|
Before I entered the glamorous and exciting world of the rock n' roll
business on a full-time basis, I used to "work" (a rather loose
expression you understand) for one of the country's larger construction
companies, not as you'd wickedly like to imagine in the guise of a bricky or a
road-digger, but in a laboratory staffed by agreeable and well-meaning people
most of whom probably thought I was completely mental. There were however three
or four such people to whom music, in one form or another, meant a great deal
and who would happily while away the day discussing the merits of anybody from
Wild Man Fischer to David Ackles. One of the subjects that did arise more than
any other it seemed, was the music of Tim Buckley, and this article is, in a
way, a result of the interest and enthusiasm that came about whenever his name
was mentioned. That, and the fact that astonishingly enough, I was given the
chance to interview him only weeks after starting at ZigZag.
He'd come over as part of Warner Brothers' campaign to launch the DiscReet
label in this country, and as well as being interviewed about a dozen times, he
recorded a spot for the "Old Grey Whistle Test," and made a couple of
radio appearances. When I met him, he was accompanied, as always, by his manager
Herb Cohen who tried to keep a watchful eye on the proceedings, but soon
succumbed to the dreaded "jet-lag" and promptly snored his way through
the whole interview. Anyway, I talked to Tim for a couple of hours more and we
went through the whole story, one which I hope you'll find as interesting to
read as it was to compile.
Timothy Charles Buckley III was born in Washington DC on February 14th 1947
and spent the first ten years of his life living in Amsterdam, New York, before
moving with his family to Southern California, first to Bell Gardens, then
Anaheim. According to an ancient Elektra press hand-out: "Tim's mother
listened to Sinatra, Damone, and Garland, and Tim listened to Flatt and Scruggs,
Bill Monroe, and Johnny Cash. When he was in the ninth grade at school he taught
himself to play the banjo-- and that was the beginning." Encouraged by his
father, he "took up guitar, and played in a bunch of country bands. The
only one that toured was Princess Ramona and the Cherokee Riders. I got to dress
in a yellow hummingbird shirt and a turquoise hat and play lead guitar. I was
about 15. I'd get $60 a week plus gas money and a room, I'd usually stay at a
motel next to the bar."
At the advice of Princess Ramona herself, Tim turned his attention to folk
music and started playing the folk clubs around LA where he soon earned himself
quite a reputation. Cheetah magazine, in their admiration for Buckley,
christened him, Jackson Browne, and Steve Noonan, The Orange County Three, a
title that brought him wide recognition and respect, and was a fair indication
of the media's reaction to him.
"I met Jackson and Steve at a club... folk music and stuff... and they
were working, viable writers at the time-- early 60s. And comparatively recently
Jackson has come out on his own, which is a very long time overdue."
By that time, Tim's own personal taste in music had expanded to include jazz,
and rock n' roll, as well as folk and country music... people like Stan Kenton,
Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Little Richard. His own
close musical associates included high school friend and poet Larry Beckett,
whose words he has put to music with great success throughout his recorded
career, and Jim Fielder, whose own musical past includes spells with Buffalo
Springfield, The Mothers of Invention, and Blood Sweat & Tears. The three of
them worked together around LA until one day, at a club called "It's
Boss," they met Jimmy Carl Black, drummer with the Mothers, who offered to
arrange a meeting with Herb Cohen (the Mothers' and Lenny Bruce's manager), in
order to secure some sort of management deal. Tim got to see Cohen at a club on
Sunset Strip called "The Trip," and "I just told him that I was a
singer/songwriter with a repertoire of twenty or so songs." Herb was
sufficiently impressed to take him on, and he booked him into New York's Night
Owl Cafe in the summer of 1966. To throw a young lad of nineteen in at the deep
end, as it were, may have seemed something of a risk, but despite the fierce
competition in New York at the time, Herb was smart enough to realise that
Buckley's obvious talent would show through and that he wouldn't go unnoticed.
In fact Herb did more than that. He knew exactly which record company to
approach for a contract and made sure that Tim got the best possible treatment.
The company was of course Elektra Records , and the following quotes, again from
an old obscure Elektra press hand-out, are Jac Holzman's:
"Herb called to tell me that he had a new artist, that he though we were
the best label for that artist, and that he was sending us, and no one else, a
demo disc with about six songs on it. I didn't have to play the demo more than
once, but I think I must have listened to it at least twice a day for a week...
whenever anything was bringing me down, I'd run for the Buckley; it was
restorative. I asked Herb to arrange a meeting, but I had my mind made up
already. We spent a late afternoon together, and my belief in Tim was more than
confirmed. I explained to Tim that Elektra was growing in a creative direction
at that time, and that he was exactly the kind of artist with whom we wanted to
grow --young and in the process of developing, extraordinarily and uniquely
gifted, and so "untyped" that there existed no formula or pattern to
which anyone would be committed. Tim understood that we understood, and he knew
we wanted him for the right reasons."
