What was it like performing live with Tim? The "Honeyman" album is simply fantastic.

Playing with Tim was like sex. Sometimes sex is good, sometimes it's great, sometimes you wish that you hadn't even done it (rarely). Tim was singing from his crotch most of the time. He was the only singer I wouldn't laugh at when he hit himself in the chest like King Kong. He embarrassed me too, like the time he trashed Colin Blunstone's English wimp band at the Troubadour.

Tim was doing a little fag-baiting on stage, which I thought would end in a rumble with the other band. Colin was the singer in the Zombies. She's Not There. He had gotten a better review from the very sympathetic L.A. Times reviewer who liked glam boys and their tight butts. Tim was trying to get to a deeper funkier, hetero groove, while this gay-awareness thing, a la David Bowie was just starting to gain some popularity.

Tim wore mostly black on stage. He had gay friends so it wasn't really about being homophobic. The world was starting to get tarted-up with spandex and sequins so Tim was not feeling particularly in vogue and he let loose on stage.

Colin and his band reacted by each band member loading up with two chicks and making a big scene of leaving the Troubadour, only to drop the chicks off after everyone else had left the club, "Hey? Where’s the party?" the girls were saying as Colin's roadie dropped them off in the alley behind the club as I loaded out my drums.

Tim once said that he thought being gay was the easy way out. He thought that many times, a guy who is gay is just too lazy to work for it and deal with a woman and all of what that entails. He was capable of hitting a person on a sexual level that they responded to no matter what their preference was. Playing with Tim was very strenuous. That's the way I liked it. He would get built up, develop a head of steam and energy.

Live at the Starwood, 1975

He'd sweat a lot on stage. We all did. It was a sign that we were working at the top of our abilities. That is a wonderful place to be and to get paid to be there was a blessing. There was anger in people, but there was no voice on stage articulating that anger. Bruce (Springsteen) had yet to cop Tim's act and make it his own. I say that in a half-joking and half-serious way.

We had just gotten out of a very violent, vocal debate in this country. The war was ending, but with great reluctance. President Nixon was getting caught with his dick in the cookie jar. The conservative forces were believing the fantasy that the Left would take over America and force everyone to smoke dope and screw.

The hammer was coming down ever so slowly that most folks wouldn't realize that the society of America changed fundamentally at that time. Personal freedoms were being modified to fit the upcoming yuppie free market slave clones of today's corporate earth. I apologize for the seditious rhetoric; it's me and not Tim.

Tim was very aware politically, but the kids had been shot at Kent State. We played there soon after that and the feeling was very grey and suppressed. The beginning of the graying of the psychedelic American dream was being instituted and Tim as a performer and as an American Voice, was compelled to speak up.

Only when he did, he was afraid. He asked someone once, "If I get political will you kill me like you did Janis and Jimi?" The guy just took a sip off his vodka gimlet and looked at me. Tim said, "When Buddy picks up a gun, then everyone goes to prison." Tim laughed as hard as he could.

Did the guys in the band hang out together a lot or was Tim more of a loner?

I stayed with Tim and Judy in Venice once in a while. They were private people. He didn't go out much at that time. When we traveled, many times he would not "hang with the band". On more than one occasion, he would ask me where I was going when we were sitting in some city. I usually went to the museums or galleries, I am a painter. Tim would go occasionally but in general, he had to do some interview while I got to be anonymous and hit the museums. He wanted to go with me many times but couldn't.

Years later, Judy showed me letters that he had written to her while on the road. Many times, he referred to our conversations as the most interesting thing going on. It flattered me more than anything that I could think of. He was very well read, and I felt like a country bumpkin around him. He would argue about writers and philosophers and become frustrated if I couldn't keep up with his own intellectual experience.

In a sense he was a father figure. He was also a big brother too. Although, more than once I had to pull him out of a fight where he angered a bouncer or a club owner enough to risk getting punched or his hands getting broken. I was taller and had a certain level of rumble energy ready, so Tim liked to push it sometimes and see if he could generate some kind of real energy from people.

