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Dream Letter - Live in London 1968 (1990)
Tim Buckley possessed a golden voice that spanned the range from baritone to tenor. Most importantly, he knew what to do with it. Sometimes he used it simply as a vehicle to carry the lyrics. Other times he used it as an extraordinary musical instrument in its own right. Standing on stage beside him, playing guitar, listening to the compassion, hope, tenderness, desperation, anguish, wistfulness, love and power surging through his voice, I often felt my spine shiver with goosebumps. Between 1966 and 1975, Buckley released 9 albums. Throughout that time, he sang like nobody else I've ever heard. I loved and respected Tim and his music. That's why I gave myself to his creative visions, and that's why I write these words today--not out of sentimental melancholy for him or the vanished '60s, but out of the love and respect I have always felt for him, down to this very moment. Unforgettable. Worth it all. Recorded in London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on July 10, 1968, this live concert was a two-hour gem. It showcases five songs from Goodbye and Hello, three songs from Happy/Sad, one song that later appeared on Blue Afternoon ("Happy Time"), another that was later recorded on Sefronia ("Dolphins," written by Fred Neil). It also contains six pieces that to my knowledge were never recorded elsewhere -- "The Troubadour," "I Been Out Walkin'," "Who Do You Love," "The Earth Is Broken," "Wayfarin' Stranger" and "Carnival Song" (not from Goodbye and Hello, but new). For three songs--"Pleasant Street," "The Earth Is Broken," and "Wayfarin' Stranger" (a folk song)--Tim stands alone, strumming his 12-string acoustic guitar, singing into the spotlight unaccompanied. On all others, Tim is joined by myself on guitar, David Friedman on vibes and Danny Thompson on bass. I toured and recorded with Tim from the beginning in 1966 through 1970, only occasionally thereafter. He and I remained best friends until his death. Friedman had recorded on Happy/Sad, and later recorded on Blue Afternoon. This was the first of his several tours with Buckley. Danny Thompson, bassist for the British folk group Pentangle, was hired only for this concert. He had never played Buckley's music before. As you can hear, Friedman and Thompson both performed with impressive skill and high-flying emotion. Because of transportation costs and hotel rates, Tim was not able to bring conga player Carter C.C. Collins or bassist John Miller to England. Both of these sterling musicians contributed significantly to Buckley's music during this period, and Carter was a regular member of Buckley's various groups for many years. He often served as a source of inspiration, strength and good cheer, and his musicianship and upbeat stage personality delighted Buckley fans everywhere. Born in Washington, D.C., on Valentine's Day 1947, Tim was only 21 when we recorded this concert. He had released three albums--Tim Buckley (1966), Goodbye and Hello (1967) and, just prior to this trip, Happy/Sad. The years between 1966 and 1969 were the glory years. Tim was appreciated by his fans and respected by his peers. There was a perfect match between what Tim needed to create and what his audiences wanted to hear. Tim was young. He was successful. His music was played on the radio. At one point, he had a giant Goodbye and Hello billboard overlooking Sunset Strip. His music made the charts. Along the way, French pop singer Jacques Brel and opera singers Paul Robeson and Leontyne Price personally told him he was the most exciting vocalist they had ever heard. He lived with Janie Goldstein (of "Janie don't you know" fame on the first album) in Venice, California, right near the beach. I lived with artist/dancer Jennifer Stace nearby, on the same street. During the sunsplashed afternoons, we swam in the ocean, riding waves like the seals. By night, we listened to music, played our own songs, and partied 'til dawn with our friends. We of course thought those days would last forever. They were our endless summers. Dream Letter (Live In London 1968) emerges from the period of Tim's greatest popularity, and embodies three of his five creative stages--the folk-oriented music of Tim Buckley; the folk-rock of Goodbye and Hello; and the jazz influences of Happy/Sad. The equally thrilling avant-garde classical stage of Lorca and Starsailor, and the sex-drenched white-funk dance period of Greetings From L.A., Sefronia and Look At The Fool were yet to come. Understandably, much of the music in this London concert reflects the joyful youthfulness, the searing energy and the high ideals of the turbulent '60s. And yet it survives the ravages of time amazingly well. Neither conceptually nor stylistically does it sound dated. True, many listeners will be transported down Memory Lane to the events they experienced more than 20 years ago, and they will re-live the youthful passions they felt back then while listening to many of these very same songs. Music can be powerful that way. It seems to me, however, that this concert transcends nostalgia. Many listeners will experience the intensity and beauty of the music immediately and directly, not through the rosy mists of memory, but here and now, in the living present, as if it were recorded only yesterday. In a sense, of course, it was. All time-past is yesterday. One of the reasons this music sounds so fresh and hits home so directly is because, by 1968, Buckley was insisting upon improvisation, not just from himself, but from all of us. Unlike many other musicians then (and now), he refused to create a commercially successful style (such as the folk-rock sound of Goodbye and