Not surprisingly, in the light of Elektra's reputation at the time, the
admiration was mutual, as Tim explains:
"Jac Holzman was great because he didn't sign anybody that wasn't
multi-talented. He signed people who could take care of themselves pretty much.
That's what made him great. And that's what made every album he put out a piece
of work. He had an uncanny ability for coupling a producer with a group or
artist that could make magic. And on my second album Jerry Yester and I got
together and he did what a producer is supposed to do-- not get in the way of
the song, and the artist's feeling for it. It's very tricky sometimes with a
singer/songwriter because you just cannot be objective about what you're doing.
Sometimes it's not commercial and you overdo it for the general public's ear.
But yeah, Elektra was a very sturdy label and I was lucky to be a part of it. I
really loved it."
So Buckley was signed to Elektra and released his debut album Tim Buckley
in October 1966.
"Most of the songs on that album are high-school songs or just after
that, and the musicians on the album, well we were living together-- Lee
Underwood (lead guitar), Jim Fielder (bass), Billy Mundi (drums), and Van Dyke
Parks (keyboards)." You no doubt know that Mundi was once with the Mothers
and later with a band called Rhinoceros, who later themselves produced three
albums for Elektra. The name of Van Dyke Parks of course speaks for itself and
as he was one of the many people that Pete and John interviewed in the States,
there just might be the chance that we'll be printing his own story in the
future. The string arrangements on the album are by Jack Nitzsche, it was
produced by Paul Rothchild and Jac Holzman, engineered by Bruce Botnik, and
recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles.
All twelve songs on the album are originals, and seven of them were written
with Larry Beckett.
"Larry's in Portland now... he's still a writer and a poet. He's writing
a thing now on Paul Bunyon [sic]-- has been for the last three or four years.
It's nearly completed and there's no way to explain it--- it's an eighty page
poem. It's stuttered with American slang and the whole legend of Paul Bunyon.
It's just a whole American legacy he's working on, quite removed from commercial
antics and music. He's not too involved with that. However, he can write a hell
of a song. He writes pornographic songs and plays piano and guitar."
Well I don't think that any of the songs on this album could be termed
pornographic... most of them are love songs of some sort or another and they're
all marked to some degree by the innocence and confusion of adolescence. There
are however some really excellent compositions here, "Valentine Melody
" and "Song Slowly Song" being my two personal favourites. But
above the quality of the songs and the instrumental work, there is one feature
that stands out on this album, and indeed all of Buckley's albums, and that's
his incredible voice. It's an opinion often quoted by many people who usually
seem to know what they're talking about, that the two most expressive,
versatile, and controlled voices in contemporary music belong to Van Morrison
and Tim Buckley. It only takes one listen to any of his songs to realise the
truth of that statement. Lillian Roxon summed it up quite nicely in her Rock Encyclopedia
when she said:
"Nothing in rock, folk-rock, or anything else prepares you for a Tim
Buckley album, and it's funny to hear his work described as blues, modified rock
n' roll, and raga rock when, in fact, there is no name yet for the places he and
his voice go.... His albums are easily the most beautiful in the new music,
beautifully produced and arranged, always managing to be wildly passionate and
pure at the same time."
During late 1966 and early 1967 Tim made a prolonged visit to New York where
he shared a bill at the Balloon Farm with The Mothers of Invention, and then
later, Downstairs at the Dom with Nico. Appearances in California included the
Troubadour in Los Angeles and a number of festivals including the Magic Fountain
Music Fair in San Francisco. In April '67 he was playing the famous Cafe Au
Go-Go in Greenwich Village where, by now, admirers flocked from all over to see
him. One such person was apparently Brian Epstein who had been advised by George
Harrison, on the strength of the album, to take a look at this bright new
talent.
In June 1967 Buckley was back in LA recording a second album that was to
leave the first one miles behind, and pave the way for perhaps the finest and
most delicate "soft-rock" album to emerge from California-- Happy/
Sad.
Anyway, this was Buckley's second album, released in September 1967, with
Jerry Yester credited as Recording Director and Jac Holzman as Production
Supervisor. To quote yet again from Elektra's very informative press release of
the day: "One will never forget the colossal exhilaration at the Elektra
offices when the tapes came in, . Holzman, who heard them first, knew instantly
that the time for Buckley's real emergence was now at hand, but rather than
simply announce this as a fact, he played the tapes for each department director
in turn, and each in turn also knew instantly that "this is it." A
massive promotion was launched, the only goal being what the album and artist
merited." The album is, sure enough, quite remarkable. Buckley's voice is
just superb with a range and power that defies [sic] description, and the songs
are consistently good... three of them brilliant, and one a pure classic.