The mood was changing though and Tim could see that what he had been doing was no longer working on a lot of creative levels. He was like a bird dog sniffing out the next groove, the next phrase, the next wail. He was focused on his art and how it fit into the world. I felt like when all the biz and politics were out of the way, and we just played, then we created something unique and exciting.

© buddyhelm.com

What was it like when Lee came back into the picture for that short period of time?

I respect Lee as a musician, writer and critic...we did one tour with him. Lee was from a previous era of Tim's life. I think Herb didn't like those guys. He had mentioned that the "jazzers" had rendered Tim's music totally un-commercial. Lee had a sway over Tim because of his attitude. Lee thought himself a great mind of the twentieth century. I took the rental car and drove as far away from Louisville just so I wouldn't get into an argument with Lee.

Tim enjoyed our sparks. But underneath he was comparing personal politics. Lee seemed a bit precious with his music. On stage, he hammered the strings with the ends of his fingers to get overtones that weren't possible by just plucking the strings. He got a good response from the audience. They knew who he was. He had a good following with Tim's fans.

I didn't resent it too much... It pulled Tim back into a place where he had been before. I respected that but didn't like it much. They tied one on for old time's sake in Louisville or St. Louis...they had a bottle of Jack Daniel's and were sneaking around like a couple of old ladies. They were giggling and sipping this bottle of Jack with COCA COLA! They asked if I wanted to drink with them.

I took a few pulls off the bottle and gave them some shit about ruining the taste with Coca Cola. They got the feeling that it wouldn't be a good idea to get me going on Jack. It was like jet fuel. I tried to stay away from it otherwise. I'd wake up with a bill for something I didn't remember breaking.

On stage in Dallas at Liberty Hall, Tim was reveling in the rekindled adoration of his fans. Lee was shining too. The crowd was big and it was full of new people. I was working my butt off. Tim took the usual encore. The band left the stage, leaving Tim and me. Tim had forgotten to introduce the band. He had fallen back into this old star thing.

I was sitting in the dark, pumping along while Tim did his vocal gymnastics. It was great fun to trade licks with him. That was the highest point of the set and it was just the two of us. Usually, I took a break and let him milk the crowd all by himself, then I would come back in and build it to a big ending. Only this night, I was in the dark during the whole encore, tired, the band had not been introduced, Tim was acting like some rock star, so I took my usual little break at the end of the encore and I walked off the stage and up to the dressing room.

Tim had no idea; he was so engrossed in the spotlight. The guys in the dressing room just shit when I walked in. We could still hear Tim yodeling on stage. Then Tim anticipated my re-entry into the encore, and the thrilling finale with Drums and Vocal Armageddon, only tonight he had to finish the set all by himself. It was a mixed bag of applause.

Tim came steaming into the dressing room ready to go to war with me ’cause I had deserted him. I said, "Don't ever do that again." He stopped and couldn't get it. "What?" "You didn't introduce the band." I said. So after all those years when I heard Tim say on the Starwood bootleg, "my good friend from Coconut Grove, it meant a whole lot."

"The stuff I would like to hear is the last things we did in L.A at Wally Heider studio. It was a band-generated sound but alas, there were no lyrics recorded. The sound was very fresh and predated New Wave, Punk… whatever."

What happened after that?

I played with Tim for a while until things got frustrating for me. I wanted to share songwriting credit and feel that what we had was a band and not just me being a back-up musician. Tim respected that. I didn't like working with his management team. We did Europe, then Central Park, then a break and a gig at Stanford.

I had met a girl in Santa Cruz area, a great painter, Katherine Huffaker, and decided to live there awhile. I decided I would leave after the gig we played at Stanford with Loggins and Messina. Carter played congas with us and it was great. He and I finally found a way to play together.

After the gig, a girl asked Carter if his name was Buddy. He almost got angry at her then he just nodded to me. I loved it. She was a friend of my girlfriend and they were eager to get together. They worked at Stanford Research Institute, close by. After the gig, in the limo, I asked Tim to drop me off at the Trailways bus station. I told him it was getting as exciting for me as installing AM radios in Pintos and I got out of the limo at the bus station.

