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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHCccGEUMr0

[sonikold]

great, thanks for the heads up on this one.

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Bump

[terminal pharmacy]

thanks for this sensational

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Before the vids get removed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onTgplSaIRM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4OTQ1MWk74

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvNJaoEZnP0

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Bump

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A review of the DVD: http://www.musicbox-online.com/filmr...-06092007.html

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A Lee Underwood Interview for Penny Black Music:

Thank you, Mr Underwood, for taking the time to answer some questions for Penny Black
Music. Please answer as many or as few of the questions as you like and your replies will
form the basis of both a published interview and review of the My Fleeting House DVD.
Thank you again, Christopher O'Toole.

• The qualities of the music you and Tim recorded together are elusive and enigmatic;
do you feel this is captured on the live versions presented on the My Fleeting House DVD?
• No question about it. This DVD serves Tim and the music well. Tim had a
mystique, a blend of gentle beauty and underlying intensity that he brought to every song.
In his early years, he looked as vulnerable as a wild deer, even as you see him on this DVD
in "Song to the Siren," "Morning Glory," or "Sing a Song for You." In his middle and later
years, he could be as forceful and aggressive as an electric-haired rock 'n' roller, as in the
marvelous 1970 rendition of "Come Here Woman." Through all of his phases, that elusive,
mysterious quality you mention remained with him. I explore that quality of gentle
ambiguity and forceful assertiveness at length in my book Blue Melody: Tim Buckley
Remembered, about the years we spent together between 1966-1975. I think this Fleeting
House DVD presents these aspects of Tim's personality and creative energies quite well.

• What was the inspiration for the present release? Was new footage discovered or re-
mastered for example? And what was the role, if any, of Mary Guibert?
• I of course cannot speak for the people who assembled these TV clips of Tim's
performances. Clearly, they are offering the best that is available. I trust they were inspired
by respect for Tim and the music as well as by the DVD's commercial potential.
• Strangely enough, very few of Tim's TV performances remain, so this assembly
is surely definitive. That makes it special. In today's media, everybody and his little sister
are videotaped. But back in Tim's era, video was just coming in. Plus, Tim was not a
commercial superstar, so he did not receive as much attention as, say, Hendrix or Creem.
As far as I know, there is no other footage to be unearthed, although I could be wrong
about that.
• I had not seen the "Late Night Line Up" or "Dutch TV" clips before. Nor had I
seen the incredible footage from "The Show," taped in Hershey, PA in 1970. That's the one
with Tim's beautiful performance of "I Woke Up" and his amazing rendition of "Come Here
Woman." This clip was a recent discovery, a major find by producer Rick Fuller. Both of
those songs are from Tim's Starsailor period and, in my view, constitute two of the very
best performances on the entire DVD. I believe the Boboquivari selections were
remastered. They include "Blue Melody" (the only clip of this song I know of) and Larry
Beckett's song "Venice Beach" (the only performance of it, as I recall).
• As far as I know, Mary Guibert, Tim's ex-wife and Jeff Buckley's mother, had
nothing to do with this assemblage. She may receive some royalties from it, but that is a
matter of business, which has nothing to do with me.

• Do you feel there are any specific reasons why Tim Buckley's commercial legacy has
never kept pace with the critical acclaim afforded his work?
• The most obvious reason seems to be the fact that he changed musical
conceptions every year or two. Many listeners had a hard time keeping up with that. One
of the nice things about this DVD is that it covers Tim's full spectrum quite well. Today, we
can appreciate what he was doing.
• He took listeners through five different musical dimensions in nine years.
Everybody enjoyed the initial folk and folk-rock phase (Tim Buckley, then Goodbye and
Hello). When he visited the jazz domain with Happy Sad and Blue Afternoon, many of his
earlier fans still hung in there and felt comfortable.
• But when he explored avant-garde and contemporary classical concepts with
Lorca, then Starsailor (which he regarded as his masterpiece), conventional listeners
conditioned by radio music and orthodox approaches to song forms and singing styles
simply could not handle it. Tim spent three years developing Starsailor concepts. By the
end of that time, he had lost nearly all of his original audience, although he had gained a
small cadre of adventurous listeners.
• When he then switched to his fifth and final phase — the last three albums,
including Greetings From L.A. — he lost all the people who loved the avant-garde music of
Starsailor. However, by the time he died in 1975, the white-funk dance music and
beautiful ballads of this final period were beginning to attract new audiences. All along the
way, from day-one to the end, various critics picked up on Tim's originality and tipped
their hats to him — not all at once, of course. But within each phase there were those who
appreciated him.
• I respect him to this day. His astonishing creative energies, his imagination, his
intelligence, his courage, his musical brilliance — he had it all. That is why I wrote Blue
Melody: Tim Buckley Remembered, and have continued to celebrate him and his music
throughout the 30+ years since his demise.