"Carnival Song," "Hallucinations," and "I Never Asked
to Be Your Mountain" are the sort of tracks you don't forget in a hurry,
and "Morning Glory," Buckley's most covered song, is a rock classic in
every sense of the word.
"It was very hard for me to write songs after Goodbye and Hello
because most of the bases were touched. That was the end of my apprenticeship
for writing songs. Whatever I wrote after that wasn't adolescent, which means it
wasn't easy to write after that because you can't repeat yourself. The way Jac
had it set up, you were supposed to move on artistically, but the way the
business is, you're not. You're supposed to repeat what you do, so there's a
dichotomy there. It's a problem, and I don't think there's anybody who you can
talk to who doesn't face it. People like a certain type of thing at a certain
time and it's very hard to progress."
The personnel listing for Goodbye and Hello is quite lengthy and, I
think worth a brief discussion. Lee Underwood and Jim Fielder remain from the
first album, and Carter C.C. Collins on congas and percussion, who is featured
on four of Buckley's albums, appears for the first time. "He's from Boston,
that's where I met him. He's now playing with Stevie Wonder." Then there's
Dave Guard (kalimba, tambourine). "Dave's from the Kingston Trio Like all
of these guys, he's a working musician of the road which is what I like to work
with -- they know what people hear as opposed to what a producer hears. Working
with Dave Guard was really a great thing... he played banjo for the Kingston
Trio and he was a terrific fellow. On the album he played kalimba, which is an
African finger piano and is now very popular-- but at the time it wasn't. He was
also writing a book for deaf and dumb kids. Great guy. I don't know where he is
now, although I think he moved to Australia." The other musicians are Brian
Hartzler (guitar), John Forsha (Guitar), Jimmy Bond (bass), Eddie Hoh (drums),
Don Randi (piano, harmonium, harpsichord), and Jerry Yester (organ, piano,
harmonium).
Being released in late '67, Goodbye and Hello coincided with the
"love, peace, flowers, beads and acid-rock" movement that had reached
its peak in San Francisco. How much Tim Buckley associated or was influenced by
what was going on there seems a fairly relevant point, as this album and the
next two, captured that spirit in the purest and most musically valid sense, exposing
most effectively, some of the shambolic pretensions that surfaced in the name of
West Coast rock music.
"I'm not really too influenced by what's going on. I'm not a reporter. I
go on energy and spirit and not anything metaphysical or religious or anything
like that. I feel in fact that sometimes that's dangerous, because it gets in
the way of the one-to-one thing with people. You start seeing and feeling that
you see an all-knowing force in the universe, when you should be dealing with
getting it on with your old lady or neighbour or something... mowing the lawn
and drinking at week-ends... you get away from the simple things. Trying to
solve the problems of the universe is a bunch of nonsense a lot of the
time."
"It was really a very tragic period in San Francisco at that time
because of the acid casualties, and I know you had them here because I played a
club somewhere in the bowels of London, and the tragedies of the drug scene were
pretty apparent even when it was beautiful. And as a performer you see it pretty
quickly because that's your audience most of the time. There were a lot of
people who had no business doing drugs. In Goodbye and Hello it was very
adolescent-- I took sides whereas now I can't. I said the establishment was
wrong... Okay it's wrong, but I didn't have an answer. All I was really doing
was stating points of view, which is cool... It's a good song [the title track]
and it was very important at the time. I felt very strongly about all the things
happening. The actual title of the album... It's a little difficult to remember
exactly how we arrived at that... something like you say goodbye to bad things
and hello to good things."
The critical and relative financial success that the album enjoyed was, all
the time, being matched by his popularity and respect as a performing artist.
For the first time, Buckley was headlining such places as the Cafe Au Go-Go and
the Troubadour, and he was reaching as wide and receptive an audience as is
possible for a solo artist. 1968 saw him working on the road almost continually,
until at the end of the year he recorded Happy Sad. Before that was
released here though, he made a fleeting visit to these shores (early 1969) to
play a concert on the same bill as the Incredible String Band at the Queen
Elizabeth Hall. I didn't see him, but a couple of people I know who did, say he
was stunning, and I can well believe it.
Produced by Jerry Yester and Zal Yanovsky (of Spoonful fame of course), Happy
Sad was released early in 1969 to overwhelming critical acclaim and to an
audience who had rightly come to love and trust anything with Buckley's name to
it. My feelings about this record have been laid down before, but I'll repeat
them here because, for me, they still hold true.
