Tim Buckley
In his short eight-year career, singer-songwriter Tim Buckley crossed many musical frontiers. With an eclectic blend of jazz, blues, rock and folk, he was at once a legend and a nightmare to music critics of the mid-'60s. Best known for his erotic crooning and sensual representation of love, war and loneliness (or to those less aware, the father of the late Jeff Buckley), his nine studio albums have been criticized, copied, detested and praised.

Born in 1947 in Amsterdam, N.Y., Timothy Charles Buckley grew up in a musically diverse family. Among the slew of his grandmother's Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland records, Buckley would stow his Johnny Cash and Hank Williams recordings. He was drawn to all the music rebels; the role of the loner is one that Buckley adopted into his musical repertoire from day one. Before entering high school and transplanting to suburban Anaheim, Calif., with his family, Buckley had already begun singing and had taught himself how to play the banjo. While in high school, he experimented with his voice; and by age 17, he could reach four octaves. Buckley's pitch was peculiar sounding, more reminiscent of screaming crosstown traffic or sounding trumpets than of a human voice.

He first started playing in Princess Ramona & the Cherokee Riders, a country and western duo. Princess Ramona later suggested that Buckley move into the folk scene. At a time when folk was crossing the lines into Top 40, Buckley was not too fond of the idea, but chose to give it a shot nonetheless. He formed two bands in the early years, the more Top 40-oriented Bohemians and the more prolific Harlequin 3. Joined by drummer Larry Beckett and bassist Jim Fielder, Buckley started to draw critics' attention.

He was discovered by Zappa's Mothers of Invention manager, Herb Cohen and was signed to Elektra in 1966. His self-titled debut appeared later that year to a pool of speculative critics. 1967's Goodbye and Hello featured the single, "I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain," a song he written and dedicated to his wife Mary and son Jeffrey. This album unleashed the painful honesty that would follow Buckley through his career. His hearty combination of truth, pain and naivete, helped produce some of the plushest soft-rock of the 1960s. Still, at the height of the turbulent late '60s, Elektra worried that as a folk singer, Buckley wasn't protesting enough, wasn't writing about the war enough and certainly was not taking a stand as often as he should.

However, Elektra's Jac Holzman stood by Buckley. "The combined effect of his words, his music, his passion, his persona struck a particular resonance," said Holzman of Buckley. "To some extent he was the bright side of people's tortured souls, and maybe of his own tortured soul. He could express anguish that wasn't negative."

This anguish became Buckley's legacy and Goodbye and Hello broke onto the Billboard charts.

Several albums followed, including 1969's Blue Afternoon and 1970's Lorca. 1971 brought the abrasive beauty of Starsailor. Starsailor's thickly layered vocals and erratic bellows were limitless, engaging and desperate. Shortly after its release, Buckley fell into a depression that resulted in several suicide attempts. At the core of this melancholic state was Buckley's refusal to accept that he was a star. While he wanted the public to praise what he was doing, he seemed to want to push them as far away from him as possible.

When Starsailor failed to live up to the success of his earlier releases, Buckley's depression worsened and was exacerbated by his increasing heroin use.

Greetings from LA emerged in 1972, however, and presented what seemed to be a new and improved Tim Buckley. A combination of rock and funk, the album was a collection of lustful, romantically smitten songs. Greetings was as shocking lyrically as Starsailor had been musically. Following the release of 1975's Sefronia, Buckley headed out on tour to promote the album. After a sold-out show in Dallas, Texas, Buckley went to a friend's house to score some heroin. On the morning of June 29, 1975, Buckley died of a heroin overdose at age 28.

A man of emotion, anguish, dissatisfaction and most importantly love, Buckley emerged as one of his era's most enigmatic performers and, 20 years after his death, is still a respected name in music.