Starsailor

There's a line in "Cafe," side two, track two on "Blue Afternoon" which runs: "I was just a curly-haired mountain boy, on my way passing through." But Tim Buckley, author and utterer of those words, has never been *just* anything.

Any kid who at the age of eleven is preoccupied with expanding his vocal range, and at fourteen and fifteen is hustling to be allowed to sing in folk clubs, has to be something out of the ordinary. Buckley was, and, of course, still is.

While most singer/songwriters are one-dimensional characters who after initially arousing interest continue as mere parodies of their public's impressions of them, Buckley, in nine years as a recording artist, is consistently changing direction.

Using only his inspired artist's intuition and his sense of irony as a guide, Buckley will set sail fearlessly for uncharted waters.

Hence "Starsailor," his 1970 masterpiece that left many of his original folk-oriented fans totally confused, while many jazzers welcomed him as a rightful heir to Leon Thomas.

But even that favourable pigeon-holing would've been too comfortable for Buckley's far-reaching imagination. Yet at one time it looked as though "Starsailor" was to be his final statement.

After its release, Buckley hung up his twelve-string for eighteen months and took stock of what had been going down.

He got himself married, and is now foster-father to an eleven-year-old boy named Taylor. The implication being that wild Timmy had finally settled down. No chance.

The rock and roll circuit might be a painful business for a child prodigy turned misunderstood creative genius, but being away from the stage was more painful still.

So Buckley roared back with a new band and a new album "Greetings From L.A.", and brought with him fresh shocks.

The fragile nineteen-year-old who had sung "in the scarlet light of Valentines, our paper hearts are blind" back in 1966 had been superseded by a bellowing, super-virile stud, hollering "whip me, beat me, spank me, oh mama make it right again."

And it's this stud persona, albeit slightly tongue-in-cheek, that Buckley seems hell-bent on promoting.

Last week, Buckley and manager Herb Cohen arrived in London for a couple of days to attend a Warner Brothers party given to launch DiscReet Records. Warners will be distributing Tim's "Sefronia" album over here later this month.

I found the man perched forward on the edge of an armchair in a Kensington hotel room, gazing longingly down at the suntanned, glistening, widespread thighs of a foxy young lady, splashed across a gatefold spread in one of those Paul Raymond glossy mags.

"I just adore pornography," he moaned. "I mean, will you just look at her? Isn't she just the loveliest little thing you've ever seen..."

It seemed like an apt moment to air a personal fantasy. From the track titles, rhythms and arrangements of the first side of "Greetings From L.A." (the tracks are "Move With Me," "Get On Top" and "Sweet Surrender,") that the whole had been conceived as a linked trilogy, a kind of Orgasm Suite. Would that be reading too much into the songs?"

"Not at all. That's just what it is. It occurred to me that all of the rock and roll sex symbols, like Jagger, Jim Morrison, had never actually said anything sexy. So..(long pause)...I decided to do it."

His face creased into a dirty laugh. Facially, he looks very different from the Dylan-esque romantic poet gazing melancholic from the sleeve of "Happy Sad."

The outrageous curls have been severely chopped, and his current trimmed hip hair emphasises his film star good looks.

Now he looks more like Paul Newman than Bob Dylan, a state of affairs that clearly appealed to more than one young lady at the press reception later, where his every move was observed by a semi-circle of silent admirers who stood transfixed.

But the sex appeal trip isn't Buckley's raison d'etre, by any means, merely one facet of a complex personality. His current activities embrace non-rock aspects of art and music, and his future plans indicate further divergence of his talents and energies.

However, Buckley's future is best explained in terms of where he's already been.

He knew the poet Larry Beckett from his schooldays, and Beckett and Buckley were always particularly close, sharing the same highbrow interest in literature.

Kafka, Sartre, the metaphysicals, and Lorca (later commemorated in Tim's album "Lorca").

Both Larry and Tim were writing poetry at this stage and experimented with putting their words to Tim's tunes. Early efforts were pretty unsatisfying, but they persevered and Tim began working self-penned material into the sets he was playing in country clubs, the only places he could get gigs in his early teens.

He was never totally country, of course, but...

"As long as you could play 'The Tennessee Waltz,' you were okay. I had a lot of fun."

But it was in New York that Buckley first began to attract attention. And even now, he feels that his roots are firmly in Greenwich Village.

