Greetings from L.A.

Recorded at Far Out Studios in Hollywood and released in August 1972 on Warner Bros., it was produced and arranged by Jerry Goldstein, who also played percussion. Buckley had put together a new funk band after Starsailor, and his sexually frank lyrics, including the line about whipping and spanking in Make It Right, stood in the way of airplay. Trouser Press said he sounded completely at home with the new band, from swampy blues to straight-ahead rock with a generous dose of funk, and called the record an orgy dripping with sweat and sex, with his sense of humor on show for the first time. It added that there was nothing innovative about it but that his character was all over it. Buckley himself called it a response to Mick Jagger, who sang about sex without ever saying anything sexy. Pitchfork has called it the "B&D r&b of Greetings From L.A."

It did not sell well at the time, though it is probably his best seller. It got substantial airplay on KQRS in Minneapolis and sold very well in independent record shops in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit and New York, until Warner Brothers deleted it. It then kept selling as a UK and European import into the 1980s. The first US pressing came with a removable postcard. In November 2005 it was reissued in a compilation with his debut album.