Art Greene, the guitar player on that one, called out, "Write if you get work". They couldn't believe it. I got on the bus and rode down into the country to the ranch that Katherine and I had rented. I went to art school at San Jose State and didn't tell anyone I had been Tim's drummer.

I was burned out and I became someone else. The intensity of being on the road affects people in different ways. It is a tough way to live. Then over six months later, Tim performed on campus at San Jose State IN THE CAFETERIA. I sat in the audience like everybody else and listened to his new band. They were good. John Herron on keyboards and Jeff Eyrich on bass.

The crowd loved them of course. As the crowd was clapping, Tim came down off the stage into the audience and motioned for me to come with him. He looked pissed. I got up and excused myself and went back to the dressing room with the band. Only one of the teachers knew that I had been Tim's drummer. No one else knew that I was even a musician at all. They were totally amazed.

In the dressing room, they told me how dissatisfied they were with their current drummer. He was slumping over dejectedly nursing a cold. I sat down next to him, "Did they insult you this way?" he asked. "No." I said.

Joe said they had gone through nineteen drummers in L.A. and no one was satisfactory. Tim told me that he had broken his contract with management. They were booking themselves. He asked me to go out on the road with them. We agreed and it was great. I went on the road 3-4 days a week then I went back and finished some art classes the rest of the week. I was living a dream.

A friend who taught at the San Francisco Art Institute came down with a bunch of teachers, writers and artists to our ranch/farm for a picnic barbecue about six months later. He picked me up at the San Jose Airport. I had just flown in from LAX.

We'd just come back from playing the Bastille Room in Houston. It had been a critically acclaimed show as well and a sold out house. The Houston newspaper had a great review of the show describing Tim in a very complementary way, bridging folk, jazz, rock, blues, great musicianship, strong performance, etc. A great review.

Tim was due to start production on the movie Bound for Glory, the Woody Guthrie Story. Tim was going to play Woody Guthrie. He had the script and I read it. We had arrived at LAX in the morning. We had a week or so off then would meet in Tahoe for a gig. I jumped on another flight up to San Jose for the picnic. Tim was in great spirits.

We stood in the cold white hallway at LAX and he turned to me as we went our separate ways. "See ya later, Babe." was the last thing he said to me and he was smiling. The next day, at the picnic, a friend asked me, "What happens if the bubble pops?" Joe called about the same time and told me Tim was in a coma. He died that night.

Do you ever listen to Tim's music anymore?

I was just in Florida, seeing family and drumming with old chums from high school. They all went on to become successful Vietnam war vets with their own businesses and families. One of them played Once I Was. Tim's music is not the kind of strumming that most people can sit around and just jam on.

I was amazed that he could sing it. He was self-conscious, but it made me stop and wonder what Tim's early stuff sounded like after all this time. I'll have Pleasant Street going through my head for the rest of my life. We worked every night for years. The stuff is so ingrained that I still hear it playing back in my head at odd times.

The stuff I would like to hear is the last things we did in L.A at Wally Heider studio. It was a band-generated sound but alas, there were no lyrics recorded. The sound was very fresh and predated New Wave, Punk… whatever. I had refused to listen to it for years. It was too painful. I heard it on a radio station in San Jose once in a health food store, and it took me the longest time to figure out why I was so bothered.

1985, I was wearing a suit being a post-production supervisor at Lorimar, a big film/tv conglomerate. I hated the life but it was a respectable job and I was married. John Herron called me, the keyboard player on some of the last tours with Tim dating back to ‘75. He said that Judy had gotten bootleg albums from Europe and I was on them. Could we go to the label and get some help with royalties?

I didn't want to listen to the stuff but one night I got back from the office, I poured myself a snifter of VSOP for old time’s sake, shut the bedroom door and listened to the stuff all by myself. It broke my heart all over again. It was some of the greatest sounds I'd ever heard. Recorded live from the crowd, the sound was cheap and thin but the spirit of the music was there.