Hello), only to stick with it forever simply to generate money. Nor did he want to create slick, technically perfect, inanimate, product-music, because, above all, he was natural, honest and emotionally naked. In no way during this period did he want to merely arrange, rehearse, memorize and reproduce a mechanical "act." In 1968, and throughout the years encompassing Happy/Sad and Starsailor (which he and many others regarded as his masterpiece), he wanted his music to be born spontaneously out of the intensity of the moment. He wanted it to be supremely human, flaws and all, true to the immediate instant, faithful to the performance context and to the heartbeat of living time. As a result, Dream Letter is not a glossy, money-based, Top-40, manufactured, MTV, product-imitation of emotion. It is not a corporate sham, and it doesn't date itself, because it's the real thing, with real fire and real tenderness. It's alive in this moment, right here, right now. As this concert reveals, Buckley was indeed an adventurous and entertaining performer. But he was also much more than a mere "entertainer." For a while, as on this album, his music matched the mood and familiar concepts of the day. As a result, he gave us mirrors, and his music was relatively successful in the commercial arena. As he moved beyond the familiar, into the unknown, he gave us portals. The whole of his career vividly demonstrated that he was a serious, dedicated artist. He evolved. His first loyalty was not to the values of entertainment or business, but to music itself, to the creative process, and to the unfathomable mystery and complexity of the human heart. Love. Compassion. Humanity. These were the universal, timeless elements that fueled his creative fires from beginning to end. These are the same elements which in this recording speak to us so intimately today. True, Buckley was arbitrarily gifted with good looks, intelligence, talent and an amazing voice. But what he did with those gifts over the years was not the least bit arbitrary. He became a conceptual innovator and a radical, renegade musical adventurer. That took vision, integrity, hard work, stamina, and enormous personal courage. Calling themselves "realists," most of Buckley's friends sold their integrity for money, exploited their talent for security and relinquished their dreams for historical oblivion. Buckley, on the other hand, had the courage to do it his way. And now he lives through his music, just as I and a few others knew and said he would. Nearly all of his recordings have been or will be re-issued. His music was featured throughout Hall Bartlett's first-rate film, Changes. Tim always want to get a live album out there, and now he has it. Those people who stuck by Tim while he lived and did not betray his memory after he died are clearly vindicated. There was irony in Buckley's death. During the '60s, along with millions of others, Tim explored psychedelic drugs. During the early '70s, after Starsailor bombed, he turned to booze. During his last years, he gained a degree o f control, especially before road tours, when he exercised, took his vitamins, got in shape and did the tour, after which he partied. On June 29, 1975, following his final gig in Dallas, he partied too much. He drank; he snorted heroin. Ironically, his system could not absorb the overload, precisely because it was clean. He died at home, and was cremated. He is survived by his second wife, Judy, and her son, Taylor; and by Jeffrey Scott, his son from his first marriage. When we clear away the debris that surrounds Buckley's legend, one major contribution seems to endure. Over the course of his evolutionary career, and perhaps especially during his Lorca/Starsailor period, he did for the voice what Hendrix did for the guitar, what Cecil Taylor did for the piano and what John Coltrane did for the saxophone: he soared into glorious freedom, taking his music where no other improvisational vocalist has ever gone before--or since. As I wrote in down beat (June 16, 1977): Tim Buckley held hands with the world for a while. He gave in fire and fury and perverse humor the totality of his life's experience, which was vast far beyond his mere 28 years. He courageously stood on the arena-stages of our barrooms and auditoriums, ultimately alone, singing from within his own flames like a demon possessed. He had a beauty of spirit, a beauty of song and a beauty of personage that re-etched the face of the lives of all who knew him, and of all who ever truly heard him sing. He burned with a very special flame, one of a kind. No doubt about that. Bye-bye, baby. Lee Underwood Shortly before Tim Buckley's death, Lee Underwood began
writing about music and musicians for numerous publications. He initially wrote
about jazz, and served as down beat's West Coast Editor from 1975-1981,
then wrote about world music, spacemusic and meditations music from 1980-1990.
His essays, interviews and reviews appeared in the Los Angeles Times, L.A.
Weekly, Body/Mind/Spirit, New Frontier, New Realities, New
Age Retailer, Pulse and numerous other journals. In 1989, he
co-authored flutist Paul Horn's autobiography, Inside Paul Horn
(HarperCollins; 1990). In 1991, he receive the Crystal Award for Music
Journalism at the NAM Convention in Hollywood. Underwood presently lives in the
mountains north of Santa Fe, where he writes, takes photographs, plays guitar
and piano and composes his own music.
DREAM LETTER: Disc One: 1. INTRODUCTION Disc Two: TIM BUCKLEY: VOCALS, 12-STRING ACOUSTIC GUITAR Recorded July 10, 1968 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London,
England Produced by Bill Inglot and Lee Hammond All Songs written by Buckley, published by Third Story
Music [BMI], |
