Siren Songs
IT is September 1970, and Tim Buckley is hunkered down in Whitney Studios, Glendale, California, recording the album that he later came to believe was his masterpiece – Starsailor. The music he and his musicians are making is extraordinary, an unprecedented flux of folk, jazz, rock, improvisation and the classical avant-garde. On this day, though, he’s focused on the album’s title track, a staggering summoning of the elements. Larry Beckett, Buckley’s long-time collaborator and the lyricist for “Starsailor”, is watching in awe.
“I hadn’t been to a Tim session since Goodbye And Hello in June 1967,” he says. “It was markedly different. With Goodbye And Hello he’d wander around in the studio going, ‘I don’t know, what do you think we should do?’… For Starsailor, he was in complete command. It was astonishing.” Beckett saw Buckley construct the song “Starsailor” from its constituent parts. “He’d say, ‘OK, that’s the master of track three, I’m now going to sing track four.’ And then he would waltz into the studio and do that. He knew exactly where he was going, even though it was what we would call an experiment. To him it was just modern music.”
Lee Underwood, who’d been playing guitar with Buckley for a number of years already, remembers bass player John Balkin directing Buckley’s performance: “Balkin was a major influence on the amazing vocal tracks he had Tim lay down for ‘Starsailor’. Tim sang different ways, in different registers, laying down some 16 tracks.”
Buckley was pushing his music beyond the boundaries of folk, rock and jazz, while stretching the possibilities of his remarkable voice. “That’s where classical musicians stand in awe of Tim Buckley,” Beckett nods. “That he could actually do this.” Maury Baker, percussionist for the Starsailor sessions, laughs affectionately:“It’s like hearing particle physics!”
may nowand had then come along for the ride for 1969’s jazzier . Buckley’s restlessness and curiosity led to three albums released across 12 months that effectively left him in the commercial wilderness – , and .
