Tim Buckley
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- This article is about Tim Buckley the musician. For the webcomic artist, see Tim Buckley (artist).
Timothy Charles Buckley III (February 14, 1947 – June 29, 1975) was an experimental vocalist and performer who incorporated jazz, psychedelia, funk, soul, and avant-garde rock in a short career spanning the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Buckley often regarded his voice, which spanned up to five and a half octaves by some accounts, as an instrument, a talent most noticeable on his albums Goodbye and Hello, Lorca, and Starsailor. He was married to Mary Guibert, with whom he had a child, singer Jeff Buckley, also known for his three-and-a-half octave voice, who died in 1997.
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Early life and career
Born in Washington DC, Buckley lived for 10 years in New York before moving to southern California. During his childhood, he was a fan of Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Nat King Cole, and Miles Davis, although country music was his foremost passion. He left school at 18 with twenty songs written with Larry Beckett under his belt — many of which later featured on his debut album. Mothers Of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black introduced Tim to Herb Cohen, and he quickly got him signed to Elektra record company.
Buckley released his debut album Tim Buckley on Elektra in 1966. A folk-rock album, it contained psychedelic melodies written with input from Beckett.
1960s impact
The late sixties was a progressive time in music, with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band embodying the movement. Experimental psychedelic music was being produced, and the influences of the time seeped into Tim's second album, Goodbye And Hello. The influence boded well for the success of his second release, which was his only to penetrate the top 200 music chart, peaking at 177. Five of the songs on the album were written solely by Buckley.
Departure of Beckett
When he left for the Army, Buckley was free to develop his own individual style, without the literary restraints of before. Uneducated both vocally and instrumentally in the fine aspects of melody and lyric structure, the quality of the tracks he produced cite the natural talent he possessed.
He described the jazz/blues-rock that he was associated with at the time as "White thievery and an emotional sham". With this opinion strongly set, he rebelled against what was commercial, and persevered on a course of development that alienated many of his fans. Drawing inspiration from jazz greats such as Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Roland Kirk, and jazz vocalist Leon Thomas his subsequent independently-recorded music was vastly different to previous recordings.
All That Jazz
1969, Buckley recorded the jazzy Happy Sad, alienating his audience. Dissatisfied with playing the same old material continuously, and disenchanted with the music business that he felt was restraining him from producing new material, he introduced new songs into his performances. However this attempted rejuvenation was a failure; it wasn't rehearsed and his performances instead went downward in quality.
Artiste
During 1969 Buckley wrote three albums – Lorca, Blue Afternoon, and Starsailor. Inspired after meeting the avant-garde musician Cathy Berberian, he decided to integrate the ideas of composers such as Luciano Berio Iannis Xenakis in an avant-garde rock genre. He started to utilize his voice's entire 4 octave range. However, Lorca was a complete failure; fans were shocked by its completely different style and found the vocal gymnastics too abstract and far removed from his previous folk-rock rooted albums. In general ,a lot of listeners simply found it too 'weird'. As a result, it was commercially unsuccesful and Buckley gave into demands from his record company to return to his old style of music.
Reluctantly, Buckley produced unrecorded tracks for Blue Afternoon. Critics complained that he performed the tracks without any zeal, and at a time when success relied heavily on live performances, it sold badly. Buckley was more eager to record his most complete original album, Starsailor.
Starsailor
Vocally and instrumentally haunting, the album was unlike much else at the time; Buckley chose words for their phonetic sounds instead of meaning, and admitted to using other languages if an English word didn't suffice. 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.
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.
"Bye Bye Baby"
Two years later, finances depleting and craving for recognition ripe, he released three rock albums, Greetings From L.A., Sefronia, and Look At The Fool. These albums failed to become a commercial success. Fundamentally Tim was unhappy with the systematic and shallow r&b structure of the lyrics and music, despite being a fan of the genre.
On June 28, 1975 after returning from the last show of a tour he decided he could relax and accidentally snorted heroin, thinking it was cocaine, at a friend's house. Having diligently controlled his habit while on the road, his tolerance was lowered, and the combination of a large amount of drugs mixed with alcohol was too much. His friend took him home thinking he was merely drunk. Tim was put to bed by his friends, who told his wife that he'd also used some barbituates. As she watched TV in bed beside him, Buckley had turned blue. Attempts by friends and paramedics to revive him were unsuccessful. Reportedly, Buckley's last words were "Bye Bye Baby," delivered in a way reminiscent of the line in Ray Charles' "Driftin' Blues." Buckley was 28.
Discography
- Tim Buckley (1966)
- Goodbye and Hello (1967)
- Happy Sad (1969)
- Blue Afternoon (1970)
- Lorca (1970)
- Starsailor (1970)
- Greetings from L.A. (1972)
- Sefronia (1973)
- Look at the Fool (1974)