"Apart from the Doors and the San Francisco sound, all of the worthwhile music out of the States in the past decade has come from the East Coast, and specifically New York."

However, it was back in Southern California that Buckley first got a recording break, playing uncredited guitar on the Byrds' first album, and it was during these sessions that he met Van Dyke Parks, Jim Fielder and then Mothers drummer Billy Mundi.

With these notables plus Lee Underwood, an aspiring young jazz guitarist, and with fine string arrangements by Jack Nitzche, the young Buckley cut his own debut for Elektra. Nine years on, it's as fresh and unique as ever.

The same isn't quite true of "Goodbye and Hello," the second album produced by Jerry Yester, which, while excellent by any standard is very much a product of the era in which it was made, that euphoric "Summer of Love," California, 1967.

Still Buckley was already stretching out, experimenting with his amazing vocal tubes, actually managing to affect at least half a dozen different voices for the labyrinthine complexities of the album's title track.

And all the time, reflecting and playing off the innumerable influences that he'd absorbed in his formative years.

"Ray Charles, Hank Williams, Clapton, Hendrix, Morgana King, Cleo Laine, Little Richard, Nat King Cole, Roland Kirk, Peggy Lee, Duke Ellington, strippers, classical music, avant-garde, from Stravinsky on, Messaien, Penderecki, Balinese music...

"I respond to anything that's done well, and I've been influenced by all of it."

After the recording of "Goodbye and Hello," the Buckley-Beckett collaboration ceased to function for three years, during which time a further three Buckley albums were issued, "Happy Sad," "Blue Afternoon" and "Lorca."

"Larry got very involved in what he was doing at the time, which was writing an eighty page poem about Paul Bunyan, and he moved to Portland to do research. It's an American epic, and really brilliant."

"Happy Sad," a reflection, presumably on the depressive side of Tim's character, marked a move towards lyrical economy, but backings became ever more subtle and jazz-like.

With Lee Underwood and vibist David Friedman achieving a quiet empathy, the music often sounds like the Larry Coryell period of the Gary Burton quartet, playing ballads.

Tim's vocal improvisations were beginning to upset a few folk club clients, however. One report, from Hollywood in late '68, records Buckley scat- singing trumpet parts, which went over like a 9pm curfew with most of the folkies that had followed him through the first two albums.

"It's very easy to confuse people in Hollywood," Tim observed. "Hollywood is like England. They're still totally preoccupied with image there. And they're so insular. They really have no idea what's happening musically in the rest of America."

It's not generally known that "Blue Afternoon," "Lorca" and "Starsailor" were recorded in a burst of creativity that lasted for a couple of months in late 1969.

And it's generally supposed that "Lorca," being Tim's final album for Elektra, before signing with Zappa's Straight label, was made prior to "Blue Afternoon." In fact it wasn't.

"That was a complicated time, between labels. But 'Blue afternoon' was done immediately after 'Lorca'".

And "Lorca," the song itself, which Buckley had tremendous difficulty in compressing into anything less than a seventeen minute epic, was a pointer towards the cataclysmic "Starsailor."

An astonishing collection of styles; Latin ("Down By The Borderline"), new-jazz aligned ("Monterey," "The Healing Festival"), European influenced Ligeti-esque ("Starsailor"), 1966-type Buckley ("Moulin Rouge"), and a number of other things that defy any classification.

The album featured Buckley alongside the dynamite horns of Buzz and Bunk Gardner, and also marked the return of Larry Beckett and more obscurantist lyrics.

(Incidentally, Buckley's voice isn't doctored, altered or treated in any way on "Starsailor," the only "trickery" of any kind is the common or garden overdub. On the title track there're no less than sixteen Tim Buckley's.)

I asked about the sleeve of "Greetings From L.A." The front depicts the town of Los Angeles, all but invisible beneath a disgusting brown blanket of photochemical smog, and inside there's a grim photo of a very serious- looking Buckley clutching a gas mask.

All very ecological, but somehow it doesn't quite ring true. Buckley doesn't seem like any fresh-air-loving nature fiend.

Concern with pollution doesn't suit a guy who can say, "I can't stand animals, so I adopted a kid," and indeed the album cover was intended as an ironic statement.

"See, in L.A. you can't even get through the day without a sense of irony. And the message that the sleeve was intended to impart was that even in this horrific atmosphere there can still be a lot of musical activity going down. But of course, nobody picked up on that.

