Tim Buckley

小簡介
Tim Buckley，又一個早逝的天才，1975年6月29日死于過量吸毒，享年二十八歲，死因 “過度用藥”。英年早逝的Buckley，音樂創(chuàng)作以民謠為主要風(fēng)格，盡管他是美國歌手，但給人的感覺確有相當(dāng)?shù)挠鴼赓|(zhì)。早期的他已經(jīng)充分的展現(xiàn)出吉他上的造詣，搭配上音域?qū)拸V的歌聲，即使任何一張他的專輯從沒打進過排行榜前一百名，但對后世的影響卻極深。
他的兒子，Jeff Buckley，也是著名美國搖滾歌手。1997年5月29日因車禍溺死于孟菲斯城附近的密西西比河中，年僅30歲.父子兩代，多才，命薄，令人感嘆生命的脆弱。
《Goodbye and Hello》，Tim Buckley最被推崇也是最成功、影響最深遠的專輯。專輯封面上的他，臉帶著微笑，注意那被子彈穿射過的眼睛，隱含著當(dāng)時反戰(zhàn)風(fēng)潮的反諷。專輯中產(chǎn)生了許多名曲，像是Hallucinations、Once I Was、Goodbye and Hello、Morning Glory。其中Hallucinations被選為美國最重要五十首迷幻單曲之一，細(xì)聽著這首歌，Buckley吉他的演奏手法，大量的勾弦與空間感的營造，伴奏樂手congas鼓的搭配，對我來說，每次聽都有著不同的感受，尤其是帶上耳機細(xì)聽，那空洞的層次與延綿不絕的吉他聲響，當(dāng)時的Buckley，透過迷幻藥物的使用，將他眼中所看到的事物與景象，換化為這首歌，消逝的燭火，追尋的美好情境突然消失。
《Happy Sad》是Tim Buckley的第叁張專輯，其中作品大都是篇幅較長的敘事民謠，有的竟長達十多分鐘，Buckley的演唱低調(diào)感性，宛如來自中世紀(jì)的游吟詩人在荒野上邊走邊唱。Buckley出色的民謠專輯還有1970年的《Lorca》。
《Blue Afternoon》與《Starsailor》，在這兩張專輯中，呈現(xiàn)的是Tim Buckley當(dāng)時最瘋狂的樂曲表現(xiàn)。《Starsailor》這張專輯試驗色彩濃厚，帶有鮮明的“太空要擺”情趣。在專輯中Buckley將民謠的甜美和諧與自由爵士的即興元素結(jié)合在一起，創(chuàng)造出一種嶄新的聲音，給人感覺像海妖在某個荒涼空蕩的外太空星球上歌唱，妖異詭秘。在樂隊的編制上，Buckley加重了管樂的成分，長笛與小號的自由吹奏是專輯始終徘徊在一種難以固定的狀態(tài)之中。
后期的Tim Buckley因為藥物的過度使用，導(dǎo)致呈現(xiàn)瘋狂的狀態(tài)，在后期的專輯中， Buckley皆嘗試要將影響他的爵士藍調(diào)根源加入到樂曲之中，往往顯得冗長而且結(jié)構(gòu)變的精密，加上唱片公司給予的創(chuàng)作壓力與商業(yè)考量，失去了原本早期的美感，有人甚至?xí)须y以感受之感，覺得Buckley的變化差距之大，與早期優(yōu)美的歌曲相比，Buckley好似變了一個人。
One of the great rock vocalists of the 1960s, Tim Buckley drew from folk, psychedelic rock, and progressive jazz to create a considerable body of adventurous work in his brief lifetime. His multi-octave range was capable of not just astonishing power, but great emotional expressiveness, swooping from sorrowful tenderness to anguished wailing. His restless quest for new territory worked against him commercially: By the time his fans had hooked into his latest album, he was onto something else entirely, both live and in the studio. In this sense he recalled artists such as Miles Davis and David Bowie, who were so eager to look forward and change that they confused and even angered listeners who wanted more stylistic consistency. However, his eclecticism has also ensured a durable fascination with his work that has engendered a growing posthumous cult for his music, often with listeners who were too young (or not around) to appreciate his music while he was active.
Buckley emerged from the same 60s Orange County, CA, folk scene that spawned Jackson Browne and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black introduced Buckley and a couple of musicians Buckley was playing with to the Mothers manager, Herbie Cohen. Although Cohen may have first been interested in Buckley as a songwriter, he realized after hearing some demos that Buckley was also a diamond in the rough as a singer. Cohen became Buckleys manager, and helped the singer get a deal with Elektra.
