Part Five

Three months later Buckley was dead. The Los Angeles County coroner's office determined that Buckley was the victim of "acute heroin-morphine and ethanol [ie, liquor] intoxication." Overdose. Richard Keeling was charged with murder under California law for having allegedly furnished the drugs that caused the death. The drug charge was subsequently dropped and Keeling pleaded guilty to a charge of involuntary manslaughter. He served 120 days.

Mothers Drummer Jimmy Carl Black recounts how he learned of Tim's death in 1975. Tape courtesy of Veit Stauffer - RecRec

The death shocked Buckley's friends, family and associates, but the autopsy puzzled them; heroin had never played a big part in his diet. The coroner declared that Buckley was no addict. On the contrary, "he was just trying to be incredibly healthy," Judy Buckley says. "Unfortunately I didn't go and pick him up at the airport and he stopped someplace on the way home."

"When he died, all of a sudden Timmy's a saint and I was a black force," Keeling says. "That wasn't our relationship." Keeling and Buckley had been friends since the turn of the decade, when they lived down the street from each other. Keeling was a graduate student in ethnomusicology at UCLA and a self-confessed "wild young man" who liked "the dark side of things."

He was not only "extremely handsome, extremely sexy," Underwood's former lover Jennifer Stace recalls, but also "intelligent. And Tim loved people that knew more than he did...I think he kinda loved Richard."

"We were very close," Keeling says. "We would kiss like a man and a woman, and neither of us are homosexuals. All these people were treating him like a little prince and I never would do that. I think that's one of the reasons we could be friends."

Keeling was dealing drugs, but he says he never sold to Buckley. "To me, it was an adventure. I wanted to have my own stuff, and frankly," he laughs, "I couldn't afford to do that as a graduate student without having some kind of business."

On Buckley's last afternoon he invited himself over to Keeling's. When he showed up, Keeling was there with Jackie McGuire. The latter testified Buckley "appeared to be intoxicated"; she also saw him take a drink shortly before he snorted a brown powder through a dollar bill.

Keeling told McGuire the heroin had been returned to him because it was wet. He is also adamant that he "put down a line nobody could die on! If somebody had to pay ten or fifteen bucks for it they would have balked." Buckley's cleaned-up system--besides the alcohol--may have contributed to his inability to handle the drug.

Judy Buckley says she is still paying off Tim's debts. History hasn't been too kind to him--so far. Lillian Roxon wrote a glowing tribute to Buckley for her groundbreaking Rock Encyclopedia in 1969. When the book was revised in 1978 (after Roxon's own premature death) Buckley's entire entry was eliminated. His albums disappeared from stores.

The 1990 release of the Dream Letter concert recording proved that Buckley stands outside the slippery stream of musical fashion. But acclaim is still an uphill battle; in the hype-heavy record business a dead artist is usually a dead artist. Buckley himself was uncomfortable with fame, and created in spite of it. His insistence on being true to himself insured the permanence of his most striking recordings. And even when he caved in, he couldn't sell out enough to extinguish his distinctive spark--or, for that matter, to be popular.

"Creativity means moving forward into new realms," Lee Underwood says; "exploring your psyche, your heart, your guts, your soul, and coming up with something new. That was Tim's great mission. 'What's next?' It's a terrifying question. When you've just shot your whole wad on Goodbye and Hello, where do you go after that? Or after Happy/Sad? 'What next?' was the motivating question of Tim Buckley's personality and his artistic aspiration. He had the courage to face that question. Above and beyond everything else, he was a creator."

Musician Magazine - Letters : Goodbye & Bravo

"Bravo, bravo and bravo for Scott Isler's article on "The Life and Death of Tim Buckley" (July 91). I was 11 when I bought Goodbye and Hello in 1967, and have been in awe ever since. I was able to attend the April tribute at St. Anne's Cathedral, where Buckley's son performed some of his father's songs. Now if we could just persuade Elektra to re-release the first LP and Lorca on CD."

John Odato
New York, NY

"Those who truly listened to Tim's voice encountered an unmatchable magical experience; those who spent time with Tim encountered a character as unconventional and exciting as his music.

My mother (Tim's mother) and I thank Scott Isler for refraining from using the usual threadbare musician-live-fast-die-young-drug-death-rebel theme that so many writers thrive upon. Tim may have died in debt, but I believe he left a rather wealthy legacy - ten albums (including Dream Letter), some interesting Tim Buckley adventure stories and most importantly a very talented son, Jeffrey Scott (who has a phenomenal voice and is a salacious guitarist as well), all of which deserve further investigation."

Kathleen Buckley
Panorama City, CA

"Musician magazine first turned me on to such diverse sounds as Midnight Oil, Chet Baker and now the article that has been worth the eight or nine years of yearly dues: Tim Buckley! Scott Isler's article is the perfect monument to his memory."

David Hawker
Ripley, NY

"I played drums with Tim Buckley for over four years until he was murdered. We spent the money from our last tour on his funeral services where his "old friends" mourned loudly even though they had rejected him years earlier for "selling out".

Your revisionist article aspires to rock history but does a disservice to Tim and the dedicated players who worked with him during his last years: his most focused, drug-free, lucid, creative and commercially promising era. Tim had become a pro, and left behind the resentful, elitist alcoholics and drug addicts who no longer mattered.

I don't resent the inaccuracies, just that Tim's gone and his so-called "friends" remain."

Buddy Helm
Marina del Ray, CA

© 1991 Isler/Musician Magazine

Musician was a monthly magazine that covered news
and information about American popular music 1980–1999.