There was another one from a different live venue in L.A. the Starwood, which is pretty much the same as what's on Honeyman. Different recordings I think. It was very hard for me to put on a tie the next morning. It got more and more difficult. At one point, an old film editor mentioned that he had seen Lead Belly live in Chicago when he was a young man. He had also seen Woody Guthrie play.

Unsolicited, he said that the person who would have best played Woody Guthrie in the movie would have been Tim Buckley. "Did I know who Tim Buckley was?" he asked. I had been living undercover for so long that I had forgotten who I was. I quit. Everything.

In conclusion...I hope that Tim's life is made a little more real for whoever wants to read this. Sorry about the bitter remarks. Nothing personal or intended to insult anyone interested in Tim's story. I suppose I let go of some of that old bizness.

The one thing that gets me about Tim is his loyal fans. The ones who always loved him no matter how weird his music got. I loved him ‘cause he was a musician, an artist, a poet, a feeling man and a gentle soul in a violent world.

He always had a sense of humor. He saw Peter Falk in the Airport once. Tim was wearing a trench coat a lot then ’cause he liked Columbo. Tim walked up to Peter Falk and did his Columbo impersonation for him in the middle of LAX. It was great - and also very embarrassing. Peter didn't know who he was. It didn't matter though. Tim was living theatre.

So what is Buddy Helm up to these days?

Llewellyn Publishing Company is printing my latest book entitled Let the Goddess Dance. There will be a CD included where I am singing original songs and also performing meditational pieces that I recorded over the last few years.

There is a pic of Tim and me playing one of our last gigs together at the Starwood in L.A. I have been doing drumming workshops around the country to help people get in touch with their own sense of healing power and rhythm.

Tim was the last great artist I worked with. I was spoiled after his death and could not work as a mercenary drummer for the likes of any of the plastic phony entertainers that courted me. I grew somewhat bitter and watched the music scene change knowing that the music that we had done was still the cutting edge. Johnny Rotten said his vocal influence was Tim Buckley.

I worked in the film biz in production for over ten years for George Lucas, Lorimar, ABC and many others but Tim's widow, Judy contacted me and sent me several bootleg CD's of Tim's live band that were recorded in Europe in '73 and also at the Starwood in L.A. After hearing the music, I finally quit a very successful career in the film biz and tried to get back to what I loved most, which is music.

Judy asked me to try to get royalties from the bootleg albums from Warner Bros. but they just blew us off and said that there was not enough money there to even bother. All the while, I was getting Xeroxes of articles Tim Buckley - Godfather of New Wave from Germany, Sweden, France and England from people who still loved Tim.

Tim had come to me many times in my dreams over the years and I tried to write down his dream melodies but I was too emotionally shattered to trust the music biz. The new songs are written on twelve-string acoustical guitar that I bought in a pawnshop in Clearwater, Florida last year. I was unsure about buying the guitar but Tim came to me in a dream that night and told me to buy it. He was in the middle of large pond and was very happy. He told me to "jump in."

Nice talking with you. Anything else just let me know. Thanks for being interested in Tim. He was a very special person to a lot of people. I miss him.

Good luck,
Buddy Helm

Buddy, I applaud your candor and your sincerity. I would like to thank you very much and wish you good luck in all your future endeavors.
JACK aka Jzero

Buddy Helm has written two books on drums as a healing tool - 'Drumming the Spirit to Life' and 'The Way of the Drum' - and started Helmtone Drum Protocols.

"The Helmtone Healing Drum Protocols is a rhythmic reprogramming system that may possibly change a person’s belief system; alleviating fear, anxiety, trauma, dependency, depression, obsessive/compulsive behavior, grief and other conditions. This rhythmic energetic system may also enhance the quality of life for people with cancer, lupis, hepatitis, stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, ADD, depression, inappropriate anger, low self esteem and other condition."

He can be reached at buddyhelm.com.

© 1999 Jack Brolly/Room 109