Lorca

Nevertheless, Buckley still owed Elektra an album, and he, Collins, Underwood and bassist John Balkin put together Lorca, which was released in 1970 on the Elektra Standard label.

"Standard" was a new term which Polydor (who distributed Elektra) had introduced into its several subsidiaries and was a budget line reserved for albums which they deemed to be of "minority interest". Tim thus joined the Stooges' Funhouse for this unlikely accolade.

Retailing at 29/10*, the combination of lower price, and the common knowledge that this was a contractual obligation, did nothing to help sales and this is easily the scarcest of Buckley's Elektra releases.

Lorca was, however, no compromise and remains a vital link in his musical path. The second side continued the style of the previous two albums, a shade less carefully perhaps, but the three tracks -- which are spread over twenty minutes -- are clearly from the same mould.

The first side is, however, something different and marked Buckley's first steps into the free-form compositions which would characterise his next collection. Confusing time changes, meandering voices and keyboards; such descriptions only hint at the depth this work possessed.

If you imagine the Soft Machine without the pretension and a fluid, superior, multi-octave vocalist, then that might go part-way to giving a picture of the two tracks on this side. It was, almost inevitably, a commercial failure.

If Lorca was an introduction to Buckley's new direction, then Starsailor was the culmination. With this album, Tim Buckley left behind whatever label might have been used to describe his music.

It certainly wasn't folk, nor rock; again, jazz would be the closest field, if only for a convenient comparison. But there were equal shades of avant-garde classics, the atonal blacks of Krystov Penderecki are as prevalent here as that of Ornette Coleman or the Ascension-period John Coltrane. Buckley, Balkin, and Underwood were joined by Mauri Baker on tympani along with two of the Mothers, Buzz and Bunk Gardner, who added flute, sax, trumpet and flugelhorn.

Larry Beckett also returned, co-composing four of the nine songs. From the record, Song To The Siren is by now the most familiar, thanks to the version by This Mortal Coil, as well as its placing on Rhino's recent compilation, Best of Tim Buckley.

Starsailor is far from being comfortable listening, but it was never intended to be so. It asserts, challenges, and demands the listener's attention and, to Buckley's dismay, it was generally savaged upon release as being self-indulgent and "difficult". Sales were minimal and this combined reaction resulted in the singer's abrupt retirement following a somewhat fraught U.S. tour, when he attempted to introduce such material in a live setting.

Tim Buckley dropped out of music altogether. He worked as Sly Stone's chauffeur for a while, drove a taxi and tried his hand at acting in an independent theatre group. It was in 1972 that he re-emerged, once again with a radically restructured music.

Perhaps sensing that there was no way forward from Starsailor, Buckley's next effort, Greetings From L.A., discarded the accustomed backing band, brought in War's producer Jerry Goldstein, and dealt out a slab of no-nonsense funk. The lyric, too, was as explicit as the sound, with raw sex as its main preoccupation and the singer's voice had taken on a rougher edge to match this steamy atmosphere.

Critics, almost unanimously, praised his return, although I personally found the white soul grind rather disappointing. Nonetheless, Greetings From L.A. rejuvenated Buckley's career following the artistic success, but commercial failure, of Starsailor.

Sefronia followed in 1973, and was something of an awkward compromise between several different styles. Some of it, like Honey Man, recalled the previous album while the cover of Dolphins, Fred Neil's most perfect composition, seemed to hark back to a more distant past.

Fred Neil was an important influence on the young Buckley -- both singers used the same low vocal register -- and its inclusion here can be seen as something of a tribute. The arrangement of Sally Go Round The Roses also hints at folk-rock and is similarly excellent, but a further succession of cover versions suggested that there may have been some kind of songwriting block.

The version of Tom Waits' Martha is reasonable, although the song's inbuilt sentimentality does need the composer's ragged vocal to offset it. I Know I'd Recognise Your Face is mawkish, something not helped by Marcia Waldorf's counter vocal, while Peanut Man is rather perfunctory.

The crowning achievement, however, is the title track, which again saw Buckley reunited with Larry Beckett. Once again, Tim's voice was expressive, and the melody and arrangement were challenging, somewhat recalling Goodbye And Hello, but placed in a modern context.

It was also this track which was at the receiving end of a bizarre piece of British editing. The song itself is divided into two parts, although they blend into one on the original U.S. version. However, the track listing shows two cuts, and the U.K. pressing duly fades out and fades in again midway through, leaving a slight gap and a ruined continuity and atmosphere.

One suggestion for this was the Trades Description Act, under which CBS had been taken to court for listing a track on Sly Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On LP which wasn't actually on it -- despite giving it a time of 0 minutes 00 seconds!

Perhaps WEA were fearful of litigations from irate Tim Buckley fans demanding to know where Sefronia -- The King's Chain was, even though Buckley sang about it in the second half of the song.

Tim crossed the Atlantic for a European tour in 1974, playing live at Knebworth (backed by, amongst others, Jim Fielder, who had arrived back via Buffalo Springfield, Blood Sweat and Tears, and the Mothers). He also recorded a session for the Old Grey Whistle Test and did several dates in Europe, from where a further live Italian bootleg was culled.

On returning home, he completed what was to be his final album, Look At The Fool, which was issued at the end of that year. It remains his artistic nadir. No-one ever imagined using "nondescript" to describe a Buckley album, but that comes close on this one.

Both he and funk were tired of each other, yet he seemed lost for any other purpose and the songs were correspondingly weak. As on Sefronia, there were flashes of the old brilliance, his voice could still soar or pull at the heart, but the general feeling was flat and rather half-hearted.

Look At The Fool also marked the end of Buckley's association with Herb Cohen. He quit Discreet, and this collection may thus have been a contractual obligation.

Unlike Lorca, however, it offered no new, exciting developments. Those came in interviews, where Tim talked of his plans for a retrospective live double album, and a complete set with Larry Beckett where they would adapt Joseph Conrad's book, An Outcast Of The Islands. In the meantime, he returned to work on the road and, in June, completed a tour of Texas and California. On the 25th of that month, 1975, Tim Buckley was dead from an overdose of heroin and morphine, mistakenly taken for cocaine at a party the previous night.

Since then, the appraisal of Buckley's work has grown as time has shown the true depth and passion of his recordings. Although many of his albums are no longer in the U.K. catalogue, pressings of some of them -- from the continent, Australia and America -- do often turn up in High Street stores.

For the uninitiated, the somewhat random and sketchy Rhino Best Of compilation does at least offer an introduction to one of popular music's most innovative artists

© 1985 Hogg/Record Collector

*29/10 is pre-1971 British coinage and stands for 29 shillings and ten pence, or one pound, nine shillings and ten pence - approximately $2.40. Can also be written as £1 9s 10d, £sd standing for pounds, shillings and pence - amongst other things...