Happy Sad is the classic
Buckley album... dream-like, evocative, and musically adventurous and complex...
a record that identifies totally with the spirit of the Elektra label in the
late sixties. The second cut on side one, "Buzzin'' Fly" is a
near-perfect piece of music in every way. A simple guitar introduction, an
emphatic chord sequence on vibes overlaid, and then everything stumbles
beautifully into time as the song rolls along with Buckley's voice soaring and
diving in amazing fashion. That track, and indeed the whole album, is just
magic.
The musicians are Lee Underwood and Carter C. C. Collins again, John Miller
(acoustic bass), and vibes player David Friedman, who's now working with Wayne
Shorter and Weather Report.
"I really loved doing that album, I'll tell ya. It was really a
break-out period of time for me musically. Yeah, "Love from Room 109 at the
Islander," "Buzzin' Fly," "Sing a Song for You,"
"Dream Letter"... I was writing, I'll tell ya that. We had a ball
doing that. "Love from Room 109 at the Islander" was recorded in a
hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and it was quite simple. I arranged it for
harp and vibes and I couldn't find a harp player in a studio that could cut
it... I didn't know about Alice Coltrane at the time, she hadn't come on the
scene. She was playing somewhere in Michigan but I hadn't heard her. And after I
recorded it, I saw her on the "Today" show, and I said
"damn!"... because I wanted that thing that the ocean gave."
One of the remarkable qualities of Happy Sad is the incongruous
feeling that it sounds loose enough to be totally improvised, but tight enough
to make you think that it's arranged.
"The trick of writing is to make it sound like it's all happening for
the first time-- that's what it's all about, so that you feel it's everybody's
idea. It took a long time for me to write that album, and then to teach the
people in the band, but they were all great people so it was really a labour of
love, the way it should be."
And that's just what it sounds like. At the time of its release, Pete Frame
wrote what I consider to be a very sympathetic and perceptive review of Happy
Sad in ZigZag [ ] but he just about threatened to hurl me in the North
Marston phlegm vats if I dared to print it, so pretentious and embarrassing did
it now seem to him. However, if you've got that particular copy, it's well worth
reading while listening to the record. And if you haven't got the record... what
are you, some kind of lunatic or something?!?
Buckley's fourth album, released late in 1969, and produced by himself.
"I recorded Blue Afternoon, Lorca, and parts of Starsailor
in the same month. I was hot. Blue Afternoon was a lot of songs that I
didn't have finished from the first, second, and third albums. And I knew Jac
Holzman was going to sell his company, which really upset me, so I figured well,
I'm going to do what I think is best and get a contract so that I can continue
at the rate I was going, which was approximately one album a year. So I finished
up all those songs for Blue Afternoon in New York City and now I still do
"Cafe" and "Blue Melody" every once in a while, and
"The River"... they're just good songs, they just work and they're fun
to play."
[More on Blue Afternoon and the rest of Tim Buckley's work next
month.--ANDY]
Alright, where were we? Oh yes, Blue Afternoon. But first of all
apologies for the delay in getting this second part to you. Any of you at all
familiar with Buckley's work will realise that the latter half of his total
recorded material is by far the more complex and demanding, and it took about
twenty plays each of Lorca and Starsailor before I could gather my
own thoughts together in any coherent form, and even now, they're both nearly as
hard and jagged on the ear as when I first heard them some four years ago.
Still, more of that later. We'll continue where we left off with an appraisal
of Blue Afternoon, Buckley's fourth album, and his first for Straight
Records. The personnel listing is the same as for Happy Sad, except for
the addition of a drummer, Jimmy Madison, and the general theme and feel of the
album is equally similar. As Buckley has said, Blue Afternoon comprised a
lot of songs that he didn't have finished from the first three albums, and he
probably needed to get them out of his system before embarking on the style of
music exhibited on Lorca and Starsailor.
"When I did Blue Afternoon, I had just about finished writing set
songs. I was just writing differently and I had to stretch out a little
bit."
The one obvious indication of things to come, on Blue Afternoon, is a
track called "The Train" which has a very loose, jazzy structure with
lots of atonal staccato guitar work and an imaginative, but by this time not
totally surprising, exhibition of Buckley's vocal abilities. The rest of the
album is, as mentioned though, very much like Happy Sad, which means it's
great. The opening track is "Happy Time" which has a beautifully
straightforward melody and lightness of touch that he unfortunately seems to
have sacrificed to some extent as of late, and the other three tracks on side
one, "Chase the Blues Away," "I Must Have Been Blind," and
"The River" are all in the same class. The vibes playing of David
Friedman deserves special mention for its taste and imagination throughout.