Before Buckley had reached his 20th birthday, hed released his debut album. The slightly fey but enormously promising effort highlighted his soaring melodies and romantic, opaque lyrics. Baroque psychedelia was the order of the day for many Elektra releases of the time, and Buckleys early folk-rock albums were embellished with important contributions from musicians Lee Underwood (guitar), Van Dyke Parks (keyboards), Jim Fielder (bass), and Jerry Yester. Larry Beckett was also an overlooked contributor to Buckleys first two albums, co-writing many of the songs.
The fragile, melancholic, orchestrated beauty of the material had an innocent quality that was dampened only slightly on the second LP, Goodbye and Hello (1967). Buckleys songs and arrangements became more ambitious and psychedelic, particularly on the lengthy title track. This was also his only album to reach the Top 200, where it only peaked at number 171; Buckley was always an artist who found his primary constituency among the underground, even for his most accessible efforts. His third album, Happy Sad, found him going in a decidedly jazzier direction in both his vocalizing and his instrumentation, introducing congas and vibes. Though it seemed a retreat from commercial considerations at the time, Happy Sad actually concluded the triumvirate of recordings that are judged to be his most accessible.
The truth was, by the late 60s Buckley was hardly interested in folk-rock at all. He was more intrigued by jazz; not only soothing modern jazz (as heard on the posthumous release of acoustic 1968 live material, Dream Letter), but also its most avant-garde strains. His songs became much more oblique in structure, and skeletal in lyrics, especially when the partnership with Larry Beckett was ruptured after the latters induction into the Army. Some of his songs abandoned lyrics almost entirely, treating his voice itself as an instrument, wordlessly contorting, screaming, and moaning, sometimes quite cacophonously. In this context, Lorca was viewed by most fans and critics not just as a shocking departure, but a downright bummer. No longer was Buckley a romantic, melodic poet; he was an experimental artiste who sometimes seemed bent on punishing both himself and his listeners with his wordless shrieks and jarringly dissonant music.
Almost as if to prove that he was still capable of gentle, uplifting jazzy pop-folk, Buckley issued Blue Afternoon around the same time. Bizarrely, Blue Afternoon and Lorca were issued almost simultaneously, on different labels. While an admirable demonstration of his versatility, it was commercial near-suicide, each album canceling the impact of the other, as well as confusing his remaining fans. Buckley found his best middle ground between accessibility and jazzy improvisation on 1970s Starsailor, which is probably the best showcase of his sheer vocal abilities, although many prefer the more cogent material of his earliest albums.
By this point, though, Buckleys approach was so uncommercial that it was jeopardizing his commercial survival. And not just on record; he was equally uncompromising as a live act, as the posthumously issued Live at the Troubadour 1969 demonstrates, with its stretched-to-the-limit jams and searing improv vocals. For a time, he was said to have earned his living as a taxi driver and chauffeur; he also flirted with films for a while. When he returned to the studio, it was as a much more commercial singer/songwriter (some have suggested that various management and label pressures were behind this shift).
As much of a schism as Buckleys experimental jazz period created among fans and critics, his final recordings have proved even more divisive, even among big Buckley fans. Some view these efforts, which mix funk, sex-driven lyrical concerns, and laid-back L.A. session musicians, as proof of his mastery of the blue-eyed soul idiom. Others find them a sad waste of talent, or relics of a prodigy who was burning out rather than conquering new realms. Neophytes should be aware of the difference of critical opinion regarding this era, but on the whole his final three albums are his least impressive. Those who feel otherwise usually cite the earliest of those LPs, Greetings from L.A. (1972), as his best work from his final phase.
Buckleys life came to a sudden end in the middle of 1975, when he died of a heroin overdose just after completing a tour. Those close to him insist that he had been clean for some time and lament the loss of an artist who, despite some recent failures, still had much to offer. Buckleys stock began to rise among the rock underground after the Cocteau Twins covered his Song for the Siren in the 1980s. The posthumous releases of two late-60s live sets (Dream Letter and Live at the Troubadour 1969) in the early 90s also boosted his profile, as well as unveiling some interesting previously unreleased compositions. His son Jeff Buckley went on to mount a musical career as well before his own tragic death in 1997.