I understand that the failure of "Starsailor" was almost devastating to Tim...Why didn't he see that if "Lorca" wasn't accepted by his fans then "Starsailor" wouldn't be accepted either?

Starsailor’s poor sales were devastating to the record company, not Tim. He knew it was experimental, and for a select audience.

Was Tim thinking illogically at that time or was he just being a "true artist" devoid of outside advice or interference?

Neither Tim nor I, from the beginning, ever thought about sales or popularity. The focus was on songs as works of art. One of our heroes was Miles Davis, independent, always changing, and success not defined by quantity but quality.

Were you happy with the outcome of "Starsailor"?

I was at the Starsailor sessions. I never did really approve of the lyric change to Song to the Siren; the real words are in The Monkees’ TV Show version. Tim’s French on Moulin Rouge, despite my careful coaching, was ludicrous. These objections aside, I thought Starsailor a fantastic beauty.

Why did Tim and Lee Underwood go their separate ways?

When Tim decided to go with a funkier sound, he realized he’d need a much funkier lead guitar.

Were you privy to what Tim was up to when he frequented Max's Kansas City in New York? Did Tim get the idea of sort of re-inventing his image while hanging out with the Andy Warhol crowd who resided there? Were you ever in that place? How many times did you visit New York in the old days?

I was with Tim in NY in the summers of ‘66 and ‘67, and did visit Max’s Kansas City. I wasn’t aware of him being up to anything. He would laugh at the idea of having an image or reinventing it.

What did you think of Tim's completely new direction in music, his abandonment of the acoustic twelve-string, and his new approach to lyrical content in his songs?

The vulgar soul sound, adopted to please the record company while perhaps laughing at it, was dreadful and unnatural. The lyrics are briefly amusing; our collaborations often were collages of different lyrics I’d sent him. For my own work, Honey Man and Sefronia – The King’s Chain stand out.

On “Greetings from L.A.” you were credited with co-writing “Make It Right” along with Joe Falsia and Jerry Goldstein. You also co-wrote one other song with Tim called “Nighthawkin”. Is there a story behind that song?

Nighthawkin’ is interesting. The lyrics are based on a story overheard in a little grocery.

The album "Sefronia" featured two Beckett/Buckley compositions..."Honey Man", a great funk-rocker and of course, the much-heralded title track. Is there a longer version of the song "Sefronia" around someplace and do you have a copy of it?

With Sefronia – The King’s Chain, Tim had asked for a song about Africa. I used a section of Frazer’s The Golden Bough about taboos on kings. There is a longer lyric about Africa he never used.

You, Tim and Jim Fielder were reunited on the “Look at the Fool” LP. It's like you guys almost came full-circle. In what direction do you think Tim would have gone next?

There were two exciting projects in the works. One was a live double album, not of “greatest hits,” but of best compositions, for which we’d chosen ten songs for stretched-out performances.

The other was a song cycle, which even Dylan had never done, and we’d dreamed of for years. Based on a Joseph Conrad novel, it was called The Outcast of the Islands. All the lyrics had been written, and some of the music, sounding like Sefronia – The King’s Chain. Tim was confident we could get the record company’s backing. I was to appear for the first time, reciting connecting narrative passages from Conrad’s text. It was a turn back toward art and experiment.

Did you keep in touch with Tim right up until the end?

We had phone calls lasting through the night.

Do you have anything at all that you'd like to say about Tim's death in retrospect?

It was accidentally on purpose. He never liked being inside his skin.

Linda Ronstadt and Friends, Venice Beach, 1968. Tim and Jainie Goldstein are top right. Linda Rondtat is center left.

You and Tim are two of many people in a photo taken on a staircase in front of Linda Ronstadt's house back in the old days. Did you guys hang out there much?

We did come across Ronstadt in different places. I even wrote her a song she never did. We thought she’d lost all taste when she took a turn toward a country sound, but it was our taste that was limited then.

