Live At The Troubadour 1969

The Troubadour show took place just thirteen months after Dream Letter's London performance but the difference in temperament is palpable. Cosmetically, the guitar/vibes/bass line-up is not only accompanied by Collins' congas and John Balkin's bass, but Art Trip's--albeit gently shuffling--drums too. On Dream Letter, Buckley sounds blissed out, enraptured, like he's just discovered the range, or lack thereof, of his gift, singing like a wayward choirboy testing the limits of a new-found toy, sounding like a swoon some minstrel (not a far-fetched image, given the British trad-folk/madrigal leanings of songs like Phantasmagoria In Two or the self-acknowledging Troubadour) although the cherubic beachboy was equally present.

At the Troubadour, the wounded-hobo persona more common to Buckley's own time and background that was only emerging in London, had now ripened. The music, mostly taken from 1970's Lorca and Blue Afternoon albums, bleeds even bluesy, jazzier colors, with aspects of calypso thrown in for good measure, the band suitable drifting on the advancing folk-jazz plateaus and cooking on the verge of funk when the need and beat arose. Not withstanding the uncanny, uncharted vocal gymnastics of Starsailor, Buckley's improvisational technique can be appreciated in a truly empathic environment.

Stretching and cajoling, teasing and scatting, snorting and starsailing, he canoodles the notes in ecstatic reverie--unique, startling, liberating, bending notes across verses and choruses, leading the band through some turbulent fire. "Ooh, cast your spell on Timmy," he shrieks at the climax of Gypsy Woman, while Nobody Walkin' effortlessly stretches out as far as the Venice Beach tide. "In rock, when somebody hits a wrong not, they don't know what to do with it," Buckley felt. "Rock music is so over-rehearsed...I've seen Roland Kirk make a mistake and integrate it, elevate the music."

If Dream Letter was suffused with the atmosphere of California's sun-splashed dreamdays (in the sleeve-notes of Dream Letter, Underwood remembers the endless summer of that time, he and Buckley living in Venice Beach with their girlfriends, swimming by day and partying by night), then Live At The Troubadour was backlit by another mood, like Buckley was gently frazzling under the sun ("dizzy sunlight", as Buckley phrases it), or flying a little too close to it.

Remember, this was 1969, when 60s idealism was confused and disillusioned (what would the 70s bring anyway?). Alcohol was a staple by now, while the drugs were getting stronger: heroin took Buckley farther out, and further in too. When introducing Venice Mating Call (one of two unreleased tracks alongside I Don't Need It To Rain), he gives it a second title, All We Are Saying Is Give Smack A Chance, guffawing in almost slapstick, knee-slapping manner. Chilling, in fact.

Buckley was unquestionably driven by a need to explore: the product-led, mechanical path was eschewed in favor of emotionally honest, tightrope-walking creativity. "The way Jac (Holzman, of Elektra Record, Buckley's first label) had it set up," he ventured, "you were supposed to move on artistically, but the way the business is, you're not. You're supposed to repeat what you've done before, and there's a dichotomy there."

Danny Thompson, who remained friends and occasional musical collaborator after playing with Buckley at Queen Elizabeth Hall, and a man with more anecdotes than is rightly fair in one human, had a first-hand opportunity to appreciate Buckley's muse and the forces that fed it.

"I would say he was like a naughty boy, just like me at the time," Thompson suggests. "If someone dared him to do something, he'd do it. He was a bit of a free spirit, but I also was a bit of a loner. But unlike most people who get into drugs, he wasn't a sad junkie figure, but more like a naughty boy who said, 'OK, I'll have a go, I'll drink that, smoke that...'" but he found out that reality was different to his imagination. The fact he died through being naughty, because he was in good shape when he died, made it even more tragic. But then someone probably said, 'Have a go,' and he did, but he was out of shape as far as drug-taking goes.

"He was a tremendous songwriter. A lot of people on their deathbed are given vast amounts of plaudits, and I don't want to sound all cynical, but a lot can come from sympathetic and patronizing efforts to say something of great importance. All I can say is that Tim was unique, who no one could impersonate. He was someone who would now be though of alongside the other great balladeers of our time. I feel privileged to have been touched by his persona.

"It was his voice more than anything. When you listen to a song, the first thing that attracts you is the way it's sung, then you hear the words after, and Tim had a beautiful voice in the truest sense of the word. A lot of artists use their voice as an instrument, people like Dylan and Van Morrison who sometimes mumble through words and use it as an effect in their performance, but Tim's voice was very beautifully clear, a powerful lead instrument.

"In that era of 60s hippiedom, all the acid stuff, Tim stood out as someone who didn't sing about surfing and butterflies, but more serious love songs and sad songs. There were a lot of other meanings besides all that drug-induced bandwagon that people go on, and when you look back, we can see how important that was, as there was a lot of that butterfly stuff about.

"He also didn't talk about music and art and how a number should go, but gave me the freedom to play what I wanted. At Queen Elizabeth Hall, I didn't even write down the parts. The good thing about spontaneity is that it can be devastatingly brilliant if it works. Tim used to improvise a lot; he didn't get into a routine of singing 'the song'. I remember we did a TV special, and after rehearsing all these camera runs, and when it came to do the show in front of 1500 people, the cameraman turned, pointed to us and Tim turned round and said 'Let's do another song', which we'd never rehearsed, and turned out to be two minutes longer than the one planned. The bloke was coming up to Tim, putting his finger across his throat, but Tim just looked at him with a puzzled expression and carried on, like music and art was far more important than all this rubbish that surrounded it."

Whether, after Starsailor, which spectaculously bombed, he was still smitten by new challenges, or just figured, wearily, that the rubbish that surrounded his art was too strong to confront and he'd meet the mainstream half-way, is detectable. Having laid low, Buckley's comeback was another typical about-face, toward the twin peaks of funk and soul, led by the ecstatic sound of Marvin Gaye and James Brown.

1972's Greetings From LA was sensual, feverish and frayed, with Buckley in supremely hollering and crooning mood, as if desperately spellbound by sex and devotion. The neo-MOR frills of 1973's Sefronia were a strange and patchy aberration, with rare glimpses of free-flowing reverie; then came the burnt-out Tijuana soul of 1974's Look At The Fool, arguably Buckley's nadir, yet his light refused to go out.

Until. After completing a tour to support Look At The Fool, Buckley attended a party: during the evening, by default, he gave smack a chance. Reportedly, his last words were "Bye bye baby." Albums like Dream Letter and Live At The Troubadour give us the chance to say, sentimentally or not, goodbye and hello. They also give us the chance to believe that there was archive material in those American vaults. Even if there is no more left--and we wont' give up believing there is more--at least we have that voice. As Song To The Siren implores, "Come hear me sing...swim to me, let me enfold you . Here I am, here I am. Waitin' to hold you."

© 1994 Martin Aston