Listen to his work, and Madison's dramatic use of cymbals, on "The
River" and marvel at the tension created with such simple but effective use
of instrumentation. the first side of this album is, if the truth be known, as
good as some of the finest moments, on Happy Sad. Side two is musically
very similar, but lyrically it has more than an edge of sadness and despondency
to it, exhibited in titles like "So Lonely" and "Blue
Melody." A gem of a record though, and one I know I'll keep playing even
when I've finished this article and the music of Tim Buckley is dripping out of
my ears. As Dick Lawson said in an old issue of "Friends":
"Albums of such gentleness, beauty and profound sadness are impossible to
write about, to put down in words. You go with it, or you don't... each cut is a
hymn to a number of different shades and depths of Buckley's mood." How
very true.
Buckley didn't have an awful lot to say about this album, which he owed
Elektra and was his last for them, and it may or may not be some indication as
to the way he feels about it. Released in 1970, it was probably deemed
"years ahead of its time," such is its wayward, uncomformist [sic]
structure. Again the album features Lee Underwood on electric guitar and piano,
and Carter C.C. Collins on congas, but John Miller is replaced by John Balkin on
bass, and both David Friedman and Jimmy Madison are absent. Lorca is
really an album of two basic styles which often overlap and sometimes collide,
providing results which range from inspired to confusing. There are only five
tracks, none of them under five minutes in length. Side one contains the title
track, nearly ten minutes of it, opening with a doomy, menacing organ sound and
featuring a lot of fast, jazzy keyboard work and vocal acrobatics. The other
track on side one is "Anonymous Proposition," which is deathly slow
with Buckley singing his deepest, most resonant voice over some adventurous and
at times frantic bass and guitar work. A truly weird side that demonstrates the
free-form, avant-garde jazz style that contrasts quite sharply with parts of
side two like the first cut, "I Had a Talk With My Woman," which is a
comparatively simple, melodious song with a lot of very tasty guitar work, and
neat conga playing giving it a constant rhythm-- something in short supply on
this album. "Driftin'" does just what the title suggests-- slow and
relaxed, capturing the feel of his earlier records on one or two occasions. And
then there's the concluding track, "Nobody Walkin'," which is very
up-tempo highlighting Lee Underwood's keyboard work and Buckley himself on
strident rhythm guitar.
Overall, not a completely satisfying album I would venture, but an important
one for him nonetheless, as it leaves behind one style and commences on another
in a way that jars and provokes nearly as much as it soothes and pacifies. I
think only devoted Buckley fans would be able to take that.
The least comprehensible and most demanding Tim Buckley album to date. Most
of it is so strange, both lyrically and musically, that I prefer not to exercise
my confused critical faculties lest I get too wrapped up in its many
complications. By now, Buckley is working very much in the seemingly limitless
confines of jazz, although he admits that on Starsailor he went about as
far as he could as a singer in that syndrome. Certainly, I think if he went any
further he'd do permanent damage to his voice, such is the way he tortures it
here. Many people, at the time of its release, and in retrospect, have said that
it's an "important' and "innovative" album, and I'll probably
cause a lot of anger and startled expressions of disbelief when I say that to me
it sounds erratic, forced, disjointed, and very very difficult to listen to all
the way through.
The first three tracks, "Come Here Woman", "I Woke Up",
and "Monterey" demonstrate the physical limits of Buckley's voice--
often painful to comprehend, backed by frenetic, formless bass and guitar that
would do the original Mahavishnu Orchestra credit, although the playing here is
nowhere near as loud or intense. There then follows [sic] two tracks which are
almost totally dissimilar in structure to each other and the rest of he album--
"Moulin Rouge", a comparatively conventional song, almost attractive
in its simple European flavour, and partly sung in French. And then there's
"Song To The Siren", my favourite track, mostly because it bears the
greatest resemblance to his earlier work. A prejudiced and probably unfair
judgment (I'm sure Buckley himself would think so), but then that's just my own
personal opinion. The whole of the second side is total weirdness. At various
times I can hear snatches of the Magic Band, John Coltrane, Mahavishnu
Orchestra, and several other artists from both rock and jazz and areas in
between, but I honestly don't feel prepared to unreservedly recommend it to
anyone but the most open-minded and patient listened[sic]. It requires a fair
amount of effort and concentration, and as I said at the beginning, it's taken
me at least twenty plays to be able to keep up with it and understand fully
what's going on all the time. I think Starsailor is my least favourite
Buckley album, but I can appreciate the thought and motivation behind it, which,
for me, makes it far from dismissible. The musicians on the album are the same
as on Lorca except the conga-playing of Carter C.C. Collins is absent and
instead there's Buzz Gardner on trumpet and flugelhorn, Bunk Gardner on alto
flute and tenor sax, and Maury Baker on tympani. Incidentally, the songwriting
credits feature Larry Beckett for the first time since Goodbye and Hello,
and he had a hand in four compositions on Starsailor.
