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Tim Buckley and Nick Drake both died young, from heroin and tryptizol. Neither managed to achieve success during their lifetime. Tim Buckley did change his musical direction in search of fame and fortune, but critics claimed that he had sold out in search of financial success. Nick Drake released only three albums but it is considered unlikely that he would have modified his ideals toward a more accessible pop music even if he had lived longer. This is a re-examination of the careers, which re-reviews every track on every album by these singer-songwriters.

Jeff Buckley drowned in a branch of the Mississippi River on May 29,1997-the same day his band was to join him in Memphis to begin recording his eagerly anticipated second album. With his death, a rock legend died stillborn, leaving behind scattered musical works in progress, a reputation for electrifying performances, and memories of a voice that flowed effortlessly up and down five octaves in a style that made even other musicians' lyrics and melodies uniquely his own. He also left behind Grace, a recorded collection of ten songs whose power, range, and haunting beauty were equal to anything that had been put on vinyl or CD in decades. Jeff Buckley was thirty years old on that final, tragic day-just two years older than was the errant father whom Jeff rejected for rejecting him, whose heart was stopped by heroin more than twenty years before: the brilliant, troubled troubadour of the sixties Tim Buckley.

Based on interviews, many exclusive, with more than a hundred associates of both men, and letters, journals, and unreleased recordings, Dream Brother is a true story of twisting roads and bizarre parallel destinies. A double portrait of the musical life, it offers a fascinating and illuminating look at two eras of popular sound-and explores the alluring starmaker machinery that aged Jeff and betrayed Tim. It is the story of the music, capturing in words the aural magic, the virtuosic experimentation, the wild, exhilarating rush. But first and foremost, it is the intimate, heartbreaking, and unforgettable story of two musicians blessed with consummate ability, each poised on the brink of stardom when the maelstrom dragged him down-a son searching for his father, a father searching for his soul, each pursuing the same demanding and dangerously seductive muse. Alternately sad and elating, riveting and revelatory, Dream Brother offers a stunning new understanding of the Buckley tragedies and legacies while brilliantly humanizing the Buckley myth. And it stands as a clear-eyed yet loving and compassionate memorial to the conflicted, self-effacing genius of Jeff and his wild rebel father, Tim, both of whom, for the briefest of moments, blazed brighter than all the other stars in the rock heavens.

My grandfather had a beautiful voice. Irish tenor. Beautiful. Too much of a military hardass to deal with his own and his son's talents. I wish it were otherwise. I love you, you poor bastards.... With a father like this man, it is no wonder that Tim Buckley was afraid to come back to me. So afraid to be my father. Because his only paradigm for fatherhood was a deranged lunatic with a steel plate in his head.... I know that he must have been scared shitless to think he might possibly become like his father. Scared shitless of treating me the way his father treated him and his family. Can you imagine the heartbreak? The useless, shitty torture day in, day out?

-JEFF BUCKLEY, JOURNAL ENTRY, AUGUST 9, 1995

As centuries went, the eighteenth was not a particularly desirable one in which to be Irish in Ireland. The island was on its way to becoming absorbed into the United Kingdom, and the British Penal Laws drawn up between 1702 and 1719 had planted the seeds for the muzzling of native Irish culture. One law in particular made it illegal for the Irish to study and practice their own language, Gaelic, and their own traditions within their own borders. For the Irish people, the Laws were demoralizing and degrading, and they led the populace to devise increasingly covert ways to school their children in, among others, Gaelic. Illicit instructors began teaching in whatever ramshackle structures could be found- in old barns and ditches, behind the ruins of walls, even behind hedges that would hide both teacher and pupils. The latter practice gave rise to the term "hedgemaster", which came to apply to any and all of these illegal practitioners of Irish tradition.

Among the hedgemasters was at least one member of the Buckley clan, said to be from county Cork in the southwestern part of the country. According to family lore, the Buckleys were already known around Cork's sloping, green-blanketed valleys for their skills as storytellers and troubadours. As hedgemasters, they now added authority defiers to their reputation. Along with their fellow educational rebels, they consciously spat on the law of the land in order to carry on the dying and suppressed culture of their own people. The hedgemasters- and the Buckleys- would do things their way.

Among their own dubious achievements, the British Penal Laws also forced thousands of Irish to flee Ireland and settle elsewhere, and some landed in the industrial towns of upstate New York. By the early twentieth century, a descendant of one of the hedgemasters- the first Timothy Charles Buckley- and his wife, Charlotte, were living and working in one of those areas: Amsterdam, a factory town twenty miles northwest of Albany. The Mohawk River sliced through the small city, but that feature was far from its most notable. Sixty-two plants clogged the streets of Amsterdam, which was populated primarily by working-class Irish, Polish, Germans, Russians, and Italians. In the proud words of its chamber of commerce, Amsterdam was "first in the manufacture of brooms" in the nation; its factories also churned out rugs, carpets, underwear, gloves, and pearl buttons, among dozens of other everyday products. (It was also the producer of actor Kirk Douglas, born there as Issur Danielovich in 1916.) Tim Buckley had an auto repair service in town with his partner, Frank Graff, but Buckley & Graff did not last long, and by 1936, Tim senior was a full-time bartender and dwelled with his family on Mechanic Street near the Chuctanunda Creek. The Mechanic Street address was merely one of many; every year, the family would relocate to a new home.

The Buckleys' initial attempt at a family failed when their first child died shortly after birth. In November 1916, eighteen-year-old Charlotte finally bore a healthy child, a son named Timothy Charles Jr. Tim Jr. graduated high school and, by age twenty, was working in the local movie theater, the Strand, on the city's bustling, fume-choked East Main Street, near the Sears Roebuck and Penney's stores. In 1939, he took a job at the Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company ("America's style leader for over 100 years," boasted its advertisements). However, World War II altered whatever plans Tim Jr. had for his life. He had already enlisted in the National Guard in December 1937, and was placed on active duty on October 15, 1940. Then, on May 25,1942, he was drafted and assigned to the 101st Airborne. He was twenty-five.

Even under the circumstances, it was a daunting assignment. The newly activated 101st trained and prepared soldiers for an innovative form of postindustrial warfare, parachute combat; their unofficial name, the Screaming Eagles, testified to the ferocity and intensity of their mission. Tim spent four weeks in parachute school at Fort Benning in Georgia before he and his fellow dogfaces shipped out for the European theater of operations on September 5, 1943, eventually participating in campaigns at Normandy, Ardennes, northern France, and the Rhineland. Tim's outfit was originally part of companies B and D of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment- a quarter to a fifth of whom were killed in action. Tim was later transferred to ground duty as part of the 105th Infantry, Company G. In the 502nd, his official title was sergeant, but his unofficial moniker was a "demolition specialist," who, in the Army's words, "destroyed by means of explosives, such objects of military importance as bridges, roads, buildings, and railways to delay enemy action."

As with many of his fellow soldiers, Tim arrived back in America only after the war ended-on Christmas day 1945, first to Fort Dix, New Jersey, and then to Washington, DC. Judging by the slew of medals he brought back with him, including a Distinguished Unit Badge, a Bronze Star, and a Good Conduct Medal, Tim seemed a solid, honorable soldier.

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-JEFF BUCKLEY, JOURNAL ENTRY, AUGUST 9, 1995