Short-lived and one of the most prolific musical careers-nine albums in less than eight years-Tim Buckley became a cult artist whose myth was strengthened by the fame of his son Jeff. He began embracing folk to be enchanted by Miles Davis, giving vent to a prodigious voice with which he never stopped experimenting. He would affirm of himself: I am too strange for the white middle class, but I am happy because I can create. Following this core idea, he would reject easy success to enter the territories of the avant-garde, breaking the schemes of an audience that continued to see him as the new Dylan.
It was foreseeing the course that would end up taking the life of Timothy Charles Buckley III.
He was born in Washington D.C. after World War II. Already in his early childhood, he grows surrounded by the vinyls that his parents and grandmother listen to regularly. The hypnotic voices of Bessie Smith, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday are playing on the turntable needle, causing a huge impact on the child.
But far from enjoying a childhood without incident, Tim often suffers the beatings of his father, an Irish ex-combatant whose character becomes even more violent due to a wound suffered in the skull during the war, a fact that will influence his personality unstable and depressive.
After moving with the family to Southern California, the young Buckley starts with the banjo in a self-taught way. We are in the early sixties and folk is in full swing, with Dylan and Báez at the helm.
During his teenage years, Buckley loses interest in classes and sports, focusing more and more on music. That is when he meets the poet Larry Beckett, who will be joined by a deep professional bond. Together, they form the band The Bohemians, while Tim starts kicking the clubs and coffees of the West Coast with a guitar in his hands.
Its modest popularity grows in parallel to the relationship maintained with his girlfriend in high school, Mary Guibert, with whom he gets married to, leaving pregnant soon after.
But fatherhood and music seem like opposite paths and he ends up opting for the latter, without ever witnessing the birth of his son Jeff. At that time, Tim is 19 years old and his career is about to take off thanks to the impulse of Herb Cohen who, seeing potential, becomes his manager and introduces him to the New York folk scene.
Leaving behind Mary and the child he has not yet met, Tim crosses the country in search of new opportunities. Advised by Cohen, he sends a demo to one of the bosses of the music industry: Jac Holzman.
The owner of Elektra Records sees the young melancholy look of a future folk star and offers a contract that is ditched with a handshake.
Buckley’s debut album came to light in 1966, bringing together 12 co-written songs with his teenage friend Larry Beckett.
It is a period in which the influence of singer-songwriters such as Fred Neil and Tim Hardin is obvious in the melodies of a first album in which some jazz harmony already appears (albeit timidly). This work is followed, just a year later, by Goodbye and Hello, which introduces anti-war lyrics, giving a good account of Tim’s vocal prowess.
In songs like Pleasant Street or I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain -the latter dedicated to the ex-wife and abandoned son-, the artist is happy to be happy, leaving our hearts beating at 100 per hour. The voice of Buckley is made a hollow from then on in the Olympus of the most shocking voices of musical history, where his eldest son will also have a place.
That same year, Elektra, which, like any company that boasts, wants to make a business of the recent signing. They invest in advertising to give a boost to sales, something that does not seem to fit the elusive character of the composer.
Tim begins to combine television appearances, after some of which ends up pricing with the producer on duty for having to do playback or the discomfort that causes him to talk about himself. This ends up strengthening an attitude that will make him look with suspicion on the media.
As it is to imagine, the issue is delicate and its reactions end up undermining the morale of the directors of Elektra, who do not end up making career of Buckley. The artist gives to show publicly his contempt towards Bob Dylan, with whom they do not stop comparing him and of whose style he will go away more and more.
1969 arrives with the release of Happy Sad, disc that involves a change in his career and that begins the search for new territories. It is a time of total immersion in jazz in which he carefully listens to the work of Miles Davis, sealing the break with his inseparable Beckett.
Songs like Gypsy Woman exceed the duration of ten minutes and incorporate the vibraphone to the compositions, surrendering at certain moments to improvisation. Despite the change of registration, Happy Sad becomes the album with the best commercial results in Buckley’s career, just before entering the terrain of the avant-garde.
However, at Elektra, they are not entirely satisfied and begin to get fed up with the rantings of the composer, who seems more interested in maintaining his artistic integrity and not so much in bowing to the demands of the company.
With the recording of Lorca, Buckley puts an end to the contract with Elektra and goes through the lining any expectation, paying a particular tribute to the Granada poet.
In addition, fruit of a prolific production and limited by the restrictions of its previous record company, he decides to record in the same month Blue Afternoon with the support of Straight Records, the seal founded by Frank Zappa.
It is also a period in which he begins his relationship with the heroin and consolidates his passion for the alcohol, while preparing what he himself will come to consider his masterpiece. Starsailor stands as its most free, experimental and avant-garde album, once again proving an unquestionable vocal skill based on impossible harmonies. Sing (and scream) more challenging than ever, with a penitent and mad voice that makes your hair stand on end.
As part of this work publishes Song to the Siren, co-written with a reconciled Beckett and that will end up becoming one of its most popular and versioned songs.
At this point, Tim barely struggles to disguise the contempt towards fans more interested in his folk past, coming to face those who, during direct, asked him to play their old songs.
He claims that if its music is accepted by the public it is because it’s not good enough.
Starsailor turns out to be a commercial failure and some financial problems arise in Buckley’s life. Accustomed to an accelerated production rhythm, he retires a season in which rumors place him trying his luck as a driver and taxi driver, while trying a parallel career as an actor, screenwriter and writer. All this while continuing his romantic idyll with drugs.
He resurrected musically a couple of years later with Greetings from L.A., an album of funk dyes where he reinvents himself as an erotic shaman, without renouncing his usual demonstrations of vocal virtuosity.
It is a more commercial work and adapted to the radios, if not for the letters of high sexual content in which it speaks about sadomasochism, adultery and other necessities not suitable for a decent audience.
After two more accessible records with no glory – Sefronia and Look at the Fool-, Tim seems to find again some welcome from the public, except that this time the success does not seem to bother him.
However, during a night of drunkenness and celebration, he rages on the door of his friend Richard Keeling in search of drugs with which to continue the party.
His friend, annoyed, throws a bag of heroin inviting him to consume the entire dose, a challenge that Tim happily accepts while snorting the contents.
After a while, Buckley starts to feel bad and his friends take him home to where his current wife, Judy, puts him to sleep between great tremors. Shortly afterwards, when she returns to check on her husband’s condition, she finds him with a bluish and pulseless face.
Tim Buckley dies at the age of 28 overdose, leaving behind a musical legacy as vast as versatile and fascinating, which will end up influencing artists like Rufus Wainwright and Radiohead.
His son Jeff, whom he would only meet once when he was a child, was never invited to the funeral. That is why, after more than a decade, the young Buckley decided to attend the posthumous tribute to his father in New York, an event attended by hundreds of friends and professionals in the music industry.
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