Briefly recounting Tim Buckley’s short, inconvenient stylistic trajectory *

* (restored)

‘You know, people don’t hear anything. That’s why rock ‘n’ roll was invented, to pound it in. That whole stuff has got to stop, because music is being poisoned by the people. I see where I’m headed–yeah, into a progressive thing–there’s going to be a change and I can’t help the people.’ — Tim Buckley, 1970

‘It is not that Tim did not want to please his listeners. He very much wanted them to enjoy his offerings. However, he also wanted to grow as an artist, to seek new approaches to composition and performance. He wanted to evolve. And he did, through five distinct generic phases: folk, folk/rock, jazz, avant-garde and white funk dance music. Along the way he listened to everything from Duke Ellington, Pete Seeger, and Fred Neil, to Miles Davis, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and Penderecki. By the time he reached Lorca and Starsailor, he knew he was the most impassioned and technically innovative singer of his era. He knew the past; he knew the present; he stretched his psyche and his soul into the future.’ — Lee Underwood, 2007

‘Once I Was’, 1968

‘I’m Coming Home Again’, 1968

‘Song to the Siren’, 1968

‘Tim Buckley recorded his debut album, Tim Buckley, over three days in Los Angeles in August 1966. Buckley later remarked that recording was “Like Disneyland. I’d do anything anybody said”. The album’s folk-rock style was largely typical of the time but Buckley’s distinctive voice and melodic compositions garnered positive reviews upon its release in late 1966. On later reflection, guitarist Lee Underwood summed it up as “a first effort, naive, stiff, quaky and innocent [but] a ticket into the marketplace”. Producer Jac Holzman expressed similar sentiments, stating in 1991 in the periodical Musician that Buckley “wasn’t really comfortable in his own musical skin”. Lyricist Larry Beckett suggested that the band’s desire to please the prospective audience held them back. Despite having some aspects in common with Bob Dylan, in terms of musical style and fashion sense, Buckley distanced himself from comparisons, expressing a general apathy towards the artist and his work. Whilst his second album, the more ambitious Goodbye and Hello did not make Buckley a star, it performed better in the charts than his previous effort, peaking at #171.

‘Morning Glory’, 1968

Tim Buckley interview, 1969

‘Sing a Song for You’, 1969

‘After Buckley’s long time lyricist Larry Beckett was drafted into the Army, Buckley was free to develop his own individual style, without the literary restraints of before. He described the music he was associated with at the time as “White thievery and an emotional sham.” Drawing inspiration from jazz greats such as Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Roland Kirk, and vocalist Leon Thomas, his subsequent independently-recorded music was vastly different from previous recordings. His third album Happy Sad alienated much of his prior audience. He began to weave in new songs into his performances, featuring an increasingly minimalist sound from his heavily orchestrated first two albums, and introducing a vibraphone player into his band. However, this attempted rejuvenation was a commercial failure; becoming largely based on improvisation, his performances were less accessible to the audiences who saw him as a folk-rock poster boy.

‘Blue Melody’, 1969

from ‘Lorca’, 1970

‘Venice Beach’, 1970

‘During 1969, Buckley began to write and record material for three different albums: Lorca, Blue Afternoon, and Starsailor. Inspired after hearing the singing of avant-garde musician Cathy Berberian, he decided to integrate the ideas of composers such as Luciano Berio and Iannis Xenakis in an avant-garde rock genre. He started to fully utilize his voice’s impressive range. 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, and Blue Afternoon was criticized as boring and tepid. Vocally and instrumentally haunting, Starsailor was highly original, with free jazz textures under Tim’s most extreme grunting and wailing vocals to date. At times his voice sounds disturbed and depressed. Despite including ‘Song to the Siren’, the song that would end up being his most covered and revered, the album shared the same response as the Lorca album. Impervious to Buckley’s avant-garde style, few of his fans were aroused, and most disliked it.