Of course Linda and Blood Sweat &Tears covered your songs as well as Fairport Convention, This Mortal Coil, Chrissie Hynde and the Swiss group Comebuckley. Can you tell us of any other people who've covered your songs?

There’s yet another version of Morning Glory by an obscure folk rock group McKendree Spring, and supposedly a version of Goodbye and Hello by the Chad Mitchell Trio, which I haven’t heard.

I like Liz Fraser's cover of "Song To The Siren" the best. Which is your favorite cover?

I also choose This Mortal Coil. Fraser’s sinuous melodic decorations sound like a siren out of Homer’s Odyssey. I’m a poet, and when I write songs, they must be able to be read without music as well as being sung to. In the past twenty years, I’ve only written thirty-five songs, though I tried to make each a masterpiece.

Here’s one that was published in the counterculture magazine RayGun, with an article on my work by the rock journalist Paul Williams. The music is a Bach chorale, as arranged by Jerry Yester.

SECOND AVENUE

In the hissing street, that old girl goes
with a newspaper over her bowed head,
and I blow my hands and walk on hard
in the fool’s rain on Second Avenue,

all the holes closed for the night
and the bad wine wearing off,
and nothing for the cold but that fire
in an iron barrel, my knowledge of you.

I've read that you were working on a project related to Paul Bunyan. How far along is that project?

My poetry includes American Cycle, a series of 100-page poems called Paul Bunyan, Chief Joseph, P. T. Barnum, Amelia Earhart, as well as a book of sonnets, a book of madrigals, translations of the Tao Te Ching, called The Way of Rain, and poems by the T’ang dynasty Chinese poet Li Po.

I’m working on a new American Cycle poem, Blue Ridge. I don’t try very hard to publish in the common way; instead, I invite audiences and recite the book, publishing it to the air.

Here’s a poem that was just published in a book called Portland Lights.

SONNET FOUR

Look, this winter won’t quit; it’s hanging on
like the old panhandlers, and the slow hookers
on the thin streets, who’d go kick in good money
for a crack of sunlight above the waterfront.

Oh the rain hurts, and down by the mission, by
the dirty movies, peace leaks out of our morning:
when we miss breakfast we squabble over nothing,
and it’s too cold for kisses under a poor sky.

We can scrape by for now with our lean love,
and be in the greenbacks by April, if we skimp,
and scratch for buys in the hand-me-down stores:
it’s okay if you’re a waitress, I’m a dishwasher,
my dollar says we’re stars and our first show
is a sure fire, oh sweetheart, weather with me.

Why do you think that Tim did not become the icon that some people feel he should have become?

To become an icon in your lifetime in America you have to sell a lot of product. Marketing and sales are boosted when a musician stays inside a category, but Tim’s music was outside the idea of categories. In each note, you can hear he’s singing out of different streams of American music, to which he’s added his own original melodic beauty, which changes from album to album. To this day, in used record stores, he’s filed under Folk Music, though there’s not one folk song on any of his studio albums.

Of all the times that you spent with Tim which one do you think about the most?

I remember most the morning he wrote the music to Song to the Siren. He picked up his guitar, and started to sing it, with almost no changes, like it was an old song. That miracle.

If Tim came back to visit with you for a little while, what do you think you guys would talk about?

He does come back, in these dreams I have, not like my other dreams, but clear. We talk about new songs, like always. I usually say, “How can you put out a new album? You’re dead.”

But as you can see, he’s succeeded.

Would you like to see a movie made about Tim's life and legacy?

Only if Tom Stoppard does the screenplay.

What would the title be?

Starsailor, and I want a percentage of the profits.

What did you like most about Tim?

We loved each other, for the reasons you love anybody, which are deep and mysterious. I was too thoughtful and he was too thoughtless, and we tugged each other toward that opposite we needed to become whole. I love artistry, and he is a real artist; I love music, and he is a true singer.

© 2000 Jack Brolly/Room 109