"There's a lot of space between Starsailor and Greetings from
LA when I didn't record, because I knew I was repeating myself. There was
nothing to write, nothing to settle into. I hope to make it all clear on the
"live" album, what my intentions were." (See further on.)
"I actually took a rest after Lorca and Starsailor. I took
a year off, and then started up with Greetings around the middle of 1972.
'Cause I'd been going strong since 1966 and I really needed a rest. I hadn't
caught up with any living."
So, a long gap, nearly two years actually, and then Greetings From L.A.
appears, revealing a drastic change in style. Buckley has moved on yet again,
this time adapting his talents very much to mainstream rock-- simple, rhythmic
and very out-front. His band is now completely different, a basic line-up of
himself on 12 string guitar, Joe Falsia (guitar), Chuck Rainey (bass) and Ed
Greene (drums), but in fact twenty different musician in all were employed on
the album including people like Kevin Kelley on keyboards (who, of course played
drums for the Byrds on "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" and then with an LA
band called Jesse, Wholf and the Whings--album on Shelter), Carter C.C. Collins
and King Errison (congas), and vocalists Clydie King, Venetta Fields and Lorna
Maxine Willard.
At the time Buckley said: "I listened to the radio a lot before writing
the songs for this album. There's a lot of radio music in it. It's full-out
blues-type barrelhouse rock. The album really rocks, and I'm very pleased with
it."
Which just about sums it up really. It's the sort of album to blow the aural
cobwebs away, expertly arranged, overloaded with energy and excitement, and
demonstrative once again of Buckley's class and adaptability as a vocalist.
"Move With Me", "Nighthawkin", "Devil Eyes" and
"Make It Right" are straight-ahead rockers with the minimum of
elaboration and the accent on hard, solid playing. The lyrics to most of the
songs (Larry Beckett again contributes on a couple of occasions), are of the
type not quite suitable for family listening, and when I made the comment that Greetings
was his most accessable [sic] album to a wider audience, he replied that
descriptive sex usually is, which will give you some idea of what to expect. All
things considered though, a pretty remarkable album and a refreshing one also to
people like myself who felt slightly alienated by Starsailor.
Released in 1973, Sefronia seems to me like a refinement and expansion
of the style established on Greetings. "Honey Man",
"Quicksand" and "Peanut Man" (sounding very much like Harry
Nilsson's "Coconut Song") are all energetic rockers with catchy riffs
and superb guitar work, while there are magnificently soulful ballads like
"Martha", "Because of You", and, to a lesser extent, "I
Know I'd Recognize Your Face". There are also songs like
"Dolphins" and "Stone in Love" which are pure Buckley, and
if you've played any of the records I've recommended so far you'll know just
what I mean, so enough said. Of the title track, Buckley says that it is the
best thing he's written in a long time, and although I personally wouldn't go as
far as to say that, it is a very fine song nonetheless.
Again, there are many musicians used on this album including Lee Underwood
who, alas, only plays on one track, "Dolphins". But the basic band,
discounting Buckley, only includes one previous member, guitarist Joe Falsia.
The rest are Bernie Mysior (bass), Buddy Helm (drums), and Mark Tiernan
(keyboards). However, the standard of playing is as high as ever, and coupled
with the excellence of practically all the compositions, it makes this my
favourite Tim Buckley album since Blue Afternoon.
Before we move on to he latest album, Look at the Fool, mention must
be made of one of Buckley's rare appearances in this country, at Knebworth in
July of this year. To my eternal disgust he was placed first on the bill, before
the likes of the Alex Harvey band and the Doobie Brothers!-- but his was
certainly one of the best acts that took the stage that day. His band consisted
of Art Johnson (guitar), Jim Fielder (Bass-- he of Buffalo Springfield, blood,
Sweat & Tears and Mothers of Invention fame, of course), Mark Tiernan
(keyboards) and Buddy Helm (drums).
Buckley himself was superb, his incredible voice bellowing, wailing, soaring
and diving all over the stately grounds of Knebworth, and when they broke into
"Buzzin' Fly"... well that made my day. His repertoire consisted
mainly of material from Sefronia, including a sparkling performance of
"Dolphins", but there was a fair selection of old stuff as well, just
to balance it out nicely. A great set which left me regretting that he'd never
come over here more often, and hoping that he'd come back soon.
Originally to be called Another American Souvenir, this is an album
that somehow I expected so much of, but was quite seriously disappointed with.
