aground on the shoals of an inspiration strained by the need to offer easily digestible material. Some lapses in quality are truly hard to fathom (the overblown arrangement of the mediocre "Because Of You", the washed-out funk of "Peanut Man" and "Stone In Love", the easy-listening "I Know I'd Recognize Your Face"), yet despite everything the album contains a few decent tracks (the sprightly "Honey Man" and "Sally Go 'Round The Roses") and, above all, the excellent and moving versions of "Dolphins" (Fred Neil - long a staple of Buckley's repertoire, with Lee Underwood on guitar) and of "Martha" (from the debut album by Tom Waits, "Closing Time").

Look At The Fool (Discreet DS 2201) novembre 1974

(Look At The Fool / Bring It On Up / Helpless / Freeway Blues / Tijuana Moon / Ain’t It Peculiar / Who Could Deny You / Mexicali Voodoo / Down In The Street / Wanda Lu)

Look At The Fool settles the account and, for a brief moment, raises its head again, at least in the delicate psychedelic soul of the title track, still delivered with a voice that sends shivers down the spine. For the rest, what's on offer is an engaging but not especially original soul-rock ("Wanda Lu", fittingly Tim's last single). It's clear this is no longer the real Tim Buckley; what's left of the daring stellar navigator of just a few years before? A beautiful voice, certainly a bit unusual compared to the average, a will that's been curbed and brought back to the "reasonable" business of communicating with the "average" chart-listening audience, and, in the end, a love of music. But there it is: few would follow him down this path, and had he carried on along the road of Starsailor, perhaps no one would have given him another chance to record.

If, from both an artistic and a commercial standpoint, the results of those final years were disappointing, the most recent period at least allowed Buckley to finally emerge from a long stretch plagued by physical problems stemming from alcohol and drug use. But it wouldn't be enough. On the night between June 28 and 29, 1975, for no reasonable reason, Tim went back to using drugs one last time. A combination of heroin (and thus morphine in his bloodstream) and alcohol. Paradoxically, it was the unpredictable reaction of the drug on Buckley's now-clean system, no longer accustomed to such excess, that caused his death. That the 29th (of May), twenty-two years later, would also prove fatal to his son Jeff, himself a remarkable artist, seems as dramatic as it is coincidental. From his father he had inherited the face of an eternally suffering, world-weary boy, and above all an incredible, singular voice — but that, without a doubt, is another story.

Tim Buckley was only twenty-eight, carrying the weight of an incredible career on his shoulders.

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