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

Jeff only met his Dad once, apparently.

 

My age too, and I heard about his death but it didn't seem to make much impact generally.

Ditto Nick Drake. I fact I think I may have already been listening to his music without actually knowing he was dead, for a while.

 

I think I've heard that too. Can only imagine it was perhaps just as difficult to deal with because the possibility of ever having him in his life was forever snuffed.

 

I had the pleasure of meeting Tim Buckley at Platterpus records(no longer in business)in Santa Monica, CA in the early 1970's while I was a student at Santa Monica college. I was aware of Tim's fame from the late 1960's, but he was kind of in decline at the time due to changing music trends. I remember a couple of years later when it was reported that he died from a drug overdose. It was almost a non news event.

I remember thinking to myself what a pity it was because he had been such a musical success story. I think by the time he died, the public had become numb to drug overdoses due to the passing of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix. and Jim Morrison. Buckley had just become another name on the list.

 

Sax-son, I was thinking that too. I and a friend liked a couple of his early albums and got hooked on Greetings from L.A. (which btw sounded wonderful on a good sound system). I was not listening to him much by the time he died, and probably read about it in the S.F. Chronicle and/or Rolling Stone. I imagine it was announced on the Bay Area FM stations too. I was not especially shocked; so many musicians seemed to be dying from drug use back then, it would not have been that startling. I think I still have a few of his albums but haven't played them in ages. I don't think I'd enjoy introspective folky ones (with very few exceptions, I just can't handle that genre any more) but I might spin Greetings one of these days, for old times sake.

 

Thank you for starting this thread. I think Tim Buckley enjoyed a level of success that most musicians on this forum, myself included, would only dream of. These things are relative, of course. I mean, I never played Knebworth, or made an album that hit #81 on the pop charts (Happy Sad).

You are correct that by all accounts Tim was quite energetic about his future, and was likely approaching yet another style transformation. I too like to imagine that he would have spun out of his "doldrums" and found a way to survive into the late 70s and perhaps even to the present as an artist with a small but dedicated following. There are a lot of artists from the 60s-70s who still make a living today playing for 100-200 people per night in intimate venues.

As for his drug use, it's my understanding that Tim in fact was a heavy user--not necessarily beyond de rigueur of the day, but certainly in that groove. Lee Underwood explained that Tim typically got clean during touring cycles in order to deliver strong performances, but then hit it hard during breaks. This, according to Underwood, perhaps explains his overdose--the irony that getting clean and healthy resulted in a system that couldn't withstand the accidental high dosage.

 

They only met once when Jeff was , I think, 10.
He stayed at Tim's house for a few days and supposedly Tim basically ignored Jeff.
This is all from the Dream Brother book.
Before Jeff died, he refered to his Ex-Step father as his real dad....got him into Led Zeppelin.

 

Yes, I read that, too. Another terrible piece of irony - like Keith Moon o.d. ing on an anti-alcoholism tablet.

 

Barely a blip. He was a cult artist who never broke through to the mainstream.

Folk fans and few real music fans were upset by the news

 

Wow. I didn't know that specific feature of Moon's OD. And I'm a big Who fan. Terrible.

 

I once found an old French music mag with a several pages long obit on Nick Drake.
It started with "Nick Drake, one of the best singer-songwriterss in England, has just died, and the British music press has hardly even mentioned it."
Sadly, the article continued with "Thank God we still have Tim Buckley."

 

Yah, I remember reading a small article in Rolling Stone magazine about it, It was like some obscure person from the 1950's or something. I was really put off that a magazine of that stature would put so little effort into it. A shame really.

 

Had Arthur Lee died in 1975, he would probably have had a similar obituary in R.S.

 

Lady time fly away
I've been thinking 'bout my yesterday
Oh, please listen darlin' to my empty prayers
Sleep inside my dreams tonight
All I need to know tonight are you and my child

Oh, is he a soldier or is he a dreamer?
Is he mama's little man?
Does he help you when he can?
Or does he ask about me?

Just like a soldier boy
I been out fighting wars
That the world never knows about
But I never win them loud
There's no crowds around me

But when I get to thinkin'
'Bout the old days
When love was here to stay
I wonder if we'd ever tried
Oh, what I'd give to hold him.

"Dream Letter" from Happy Sad was a pretty direct expression of Tim's feelings. About as naked as Tim's lyrics ever got.

 

True. But I don't think much was known about his private life at that point. I only learned about his marriage and son when I got the Dream Letter set, where Lee Underwood goes into some detail about both.

 

You're probably right. I was in a LA club during the 1980's where Arthur Lee was visiting the band that was playing that night. He was in a really bad way.

 

Listening to the two interviews of Tim Buckley and then his son Jeff was very sad. Sometimes people overthink life!

 

By the late 70's you could still get all of Tim's albums in the racks except "Blue Afternoon" and "Starsailor". That says something?

 

Jeff didn't even know his name was Buckley until much later. When he was growing up he was known as "Scotty Moorhead". His mom had always used his middle name, and the last name of his stepdad. He eventually found the name Jeff Buckley on his birth certificate and started using it. Apparently, some of his family continued to refer to him as Scotty even after he no longer went by that name.

He stayed on friendly terms with his stepdad Ron Moorhead - even after his mom and Ron split. From Jeff Buckley: River's Edge

"Jeff and I had a wonderful talk on the telephone a few days prior to the accident," says Moorhead. "He always reassured me that I was his dad and he was my son. Jeff was so happy. He told me he had stopped smoking and stopped eating meat. He was so excited about going into the studio; he felt his voice was the best it had ever been. Nothing in this world will ever take away the hurt in my heart, but the fact that I know my Scotty was so happy and full of joy softens my tears."​

Yeah - briefly - when he was 8. Tim died two months later - on June 29, 1975.

Ironically - if Tim had been a habitual heroin user, he might have survived. As has been mentioned, Tim was kind of a binge drug user. Completely clean during the tours to protect his voice, afterwards, he couldn't say no.

There's a theory this may have led to Jeff's downfall as well. Not drugs - Jeff apparently never touched the hard stuff. But - jumping in to a dangerous river with combat boots and pockets weighed down with keys? Was that ability to break boundaries also an inability to pull back from the edge? Hard to say exactly.

As for me - I learned about Tim from the Monkees episode - although I caught it in syndication in the late 70's - not when it was originally aired. I was mesmerized by that song - but couldn't find anyone who knew anything about it.

Later on - reading the Illustrated New Musical Express Encyclopedia of Rock in Junior High School in about 1978 or so - I finally found a reference to Tim Buckley - and found out what had happened to him. Even before I had heard any of his other work, I remember thinking it was a huge tragedy.

Cheers,
Paul

 

I was a fan enough to buy most of his albums, but never caught him live, so I was sad when I read of his passing in Rolling Stone, etc. I was much sadder at his son's death because he was great artist just coming into his own. Those future masterpieces never got to happen.

 

I never heard of him or his death in high school at that time.

 

Thanks so much for posting this! I'd never seen it...