from ‘Starsailor’, 1970

‘I Woke Up’, 1970

‘Come Here Woman’, 1970

‘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. Two years later, financially depleted and craving recognition, he released three rock/soul/funk albums – Greetings from L.A., Sefronia and Look at the Fool. They all failed. Fundamentally Tim was unhappy with the systematic and shallow R&B; structure of the lyrics and music, despite being a fan of the genre. His distaste with bowing to commercial pressures from his manager soon left him without a recording contract. On June 28, 1975, Buckley completed the last show of a tour in Dallas, Texas, playing to a sold-out venue with 1,800 people in attendance. Buckley celebrated the culmination of the tour with a weekend of drinking and drugging with his band and friends, as was his normal routine. Having diligently controlled his drug habit while on the road, his tolerance was lowered, and the combination of the drugs he took mixed with the amount of alcohol he had consumed throughout the day was too much. The coroner’s report by Dr. Joseph H. Choi stated that he died at 9:42pm, June 29, 1975, from “acute heroin/morphine and ethanol intoxication due to inhalation and ingestion of overdose”.’

* text collaged from various sources

‘Dolphins’, 1974

‘Honey Man’, 1974

‘Sally Go Round the Roses’, 1974

‘I think of our culture like I think of bacteria. Rock ‘n’ roll keeps the traffic moving to an adolescent pulse. Politics, prime-time TV, Danny Thomas and the game shows–it’s all bought and sold and planned out to get a response, and the response is planned in order not to get in the way of the next one. But man’s music–his bout with the gods–has nothing to do with the latest crimes. It’s too personal to isolate, too intimate to forget, and too spiritual to sell.’ — Tim Buckley, 1970

