Tim Buckley was a hugely influential singer and guitar player, over the course of his career, he developed a style that fused folk, blues, jazz, soul, and psychedelic rock. Buckley was known for his original singing, music writer and critic Piero Scaruffi called his singing “a combination of African melisma, Tibetan droning, jazz scat and acid-rock wailing.” He was the father of musician Jeff Buckley, who only met his father once when he was 8 years old.

Tim Charles Buckley III was born in Washington D.C., on Valentine’s Day, 1947, to Elaine (née Scalia) and Timothy Charles Buckley Jr.. He spent his early childhood in Amsterdam, New York. He began listening to his mother’s progressive jazz recordings as young as 5 years old, particularly the work of Miles Davis.

In 1956, his family moved to Bell Gardens in southern California. His grandmother introduced him to the work of Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, his mother to Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, and his father to the country music of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.

In 1960, when he was 13 years old, Buckly developed an interest in folk music, taking banjo lessons and playing in a folk group with some school friends; they were heavily influenced by groups like The Kingston Trio. Exposure to the Beatles later in the decade would further influence Buckley’s music tastes, though they would remain very eclectic.

In 1965, after finishing high school, Buckley moved with his family to Anaheim. Buckley attended Fullerton College, but dropped out after only two weeks, choosing to dedicate himself fully to his music. In Anaheim he met bassist Jim Fielder and songwriter Larry Beckett, who would become long-time friends and collaborators. The three would meet at Beckett’s house to listen to Dave Brubeck and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Buckley made the switch from banjo to guitar, and pretty soon the three were writing songs and performing together. At first performing very conventional folk and rock n’ roll, they very quickly got experimental. The trio formed two bands, The Bohemians, for radio-friendly rock n’ roll, and the acoustic Harlequins 3, for folk and alternative music.

Fielder was an acquaintance of Jimmy Carl Black, the drummer and singer for Mothers of Invention, who invited Fielder, Beckett, and Buckley to come see the Mothers perform, and introduce them to the band’s manager, Herb Cohen. Cohen was the manager for some of the most influential and experimental artists of the time, including names like Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Lenny Bruce, Linda Ronstadt, and Tom Waits. Cohen was initially interested in Buckley as a songwriter, but was blown away by his singing ability, saying it was “so unlike what anybody else was doing at the time.”

Buckley recorded his eponymous debut album, Tim Buckley, in just three days in August 1966, releasing it under Elektra Records in October 1966. It is Buckley’s most straightforward and accessible album, lacking the experimentation he would come to be known for on his later albums. The lyrics and melodies are incredibly sophisticated for a 19 year old’s debut album, and only seem poor in comparison to his later work.

Buckley’s second album, Goodbye and Hello (1967), was much more ambitious and experimental. Buckley used a wider range of instruments, playing the 6-string guitar, 12-string guitar, bottleneck guitar, kalimba, and vibraphone. Music writer and critic Pierro Scaruffi called the track “Phantasmagoria in Two” “the most beautiful love song of all time, suspended in a slow and anemic refrain that gradually fades into an eternal and poignant melancholy; it is a delirium of solitude and fear that transcends the courteous pretext and sinks into apocalyptic vertigo of darkness, a void of emptiness that compresses the chest and prevents the scream from exploding.” Goodbye and Hello was heavily influenced by Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde (1966), which Buckley spent months listening to and trying to imitate. Blonde on Blonde’s influence on the album is evident, but Buckley is a much more tender and emotional singer, in contrast to Dylan’s severe monotone.

Buckley’s third album, Happy Sad (1969), is really where he began to find himself and his style. For this album, Buckley chose to write the lyrics for the songs himself, rather than relying on Beckett; his lyrics were a stark contrast to Beckett’s very literary and political style. The vocals were also more drawn out, marking the beginning of Buckley’s experimentation with his own voice as an instrument. The tracks on Buckley’s first two albums were largely “speaking songs”, where the lyrics were the driving force of the song. The music on Happy Sad and succeeding albums focused much more on the instruments and sound, with the lyrics becoming ancillary. Buckley’s folk-rock style is heavily contaminated by elements of jazz, with the songs becoming much less structured and improvised. Happy Sad was Buckley’s most commercially successful album, reaching No. 81 on the US Pop albums chart.

On Blue Afternoon (1969), Buckley’s fourth studio album, typical song structure is abandoned entirely. While all of Buckley’s albums have a melancholy feel to them, Blue Afternoon has a distinctly solitary and gloomy tone. Buckley further explores the folk-jazz synthesis he began to dabble with on Happy Sad, the song “Blue Melody” wouldn’t sound out of place in a smoke-filled cabaret. The tracks are longer and more freeform than his previous works, though not nearly as much as they would become on Lorca (1970) and Starsailor (1970). Blue Afternoon was intended by Buckley as a more “conventional” album to precede his “experimental” album Lorca.

Lorca is an experimental album in the vein of Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica (1969), recorded in September 1969 and released June 1970. If previous albums had been influenced by collaborators and/or the public, this was an album Buckley wrote just for himself. Beckett claimed that Buckley was purposefully trying to alienate his fanbase with Lorca. Rhythm is more of a suggestion in Lorca than anything, with the beat shifting and sometimes disappearing entirely in tracks ranging 6 to 10 minutes in length.

Starsailor is considered to be Buckley’s masterpiece, where his folk-jazz fusion is fully mature and developed. Buckley’s psychedelic influences are on full display on this album, giving the songs a dreamlike, ethereal quality. The album’s name "Starsailor", is a literal English rendering of the Greek-derived word "astronaut."

Greetings from L.A. (1972) marks a sudden shift in Buckley’s style. A vibrant, funky-soul tone dominates the tracks. The lyrics are also much more erotic; where previous albums had been dominated by the theme of drugs, Greetings from L.A., with tracks like “Move with Me”, “Get on Top”, and “Sweet Surrender”, is dominated by sex.

Buckley made frequent use of 12-string guitars in his music, he began to experiment with the instrument on Goodbye and Hello, and used it exclusively on Happy Sad, Blue Afternoon, Lorca, and Greetings from L.A. (1972). 12-string guitars have a richer sound than normal 6-string guitars. The double ranks of strings of the 12-string guitar tend to vibrate out of phase, the result is a sound that seems to "shimmer", creating a fuller and more harmonically resonant sound.

Buckley recorded two more albums, Sefronia (1973) and Look at the Fool (1974). The tracks have a soul-rock style, with a choir and string section to accompany him.

On June 29, 1975, Jeff Buckley died of a heroin overdose. He was 28 years old.

Reference List

https://www.scaruffi.com/vol1/buckley.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Buckley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-string_guitar

https://timbuckley.net/bios/musician.shtml