Only the title track and a song called "Mexicali Voodoo" make it for
me, and if it wasn't for the quality of Buckley's vocals, then the rest of the
album would sound quite anonymous. It's not a straight rock album by any means,
if anything it veers more towards, dare I say it, a funky soul sound, which is
fair enough, but the song themselves are definitely not among his best work and
in the case of one track, "Wanda Lou", encroach dangerously near
rip-off territory. Now that's something I'm sure all Buckley freaks will regard
as a cardinal sin for him because if anything he's always been a pioneer and an
innovator in whichever style of music he's chosen to work with. "Wanda
Lou", incidentally, is so much like "Louie Louie" that I secretly
suspect it might be a piss-take of some sort, but having spoken to the man and
got [sic] to know him quite well, I would tend to think it rather unlikely.
I don't really want to say anything more about the album at this point, but I
shall keep playing it, out of a weird sense of duty more than anything, and hope
that it improves with age.
Now that "live" album that was mentioned earlier:
"I'm really happy about doing this because I need a break from writing
and this will be a record where I can be arranging and putting it together on a
different level. Just sort of reviewing everything. It'll cover the while
gamut-- all my albums. I'd like to have every song be played by those people who
originally recorded them on the albums. I'd love that... a little dream there
y'know? But I know I'm going to have to make a compromise, you can't have
fifteen people on it. I don't know if or how it will all be rearranged, but I do
know one thing I won't be doing and that's "Goodbye and Hello."
There's no way to do that without the orchestra. It just wouldn't be the same.
That was, for me, a one shot thing in the studio because so much work went into
it. There are a lot of things like that-- you just do it, but you never do it
again."
As far as I know at the moment, there are no immediate plans for the release
of such an album so I presume that the project has take much longer to complete
than expected. However two things are certain. Firstly, a "live" album
(maybe a double) will be released at some stage-- it's not one of those
pie-in-the-sky cuckoo ideas that a lot of musicians seem to propagate with
alarming frequency, and secondly, when it does appear it'll be dynamite. I get
impatient just thinking about it.
Well that's all the records and historical paraphernalia covered., but during
the course of the interview Buckley talked with authority and great conviction
about music generally, American culture, and other related subjects.
TB: What do you think of music that's happening today, here and in America,
in '74?
ZZ: It's a very complex question as far as I can see. There are a lot of
things going on which I think are healthy in a lot of ways. I don't know whether
there's any music that's got the magic of say, six or seven years ago, but there
are enough good records, and enough talented people to keep one occupied.
TB: Well, maybe it was because of the interest in music. It seemed like
everything depended on music in the '60s. Protest movements, the flower-power
thing, the acid rock, the acid rock game, now our lives don't depend on that
message.
ZZ: No, not to a certain extent. But I still think it's important.
TB: Yeah, I think so. But I don't think the general...
ZZ: Well, they've cheapened the value of it. They take it for granted, or
they cheapen the values of people. I don't know, it's a strange thing about the
grass always being greener. A lot of American bands come over here and get very
favourable receptions, and the same goes for our bands who go to the States.
TB: It is uncanny, because both countries seem to ignore their natural
resources. I have a very strong current there, but it's not the Top 40 syndrome.
You can say the same thing about Ray Charles, but still he plays in big places.
I think the longer you are around and if they know you are going to play, and
you are not a coy entertainer, say, like most of the groups who don't play a
lot, they'll say "Maybe we'll put out this album", and they are
assured of a certain amount of success. Somehow they've done that. What happens
with someone like Ray Charles of B. B. King, they're players. You go an d see
them instead of putting them on the Top 40, ''cause they're around. And to me
you are more of a part of the culture that way because somehow the Top 40 is not
the culture. I don't know why.
ZZ: Well it's anonymous a lot of the time.
TB: Yeah. That's it, it's anonymous. So like when Foghat go to America, or
The Strawbs, they do the entire country and then go back through it again and
become part of the culture. Whereas someone like Marvin Gaye never plays. So the
only taste people get of him is to buy the album, which is good in one respect,
but really kinda tragic in another, because he never gets the real feeling from
people. Whereas Ray always does, or Stevie Wonder always feels people. Can't
live without them. You don't know if you're writing if you don't play for
people.
ZZ: I can only see it from this side of the Atlantic, but there seems to be
people in the States, especially the West Coast, they seem to be geared to
secluding themselves as much as possible.
TB: Yeah, on the West Coast they actually are. They really isolate themselves
from the cities where more active living is going on. I can't strike an analogy
with anybody here because I don't know how things are done here as far as people
play, but I think it's very important to play Chicago, Detroit, New York City,
Boston, the South, and not stay in Los Angeles. Because in Los Angeles you are
just with people who are hearing the same notes, and you become a cult instead
of a personality. That's a dangerous trap to get into and I know that's what's
happening.