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Pleasure, mine. Really impressive: your mom. I’m down with a working if creaky, cramped elevator, yes. Maybe balconies that double as flying carpets? That’d be way nice, yep. Love explaining why there’s a guard rail on the inaccessible roof of the building next to mine, this, G. ** Charalampos, Hi. I’ve had Claude Simon on the blog, but I haven’t spotlit that book before. Yeah, I’ll find out if AS is going to print more copies. I would guess so. Enjoy home, from my home to yours. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey. He’s great. I think I’d start with Robbe-Grillet maybe, but Simon’s great too. New PTv2: It amazes me that you find these crazy tracks from the 80s and 90s (Carol, Basking Sharks, Brighter Death Now, Loss of Head) that I’ve never heard or even heard of before. And from the 00s too, like ICK. Since I think you’re too young to have heard those earlier tracks in the flesh back in the day (?), you just happen upon them? Great stuff, great show. It had a kind of industrial on MDMA thing going on maybe? Thanks, maestro. MUBI’s great. I’m a MUBI subscriber. They had ‘Permanent Green Light’ on the site for a while. Enjoy! ** Malik, Awesome. Acing it … that’s great luck (or something). Sure, yes, I’d love to read those pieces. Your friend makes sense. There are really exciting things happening with the novel these days, but there’s not much encouragement to experiment therein or critical interest in daring fiction. Whereas the theater is still a medium that can do almost anything and people will venture there. Visual art too. Those are the ‘biggest’ mediums in terms of embracing newness, I think, maybe. So, great! Thank you. It’s great to talk with you. ** Dom Lyne, For some reason the only places in Paris where you can get any range of vegan sushi is at the hoity-toity places. The film issues are the same ones we’ve been suffering through for forever. Funding, money. We’re on the very cusp of finishing the film’s post-production, and we don’t have money to pay for it, and the people who did the p-p work already still haven’t been paid due to the bullshitting, lazy, incompetent scumbag we work with, so everything has stopped dead, and we’re trying to find a way to finish the film, which means literally maybe just four more days of work. Blah. Same old. Yes, we’re going to be immensely more careful who we work with on the producer level next time. And I think we’re going to try to make our next film cost less to shoot because raising all the money it took to make ‘RT’ was just way too hard. Thanks for asking, pal. Our heat is supposed to die tomorrow, pray god. Best to you! ** Tosh Berman, Hi. Very strange that it’s so hard to find/buy Simon’s books. I don’t quite get it. Good luck. It’s excellent. I’ve been thinking about restoring an old spotlight post about Duncan Smith’s great, obscure book ‘The Age of Oil’, and I looked around to discover that it’s impossible to buy a copy of that book for under $900! ** Thomas H, My pleasure, of course. Podcasting: How can I get in on that as listener? I don’t think I know Don Hertzfeldt’s work. Okay, I’m definitely on that hunt. Thanks! Enjoy! Or ‘Boys Run The Riot’ either, wow, okay, another hunt imminent. Thanks for that too! Sounds amazing. I’m okay, heat and some film-related crap aside. Big up. ** Steve, Yeah, I don’t think I’ve heard the early Charli XCX. What’s the podcast you’re talking on? My guess as to Simon’s lower profile is that his work didn’t/doesn’t engage with contemporary cultural interests and styles like Robbe-Grillet’s and Duras’s, for instance, did/do. He’s a very serious writer, and you have to want to read his complex writing in and of itself, as opposed to the aforementioned where the work is considered ‘cool’ and readers are willing to brave the experimentation to get the ‘coolness’. A guess. ** Misanthrope, If U2 started the greedy ticket thing, it wouldn’t surprise me. Even $50 seems like a lot. At least over here, you can go see excellent bands and musicians in small venues for 15 -17 euros pretty regularly. I didn’t know Little Show lost his last job, but, yeah. Well, all the luck, and it sounds he’ll need every bit. ** Harper, Rimbaud’s apartment that he lived in when he first escaped to Paris is very seeable, over on the left bank. But it was an attic apartment, so you have look way up at it. Understood about the NHS’s goodness. People here complain about the French health system, but, if you’re coming from the US like I am, it really seems like heaven. I’m still an LA guy, and consider myself that, but I’m proof positive that you can exit your hometown and thrive, or I hope I am. Eek: that Labour meeting with J.K. Rowling about trans issues? I mean, what in the world are they thinking?! That’s insane. Heat and crap insulation here too, if that helps. Which I know it doesn’t. Droopy high five though. ** Uday, The Nobel tends to help on the level of getting the awardee’s work translated and published in other countries, and that’s something, I guess. Nice Rilke quote. I remember back in the … 70s (?) when it was trendy to carry a copy of Rilke’s ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ around with you. Wow, different time. The film stuff is stuck for now, no progress, but we need to make progress very soon, so hopefully something miraculous will rescue us. ** Darby 🐙, Mm, I don’t think I hear colors, but how would I know? Four pages, nice length. Yeah, send it to me. I’m an honest responder. I’m just slow. That’s my problem. Anyway, I’ll look from an email from you at your sparkling new address. ** Don Waters, Of course, man. Yes, great translator. Hm, I’ve had writers on the blog who are also excellent translators and have pointed that out — Lydia Davis, for example — but not a solo translator per se. I should. It can be interesting. For instance, Richard Howard was a mediocre poet, but his translations of 60s/70s French lit are amazing. If memory serves, France is the only country that confers with me about the translations of my work. I can’t remember any other publishers/ countries doing that. I really wish they did. My work is very hard to translate correctly, I think, due to the argot you mentioned and my interest in inarticulation too. That’s very hard to parse, Even making the subtitles for Zac’s and my films is very, very time consuming, and it’s never the same or as good. Thanks for asking, bud. ** Oscar 🌀, Oh no, ha ha, you grabbed the Scrabble option! I was thinking of reaching for it. One time years ago I took this now obscure but formerly famous American comedian named Oscar Levant to meet Queen Elizabeth. I asked her to say ‘hi’ to him, but she said ‘Hello, Oscar.’ And I said, ‘No, you have to say ‘hi’ because he’s an American and won’t understand’. And she got indignant and said it was beneath her to use the lowly term ‘hi’. And things got a little heated, and we were forcibly escorted out of the palace by armed guards. Yes, he is very o.o.p. weirdly. I feel like you could pick up a copy cheap somewhere because he’s so not au courant. I love concrete architecture. And, yes, especially at the moment. Thursday might be nice: film meeting (of the good kind), see a show by teenaged artists making art about amusement parks, a film I’m excited to see later. Looking good except for the all the sweat. Yours? ** Okay. I’ve restored an old post about the highly admirable and adventurous and unjustly non-rewarded singer/ songwriter Tim Buckley for you today. Very interesting guy/artist/work, I think. See you tomorrow.