• You first met Tim at the Night Owl in New York in 1966. What were your first
impressions of him and his singing style? Do you feel you had any influence over his
development as an artist during that period?
• Initially, he sounded to me rather like an innocent, a 19-year-old folk-singing
choirboy with great potential. His songs, most of which were co-written with Larry Beckett,
were lovely gems that drew largely on high school experiences. Tim's voice was magical,
as we know, and the songs themselves were far more original than the blues-based
clichés composed by most of the other singer-songwriters of that era. I don't know that I
had any musical influence on Tim at this stage of his development.
• However, two songs in particular from the first album very much interested me –
"Song of the Magician" and "Song Slowly Song." They were extraordinarily atmospheric,
spacious, intimate, free-floating — and as we can see today, they were seminal ideas that
flowered into major works in later years (such as "Hallucinations," "I Woke Up," "Lorca,"
"Anonymous Proposition," and "Starsailor.")

• Which was your favourite album to record? Lorca and Starsailor are perhaps the most
revered, but for you, which was the album that captured your imagination?
• They all captured my imagination, because each of the nine albums he recorded
during his lifetime contained so much original material. By that I mean his lyrics, chord
progressions, melodies and increasing improvisational material were unique. He was a
fountain of great ideas and impassioned musicality. As he changed and grew, so I had to
change and grow in order to participate with him. That was a joy.

• How would you describe the legacy of the music you and Tim created? Can you see
any influence on popular culture or specific recording artists today?
• I think the legacy has to do less with specific songs or albums than it does with
his approach to making music. Unlike most individuals or groups in the popular music
domain, Tim did not merely find a style that listeners liked, and then re-do it over and
over again until the mother lode ran out. He was not in it for the money. He was in it to
create as much music on as many different levels as he could. Like guitarist John
McLaughlin or pianist Keith Jarrett or trumpet player Miles Davis, he explored music and
himself endlessly. He grew. He expanded. He evolved. That took not only great talent, but
great courage, integrity and imagination. He stands as an exemplary model of artistic
creativity.
• As for influence, only one singer-songwriter that I know of learned a
tremendous amount from Tim and had talent and voice enough to use it well: his son, Jeff
Buckley.

• How do you view the abrupt end to Tim's recording career? Was it a conscious
decision at the end of a downward spiral, or a mistake on the part of an artist with a great
wealth still to give?
• Tim's spiral at that time was actually starting on the upswing. He was working
on new music with Larry Beckett, conceiving a live Best Of re-recording of favourite songs,
and exploring the question of film acting. I think he had plenty of time, energy and talent
left to give. His death by an overdose of alcohol and heroin was by no means a conscious
choice. It was not suicide. It was purely an accident.

• For Tim were drugs a recreational activity or an essential ingredient in his musical
legacy, like Jim Morrison for example?
• All sorts of drugs, from alcohol to grass to heroin, were part of the social fabric
of that era. Tim used various drugs, not merely to get high and have sex or whatever, but
to intensify his sensibilities in the service of music. A lot of his fans don't want to believe
that, of course. I'm not saying Tim didn't enjoy getting stoned for the pure pleasure of it —
we've all done that, haven't we? I'm just saying he knew what he was doing most of the
time and, especially early on, had high artistic reasons for amplifying creative energies.
Later, for a variety of reasons, things perhaps got out of hand. Listen to the lyrics of songs
like "Who Could Deny You" and "Look At the Fool." You'll see some of the reasons why.

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• Finally, did you or Tim ever meet Frank Zappa, when Tim's records were being
released by his imprint? What was Zappa like during the period and what did he think of
your work?
• Tim knew Zappa from the beginning, as Frank and Tim were both managed by
Herb Cohen. We were on the same bill with Zappa in New York in 1966, and performed
several other concerts with Frank along the way.
• Frank didn't think much of Tim's folk music efforts early on, because Frank was
an extremely sophisticated composer, rooted in complex modern classical music. But he
ultimately came to respect Tim when Tim recorded the avant-garde music on Starsailor.

After performing and recording with Tim, Lee Underwood became a well-known
music journalist. He wrote for dozens of publications throughout the 70s and 80s,
including Down Beat (West Coast Editor), Rolling Stone, L.A. Times, Soul, and L.A. Weekly.
He co-authored Inside Paul Horn with Horn in 1990 and published Blue Melody: Tim
Buckley Remembered in 2002/03 (honoured by Uncut music magazine as one of the ten
best music books of 2003).
Underwood's web site features several of his published poems, many of his
photographs, and numerous essays. Blue Melody is available at Amazon.com.
Autographed copies can be ordered by contacting the author directly through his site at
http://www.leeunderwood.net .