Last evening, Steve and I drove down to West Hollywood to see a free screening of the documentary Tim Buckley: My Fleeting House, which was touted as the first-ever collection of rare videos capturing Tim’s various TV appearances and live performances between 1967 and 1974. Between a dozen songs, interviews with David Browne (author of “Dream Brother”), Larry Beckett (Tim’s lyrical co-writer), and Lee Underwood (guitarist) give insight into the Tim’s musical career as well as his personal life.
Of the songs, the most fascinating to see performed were definitely “Come Here Woman” and “I Woke Up,” the footage of which was culled from a program called “The Show,” in which Tim participated in an informal round-table discussion before he and his band took the stage. The songs were unbelievable and intense, and his band’s improvisations and embellishments were remarkable. Lee Underwood’s fragmented, jazzy, off-time guitar scribbling was the perfect accompaniment for Tim’s 12-string chord strumming and lofty voice. The band seemed to have a perfect sense of space and tone, expertly filling holes and bending and weaving with the pace Tim dictated with his playing and singing. Those two songs sounded way better than the versions which were recorded for Starsailor.
The pre-1970 performances (tracks from Happy/Sad, Blue Afternoon and Goodbye And Hello) were filmed much more in the vein of a ’60s singer/songwriter troubadour, with continued close-ups of Tim’s face and little exposure given to Underwood or John Miller or Carter Collins. It seemed like the media and record industry, at the time, painted Tim as a folksy love-song composer rather than the experimental outsider he aspired to be. Still, the live performances of “Pleasant Street” (from the movie The Christian Licorice Store) and “Morning Glory” were great.
The interviews were very revealing, although some of the material seems recycled by now. Lee Underwood did a great job of explaining the technical musical aspects of what he witnessed in his years as Tim’s guitarist, and Beckett handled the majority of the personal information that was disclosed to the audience. The guy who wrote “Dream Brother” had some interesting insight, but because of his position (biographer, not friend or bandmate) his knowledge was limited, and his assumptions about what might have been occurring inside Tim’s head was totally speculative.
The round-table discussion that preceded the Starsailor era performances was a nice touch. It enabled us to hear Tim interact with others, and introduced many to his “warrior” persona, as an adamant activist and politically-aware person. Granted, he came off very pretentious at times with what he was saying about societal ills, but we’re now thirty-five years after the fact, so perhaps my growing up at a different time puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding or sympathizing with the ideas of youths in the ’60s.
Nevertheless, it was a really fantastically compiled documentary, and that’s exactly what I told the film’s producer at the conclusion of the screening. I didn’t have much else to say to the guy, so I just shook his hand and left. Still, I recommend you at least add it to you Netflix queue it if you’re not going to buy it. I don’t have Netflix, so I don’t know if it’s even available, but you should check on that and get back to me so I can amend that statement accordingly.