See, everyone's playing just about the same thing right now, and that's been
happening for the last three or four years because I guess it's a business.. You
know, you say something sounds like them or like that, I can really see it
'cause everyone's relating to the same thing over there. The same kind of music.
That's what was nice about the '70's. Bill Graham would book Clara Ward, gospel
music with somebody like B. B. King, and then something like Faroah Sanders.
You'd have four different types of music there. What changed was the battle of
the guitar night, Jeff Beck, Johnny Winter, all of them on the same bill, and it
was really monotonous, and not really culturally good for an audience. What it
did was milk an audience for a certain style. Try and make it more important
than something else. Which is always dangerous in the long run, culturally [---]
-edy of music burning out is that there are people involved in the music that
burn out. So Bill Graham was the "hippest " of all the promoters
because he put together a show that was America. That's sad, because it's really
needed now, in my opinion.
It was like when an audience goes to see a director's movie it was almost
like going to see Bill Graham's show, you understand? And so, you were up for an
evening... it was like Jac Holzman, you weren't afraid to buy an album form him.
Right now I don't think there is a personality like that, that you can depend
on. And that's the problem. That's really the problem. That's why when I asked
you the question about what do you think is going on, too much of the same thing
is going on, because people are forced to copy each other to exist. Black and
white. English and American. That's not good.
ZZ: Are there any originals do you think?
TB: Well, there are some that may emerge. Dr. John is always very unique and
fun. Miles (Davis) will always be unique, whether anyone likes him or not or he
will always come out smelling like a rose 'cause he's a giant. Cleo has just
made a phenomenal impression on America. Cleo Laine. As far as groups, the
Mahavishnu thing, well that's dissolving. That had a very healthy effect.
ZZ: You think so?
TB: Oh yeah. In America anyway.
ZZ: I saw them once over here and they just blew my brains out, they were
very loud and very fast.
TB: Well let me tell you about Foghat and all those people. The English
aren't exactly the softest sounding groups. The thing that's nice about people
like Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye, and stuff like that, is that they cook at
a musical level, and they don't have to plug into the Grand Cooley [sic] Dam to
get it off, y'know, they get it off between themselves and the people. It's a
cook, it's not a bombardment of World War Two. You know the one that did it,
that really made it was Jimi Hendrix because it was him. But [--- line
missing---] exactly the same thing except without the electronics. You felt an
involvement there with the person, that's the important thing. So there are
people, there are writers, but it's moving out of music. It's moving into
politics, moving into journalism.
ZZ: I read somewhere that you were working on film scores.
TB: They were a little too expensive the for shape the business is in. They
were all comedies. I f you find anybody that's interested the door is always
open to discuss a million dollar script.
ZZ: Are you still interested in doing it?
TB: Oh yeah. I believe in what I wrote, I always do.
ZZ: You've got everything you've written?
TB: Yeah, I just have two scripts but very few people are prepared to come up
with the money. And those who are don't see eye to eye with the viewpoints. When
you're talking about a million dollars you're talking about... they can't really
believe in what you're saying. It's a little hard to flim flam a million
dollars.
Buckley has in fact, appeared in professional productions of Edward Albee's
"Zoo Story" and Sartre's "No Exit", and one of the scripts
he talks about is titled "Fully Airconditioned Inside", which he will
probably be turning into a book. According to the latest Warner press release on
him he is also adapting Joseph Conrad's novel "Out Of The Islands"
into a concept album with Larry Beckett.
Side One: Valentine Melody (Tim Buckley); Carnival Song (Goodbye
& Hello); Hallucinations (Goodbye & Hello); I Never Asked to
Be Your Mountain (Goodbye & Hello); Morning Glory (Goodbye &
Hello).
Side Two: Buzzin' Fly (Happy Sad); Sing A Song For You (Happy Sad);
Happy Time (Blue Afternoon); Dolphins (Sefronia); Martha (Sefronia).
And that's without taking anything from Lorca, Starsailor or Greetings
from LA.
Lastly, a few acknowledgments. To John Masters and Maija Deer for re-kindling
my interest in Buckley, to all you loyal readers to whom Tim Buckley's music
means so much that you were moved enough to write me threatening letters, to
Herb Cohen for falling asleep during the interview, and to Nigel Williamson who
wrote a nice article on Buckley for a future issue of Fat Angle [I] mercilessly
plundered it for info-- many thanks. Oh, and of course, regards to the man
himself, who, believe it or not, is coming back over in February to play a few
dates. Wahoo!! (to coin a well-used ZigZag phrase).
|
