The "Bleecker and MacDougal" album by Fred Neil, which you and Paul Rothchild produced, is one of my favorite albums. At a live concert in Los Angeles late in his career, Tim is quoted as saying that Fred Neil was the only friend he ever had. Were you aware of any friendship or camaraderie between Tim and Fred Neil in the early days of Tim's career?

Fred Neil at that time was out of my field of vision. You might like to know that Elektra has plans to re-issue that "Bleecker And MacDougal" CD

Do you remember in the early days, if Fred was any kind of an influence on Tim at all?

I think he might have been a bad influence, because of drugs. He was not a particularly nice guy as we say in the book. That he was an influence wouldn't surprise me because they had similar tempers as writers. They were somewhat moody as writers but always interesting and of course Fred had written some fine songs. While running the company, and with so many artists under your umbrella, did you have the time to stay close to the recording sessions for “Happy Sad“? And if so, what did you think of Tim's subtle direction change towards jazz on that album?

I would have liked to have seen him build more on Goodbye And Hello. Tim was a folk-rocker on his first album and he was charting a new direction with Goodbye And Hello and I thought that would be a better direction. It seemed to me that we had three albums and they were all distinctly different without a helluva lot of continuity. That he wanted to explore his jazz grooves didn't surprise me.

When you talk about Fred Neil, I think that there is some Fred Neil on this album. In retrospect, years later I think that this is the album where he really found himself. I have a great deal of respect for that record. And of course, Jerry Yester was involved in that one too.

"Like all artists who die young, he has some of the same tragic figure aspects of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and people like that. There's a certain fascination. It's almost kind of a "Greek" thing with people who die young and we remember them only as we would like to remember them..."

Are you aware that Tim once said that you taught him that an artist has to keep growing? Do you remember telling him that? And if so, do you think that he took that advice too literally?

Oh, I tell that to everybody because that's the excitement for me. It's not like today where you put a record out every two to five years. He was putting out records once every 14 months and I just like to see a progression. In retrospect, I would probably say that the first album was a very good debut album.

I thought that Goodbye And Hello at the time was the apotheosis. Happy Sad is as good as anything he ever did. On Lorca - and I must point out that I haven't heard Lorca in a long time - Tim did something that Judy Collins would do a lot with vocal gyrations, and she wasn't very successful with that. I thought that the record didn't come together as a full vision.

Were you getting any feedback from the people involved with the recording sessions that "Lorca" was going to be a bit far-out?

I thought that it was just another phase. There wasn't a great deal of interest as far as the public was concerned and it wasn't received very well. It only had five songs on it. It felt unleavened to me and that was the direction he wanted to keep going in (and even further as you know).

And what's interesting is that the direction in which he did go with Starsailor, which is probably a better album, made more sense live than it did on record. You could get involved much more with Tim on stage because you saw that he was so taken with his own music and you had to respect that. But, recording is another reality and I don't think Tim ever really understood what I meant by that.

I read in your book that your son Adam played keyboards with Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Chaka Khan, and Grover Washington Junior. Do you know if Adam had any opinions about the avant-garde stuff that Tim was into because Tim was a fan of Miles Davis?

If you want to call him, by all means go ahead. We never discussed it.

Do you think that Tim's music from the Elektra years still holds up?

Like all artists who die young, he has some of the same tragic figure aspects of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and people like that. There's a certain fascination. It's almost kind of a "Greek" thing with people who die young and we remember them only as we would like to remember them; which is certainly going to be true of John Lennon as compared to Paul McCartney. We're going to have to watch Paul grow old and I don't know if people want to see that.

Do you think that Tim would have listened to you if you had advised him about his short-sightedness when it came to his daring career moves?

He was a very young man. His first album came out before he was even old enough to vote or drink. And here he had made an incredible second album which made a lot of people pay attention to him. I think Tim was in his own personal orbit. When that occurs...it's tough for anybody to break your will.

I know of possibly two or three people who are writing books on Tim Buckley. I was wondering if authors Bob Niemi or David Browne had talked to you at all? I've read a draft of Bob's unpublished book and it's wonderful. I also think that Lee Underwood might be interested in writing a manuscript on Tim if a publisher were interested.

Let me put it to you this way. I don't have any recollection of having done any interviews for a Tim Buckley book.

Does your company, "First Media", publish books on music?

Well of course we published Follow The Music and we're going to be doing some other books, but I don't think that they will be music books. We're working on aviation and financial books. That's what I hope to be spending some time doing after I finish this.

The two publishers who first offered to publish our book did not like the format that we had it in, and I demanded too many photographs. I wanted absolute control over the photos and how the book looked and they weren't willing to do that. So, we published it ourselves.

Do you see Tim Buckley's life as possibly being movie material?

It's pretty much a downer and you know the inevitable second title is going to be that his son died. I don't think that anybody could perform him. There was another worldly quality to Tim that I'm not sure an actor could do. It would have to be an actor that I've never seen before. I don't know of anybody who could play him.

He was a male gamine when I first met him . I think that we've seen a lot of tortured artists. If he had an impact greater than he had, then maybe I could see it. If there's a movie done, it would probably be done by VH1. They are doing movies now. I'm trying to get them interested in the book.

How long did it take to research and write your book?

It took a tremendous amount of research; about three years. I had started eight to nine years earlier writing it and I just didn't like it. It was me, me, me, me. So, I had to have someone else do the interviews and the person I had doing the interviews didn't do a very good job. I couldn't do the interviews for obvious reasons. But, we did get some good stuff out of it like the Paul Rothchild interviews, because later Paul was too sick to do the interviews.

Then when I started with Gavan Daws, it was three years from the time we began. Gavan did interviews for the first year. I wrote the beginning of the book (the me, me, me part) or the first fifteen pages of the book in which I dominate. I wrote that very early on.

It was when I read the five thousand pages of transcript (laugh) that I brought Gavan on to create a time-line so that we could hang all of the events. That's what I spent about six months doing; trying to come up as best I could with what happened when. Then we started putting the ornaments on it.

Looking at all of the interviews and I would remember stuff and I would write and then Gavan would try to weave the two together not by rewriting me or anybody else but by saying "this is what so and so says and this is what you said, can you make it tie in better". He didn't do any writing for me. In order to keep the book honest I could not remove anything unless I could convince him that it was a total involved lie and I couldn't change anybody else's words. I think the book has a certain integrity.

Was it like a catharsis? Did you feel that you had to do this? Was it something that you felt you had to have in print for posterity?

Nah, I really wished that I hadn't done it at all. It was a major, major project that was going to take me three years and I had done a number of major, major projects before, and I was not looking forward to doing another. Let me just say that members of my family were pressuring me to do it, and the reason I engaged Gavan was that I knew he would not let me get away with NOT doing it.

I could have told him at any time that I don't want to do any more, but I just would have been too embarrassed to do that. The process is not a lot of fun. The answer to your question is that I am tickled that I did it.

Well...I guess we're out of time. Thank you for fitting me into your busy schedule. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Good luck with the book and all your future endeavors.

You're welcome and good luck to you as well.

©1999 Jack Brolly/Room 109