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One of the great rock vocalists of the 1960s, Tim Buckley drew from folk, psychedelic rock, and progressive jazz to create a considerable body ofadventurous work in his brief lifetime. His multi-octave range was capable of not just astonishing power, but great emotional expressiveness,swooping from sorrowful tenderness to anguished wailing. His restless quest for new territory worked against him commercially: By the time hisfans had hooked into his latest album, he was onto something else entirely, both live and in the studio. In this sense he recalled artists such asMiles Davis and David Bowi ...read more
One of the great rock vocalists of the 1960s, Tim Buckley drew from folk, psychedelic rock, and progressive jazz to create a considerable body ofadventurous work in his brief lifetime. His multi-octave range was capable of not just astonishing power, but great emotional expressiveness,swooping from sorrowful tenderness to anguished wailing. His restless quest for new territory worked against him commercially: By the time hisfans had hooked into his latest album, he was onto something else entirely, both live and in the studio. In this sense he recalled artists such asMiles Davis and David Bowie, who were so eager to look forward and change that they confused and even angered listeners who wanted morestylistic consistency. However, his eclecticism has also ensured a durable fascination with his work that has engendered a growing posthumouscult for his music, often with listeners who were too young (or not around) to appreciate his music while he was active.Buckley emerged from the same '60s Orange County, CA, folk scene that spawned Jackson Browne and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Mothers ofInvention drummer Jimmy Carl Black introduced Buckley and a couple of musicians Buckley was playing with to the Mothers' manager, HerbieCohen. Although Cohen may have first been interested in Buckley as a songwriter, he realized after hearing some demos that Buckley was also adiamond in the rough as a singer. Cohen became Buckley's manager, and helped the singer get a deal with Elektra.Before Buckley had reached his 20th birthday, he'd released his debut album. The slightly fey but enormously promising effort highlighted hissoaring melodies and romantic, opaque lyrics. Baroque psychedelia was the order of the day for many Elektra releases of the time, and Buckley'searly folk-rock albums were embellished with important contributions from musicians Lee Underwood (guitar), Van Dyke Parks (keyboards), JimFielder (bass), and Jerry Yester. Larry Beckett was also an overlooked contributor to Buckley's first two albums, co-writing many of the songs.The fragile, melancholic, orchestrated beauty of the material had an innocent quality that was dampened only slightly on the second LP, Goodbyeand Hello (1967). Buckley's songs and arrangements became more ambitious and psychedelic, particularly on the lengthy title track. This wasalso his only album to reach the Top 200, where it only peaked at number 171; Buckley was always an artist who found his primary constituencyamong the underground, even for his most accessible efforts. His third album, Happy Sad, found him going in a decidedly jazzier direction in bothhis vocalizing and his instrumentation, introducing congas and vibes. Though it seemed a retreat from commercial considerations at the time,Happy Sad actually concluded the triumvirate of recordings that are judged to be his most accessible.The truth was, by the late '60s Buckley was hardly interested in folk-rock at all. He was more intrigued by jazz; not only soothing modern jazz(as heard on the posthumous release of acoustic 1968 live material, Dream Letter), but also its most avant-garde strains. His songs becamemuch more oblique in structure, and skeletal in lyrics, especially when the partnership with Larry Beckett was ruptured after the latter's inductioninto the Army. Some of his songs abandoned lyrics almost entirely, treating his voice itself as an instrument, wordlessly contorting, screaming,and moaning, sometimes quite cacophonously. In this context, Lorca was viewed by most fans and critics not just as a shocking departure, but adownright bummer. No longer was Buckley a romantic, melodic poet; he was an experimental artiste who sometimes seemed bent on punishingboth himself and his listeners with his wordless shrieks and jarringly dissonant music.Almost as if to prove that he was still capable of gentle, uplifting jazzy pop-folk, Buckley issued Blue Afternoon around the same time. Bizarrely,Blue Afternoon and Lorca were issued almost simultaneously, on different labels. While an admirable demonstration of his versatility, it wascommercial near-suicide, each album canceling the impact of the other, as well as confusing his remaining fans. Buckley found his best middleground between accessibility and jazzy improvisation on 1970's Starsailor, which is probably the best showcase of his sheer vocal abilities,although many prefer the more cogent material of his earliest albums.By this point, though, Buckley's approach was so uncommercial that it was jeopardizing his commercial survival. And not just on record; he wasequally uncompromising as a live act, as the posthumously issued Live at the Troubadour 1969 demonstrates, with its stretched-to-the-limitjams and searing improv vocals. For a time, he was said to have earned his living as a taxi driver and chauffeur; he also flirted with films for awhile. When he returned to the studio, it was as a much more commercial singer/songwriter (some have suggested that various managementand label pressures were behind this shift).As much of a schism as Buckley's experimental jazz period created among fans and critics, his final recordings have proved even more divisive,even among big Buckley fans. Some view these efforts, which mix funk, sex-driven lyrical concerns, and laid-back L.A. session musicians, asproof of his mastery of the blue-eyed soul idiom. Others find them a sad waste of talent, or relics of a prodigy who was burning out rather thanconquering new realms. Neophytes should be aware of the difference of critical opinion regarding this era, but on the whole his final three albumsare his least impressive. Those who feel otherwise usually cite the earliest of those LPs, Greetings from L.A. (1972), as his best work from hisfinal phase.Buckley's life came to a sudden end in the middle of 1975, when he died of a heroin overdose just after completing a tour. Those close to himinsist that he had been clean for some time and lament the loss of an artist who, despite some recent failures, still had much to offer. Buckley'sstock began to rise among the rock underground after the Cocteau Twins covered his "Song for the Siren" in the 1980s. The posthumous releasesof two late-'60s live sets (Dream Letter and Live at the Troubadour 1969) in the early '90s also boosted his profile, as well as unveiling someinteresting previously unreleased compositions. His son Jeff Buckley went on to mount a musical career as well before his own tragic death in1997. « hide |
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