Tim Buckley

Orange County to Elektra

Timothy Charles Buckley III was born in Washington, D.C., on 14 February 1947, and his family moved to Bell Gardens in southern California in 1956. At Loara High School in Anaheim he befriended Larry Beckett, his future lyricist, and the bass player Jim Fielder, and with them formed two groups, the Bohemians and the Harlequin 3. In February 1966 the Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black recommended him to the Mothers' manager Herb Cohen, who found him a booking at the Night Owl Cafe in Greenwich Village. A demo disc sent to Elektra's owner Jac Holzman brought a contract, and in August 1966 Buckley recorded his self-titled debut, Tim Buckley, in three days.

Goodbye and Hello followed in 1967. Elektra gave the group free rein, Beckett supplied lyrics such as No Man Can Find the War, and the album peaked at 171 on the Billboard chart, better than the debut. Holzman even rented advertising space on the Sunset Strip for him. In 1968 Buckley sang Song to the Siren on the final episode of The Monkees.

Jazz and the voice

Beckett was drafted, and Buckley developed his own style, calling the jazz and blues rock he was associated with white thievery and an emotional sham. He drew on Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Roland Kirk and the vocalist Leon Thomas. He toured Europe twice in 1968 and appeared on John Peel's Top Gear on the BBC. A London concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 7 October 1968, with Danny Thompson on bass, later appeared as Dream Letter: Live in London 1968. Happy Sad, released in April 1969, was built around David Friedman's vibraphone, ran to much longer songs and had lyrics Buckley wrote himself. It reached 81, his highest chart position.

Through 1969 he wrote for three albums at once, inspired by the singer Cathy Berberian and the composers Luciano Berio and Iannis Xenakis. Blue Afternoon was his first self-produced record and his debut for Straight, the label of Cohen and Frank Zappa. Lorca alienated his folk audience. Starsailor, his avant-garde record, held Song to the Siren and was a critical and commercial failure on release.

Funk

In 1970 Buckley disbanded his Starsailor group and assembled a funk band. The result was Greetings from L.A., recorded at Far Out Studios in Hollywood and released in August 1972, with sexually frank lyrics that stood in the way of airplay. Sefronia, produced by Denny Randell, followed in 1973, and Look at the Fool, his ninth and last studio album, came out on DiscReet in September 1974. In 1975 he began playing revamped songs from across his career, leaving out Starsailor and Lorca.

After

He finished a short tour with a sold-out show in Dallas on 28 June 1975, and died the next evening, aged 28. He was in debt, owning only a guitar and an amplifier. The coroner's report gave the cause of death as acute heroin, morphine and ethanol intoxication. His son Jeff, who was 8 and had met him once, was not invited to the funeral, and in 1991 sang I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain at a tribute concert for his father in Brooklyn.

In September 1983 This Mortal Coil released Song to the Siren as their debut single, and it reached 3 on the British independent chart. The Guardian counted 24 covers of it by 2011 and said Ivo Watts-Russell had tracked down Buckley's deleted albums. Pitchfork wrote in 2016 that his legacy continues to fly under the radar, because he recorded and toured so constantly and never built a big fanbase. Books include David Browne's Dream Brother (2001) and Lee Underwood's Blue Melody (2002).