Tim Buckley's Death: What Impact Did It Have in 1975?

I don't think he was in any position to continue in the Lorca/Starsailor vein, as those albums had sold so poorly that no label - not even an independent - would have sanctioned any more. Had his previous albums sold more and established him, more risk-taking might have been possible. But Tim wasn't Neil Young...

I like Greetings.....but not the follow-ups (where he did seem to be running dry on ideas). Quite a few people bought Greetings....thinking it was going to be (as the cover art suggested) an album of environmentally-conscious songs about pollution/green issues, etc. They got a shock when they actually heard it!

 

I had barely heard of Tim, but my wife was absolutely devastated when hearing of his death. She was a huge fan for a few years before but had never got the chance to see him play live. Finally in 1974 he was playing a festival at Knebworth (I think it was) and she planned to go see him. Unfortunately her best friend planned her wedding for the same day so she had to call off going to the festival. One of her biggest regrets.

 

That sounds like a real bummer.

 

Not sure about the weekly press in the UK but there were three pages in the monthly Let it Rock which I'll post here for interest.

 

There was also a page in the monthly Zigzag written by Andy Childs who was ZZ editor at that point. I remember reading this at the time although I hadn't heard any of his music

A few years later I ordered the back issues mentioned in the obit. After a friend lent me Happy Sad...and I has hooked. But as far as I remember, only Goodbye and Hello was in print at the time - Blue Afternoon, Lorca and Starsailor had been out of print a long time before. Sefronia was in my local lending library so I taped that.

Look At The Fool was disappointing but I don't see why he couldn't have made decent albums after that - he had a bit a habit of changing direction before so could have done again with ease.

 

That would be OK with me as long as you sent a nickel of each dime to Fred Neil (were he alive).

 

But The Monkees was regularly in syndication throughout the 1970s. I was aware of Tim Buckley in the mid-1970s specifically because of the Monkees connection. I wan't reading Rolling Stone or rock rags at that age, though, so I would have had no idea that he'd died.

 

Fred should have been getting his nickels from David Crosby.

 

I always thought that Tim could have went in the same direction that Jackson Browne went. That style of music would have suited him. Jackson and Tim grew up around the same area. Sort of a 1970s update of Goodbye and Hello.

 

It sure hit me hard...

 

I think Goodbye & Hello and (parts of) Happy Sad are as personal as he got: several songs on those albums deal with his (non) relationship with his son and the breakdown of his very brief early marriage - but they are dealt with very obliquely, in the language of metaphor. I get the feeling he didn't feel wholly comfortable putting his personal life into songs.

 

Marc Bolan was a big deal in America and his death had people talking about it. He had a following before Electric Warrior but that definitely upped his popularity. You can go out here and find T-Rex LPs all over the place. Tim Buckley albums are tough to come by. He did not have much of a following and his albums obviously did not sell well. I wish I could come across some of his early ones!

 

I thought I read somewhere that his voice couldn't take it if he continued making albums in the style of Starsailor or Lorca, but I could be wrong.

 

Same here.

 

It's true that Bolan was not the massive success in the US that he was in the UK, but he was definitely well known in my circle of friends (I was in my teens when "Electric Warrior" and "The Slider" were released). I know that most folks overseas got the impression he flopped in the States, but he really didn't do badly at all...he just didn't have the level of mega-success here that he desired at the time. But he WAS a moderate success, and most rock fans were familiar with at least some of his work. And his death had a great impact with a lot of us.

As far as Tim Buckley goes, I was really into music at the time and enjoyed "Greetings From LA", but the followup records were too impenetrable for my more straightforward rock & roll tastes back then. By the time he passed away he was looked upon as a cult artist, possibly considered past his prime (whether justified or not) by many.

 

Never heard that before. Interesting, if true.

 

I believe when he attempted to conquer America in 1974, Paul Simon ripped him a new one and went public on how useless he talentless he thought Bolan was. That may have had something to do with the perception (shared by many in Britain) that Bolan flopped in America (and the fact that he only had one really 'big' single).

Then again, I've heard it asserted that Bowie is largely a cult artist in America, despite having big-selling albums and a number one single. He was a big deal in 1974-75 but thereafter his American profile nosedived with the Berlin Trilogy, etc.

 

Well, you know...although I do like him a lot, I don't think that Paul Simon was (or is) T. Rex's target audience. So I could understand him thinking that.

And I can say without question that David Bowie was NOT largely a cult artist in America in the 1970's. I don't think that someone whose American profile "nosedived" would be regularly doing arena tours (which he was still doing in the late 1970s).

Bowie was an artist who toured America regularly all through the 1970s. After he got attention in the US with Ziggy, he was not the massive success he was in the UK, but he continued to tour the 'heartland' of the US regularly (not just the large cities), building up an audience gradually and getting a rep for being a great live act, and getting regular radio play in the process. (Genesis did kind of the same thing in the mid-70s, except without the radio play, lol.) So even though the 'Berlin Trilogy' was not as radio friendly as the earlier stuff, he was still playing large places, getting attention, and getting people in the concert seats.

Now, Tim Buckley could definitely be considered a "cult artist" in America at that time. David Bowie? No...

 

Too soon.

 

I had read about him in Hit Parader and saw his appearance on The Monkees, and I liked his style, but somehow it didn't resonate with me enough to start buying his albums at the time. First one I bought was Happy Sad in a Goodwill for 25 cents in 1978. It blew me away but I had no idea he had died until a few years later. I now have 12 of his albums including 4 of his archival live albums. From his first folk-flavored album through the Baroque textures of Goodbye and Hello, the stripped down jazz-folk of Happy Sad, the mellow introspection of Blue Afternoon, the uncompromising avant garde experimentation of Lorca and Starsailor, to the sexually charged funk rock of Greetings From L.A. and the more mainstream leanings of Sefronia and Look At the Fool, there is much to like about all of his albums, including the live Dream Letter, Live at the Troubadour, and more. He was a defiantly uncompromising artist; a fierce musical integrity that kept his star from rising.

 

David Bowie was a big star in America from 1972 on, if not earlier. He was playing 15,000 seat arenas in small Midwestern cities in the mid-1970s and his popularity never really waned. He was still playing 15,000 seat arenas in small Midwestern cities in the late 1980s. He was not just a cult figure.

In the late 1970s, a lot of artists were putting out albums that their earlier fans thought were not the greatest, from Santana to Elton John to George Harrison. It was just something that was happening. The artists, including Bowie, remained big stars who happened to have a few albums which were not as well loved as their best ones. Bowie's Berlin trilogy was critically acclaimed in America. I saw David Bowie on the Johnny Carson-hosted Tonight show when Scary Monsters first came out--only the biggest stars appeared on Johnny Carson then.

Tim Buckley was a cult figure in America with a very small cult. I had one of his Electra albums in 1975, because I had found it for $1 in a cut out bin and decided to go for it. All of the many other music lovers in my college dorm had never heard of him in the mid-1970s. No one talked about his death.

 

By most accounts, Tim Buckley was feeling optimistic at the time of his death - enthused about creating new material and possibly releasing a live album. He seemed confident he was emerging from his recent personal/career doldrums.

No idea about his drug use - I'd always assumed that, like most musicians of his age and background, he took the occasional toke but I don't know that he was an especially 'big' user.

 

I imagine it had a terrible impact on his son...