"I like the album a lot, though. We made it all in two days, and it has a kind of immediate energy about it."

"Greetings" was the first of Tim's albums that didn't feature Lee Underwood as lead guitarist, the jazzer being replaced by Joe Falsia--a New Yorker.

More rock-oriented, Falsia also produced "Greetings" and took most of the lead action on "Sefronia." Underwood, apparently, has made the move from artist to critic, and is now a jazz and rock-writer for Down Beat.

With "Sefronia," Buckley seems to be attempting to reach a wider audience, or at least to pick up old fans that have fallen by the wayside.

For while the groin-rock and oblique elements remain, most of the album is direct and conventionally melodic enough to convert folks that have never even heard of Roland Kirk or Franz Kafka.

The record even includes three songs that Buckley didn't have a hand in composing, among them Fred Neil's beautiful "Dolphins."

"A lot of people prefer the older-type songs, and I'm happy to do them, as long as I can continue to experiment simultaneously."

Experimentation, innovation and invention are words that occur frequently in Buckley's conversation. His in an alert and inquisitive mind. For example, it's no accident that he chooses to play and compose on the twelve-string guitar.

"With the twelve-string there aren't any clichés that you have to try to consciously avoid, except maybe the old Leadbelly flicks."

So Buckley has worked at developing his own guitar style, and is now almost as individual instrumentally as he is vocally. The concerted energy that has got him to this point is currently sustaining him though the planning and execution of three albums -- a regular studio album, a concept album and a live double album.

He's already written more than enough new material for the studio record, and the concept album is well under way. It's a song cycle, another collaboration job with Larry Beckett and is based on Joseph Conrad's "Outcasts Of The Islands" further reflecting his literary fascinations.

The live album seems destined to produce rather more headaches. He intends to re-record all of his personal favourites from earlier albums, but is going to be restricted by time limits.

"I intend to use every musician that I've ever worked with somewhere on the album, though I'm not sure of specific songs yet.

"I'll definitely include a lot of 'Blue Afternoon,' however. That album was only half-finished, and I particularly want to up-date and complete 'Cafe' and 'The River.' That album got kind of lost while I was changing labels."

Whether or not this nostalgia for older songs has anything to do with Jim Fielder, who has now rejoined Buckley after some years with Blood, Sweat and Tears is an interesting point. But irrespective, Fielder will be playing with Buckley when the singer's band tours here in the autumn.

Further evidence of Buckley's passion for music is revealed when he speaks of his activities away from the concert rostrum.

"I work in the ethnomusicology department of the UCLA in California, and my main premise is with Japanese and Balinese music. I do notation and translating from the Balinese musicians to the kids that are there studying.

"The programme was started years ago by Pete Seeger's father, and that's how I found out about it. Right now, that's my main source of new music and inspiration in the world.

"The courses aren't set up as a student/professor type thing. What you have is a group from Bali actually there, dancers and musicians, Gamelan Orchestra, the whole situation. What I have to do is to assimilate it all, and figure out how exactly to play the instruments.

"It's a near-impossible feat, but you try to understand about the people, the culture and the whole thing."

Speaking of unusual instruments prompted Buckley to ask after the Incredible String Band, with whom he played here briefly back in 1968.

He grimaced on hearing that Messrs Williamson and Heron were now heavily into Scientology.

"What? See ya, boys! It's hard enough to get along without signing your s--- over to something like that. Religion is the ruin of a great many good musicians. You won't find me falling for any of that kind of stuff.

"But the Scots are nuts, aren't they? I mean that's not just my opinion is it? I mean they really are crazy. They'll argue about anything, and somehow they always seem to know more about what you're doing than you do.

"And you always end up buying them a drink because they've argued you into the floor."

The light-hearted turn that conversation had taken seemed agreeable to Buckley as he launched into a lengthy monologue, totally unsuitable for publication in a family magazine like this, on the sensual delights of young ladies from Oklahoma to Mexico and the liberating effects of Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot and the Pill upon the same.

Okay. You got any ambitions, Tim?

"Yeah. I wanna get paid. No, seriously, I'm writing a book, my impressions of America, that I'd dearly like to see published..."

Tim Buckley, ladies and gentlemen.

"Interior war drives him, shorn of sleep...he takes the clear risk in new dance...crusading upwards from dearth. He will sign you his ten tales and then wander till spring."--Larry Beckett, 1967.