Rating: 
Summary: I know Lee and Knew Tim as well
Review: We raised a lot of hell back then...No one could dance through a melody the way Lee did with his guitar ...he did it again with his words. Having known both he and Tim for years, I can say that you must read this book...you will know them both at the finish. What a sad day for all of us when Tim Died. The world was left with a void that will never be filled. I miss him to this day.I'm so glad that Lee wrote this book...There is a heart beat within these pages. You will feel it.
Rating:
Summary: Review in Goldmine music magazine
Review: Writer Tierney Smith gave Blue Melody an insightful review in Goldmine magazine, July 25, 2003-- When Lee Underwood met an aspiring singer/songwriter named Tim Buckley in Greenwich Village in 1966, the latter had already secured a contract with Elektra Records and seemed well on his way to a promising musical career. In the end, commercial success proved elusive, though Buckley did achieve an impressive cult-level status.
Underwood was Buckley's lead guitarist for seven years, and together they formed a bond so close that Buckley once said of their friendship, "We didn't have sex, but we were married." Still, the author, who interviewed Buckley's family members, bandmates and friends for this project, insists that he's not "blinded by friendship" and can maintain his objectivity toward the man he calls "one of the most interesting, complex and stimulating persons I ever met."
Given Underwood's flair for insightful analysis (of both Buckley himself and the music in question) and his wonderfully descriptive prose - he brings the fast-paced world of New York and the colorful kaleidoscope of Venice, Calif., to life with a vividness that feels almost cinematic in scope - Buckley could hardly have asked for a more eloquent writer to tell his story.
Underwood paints a portrait of a "brilliantly funny" man who disdained the banal conversation of more conventional minds, an intellectual who seemed to find a kindred spirit in the author, who introduced Buckley to the poetry of Western mystics such as William Blake and Rainer Maria Rilke and discussed with him the poetry of Dylan Thomas and Delmore Schwartz.
Buckley, who channeled his musical and literary influences into his art, possessed a musical intelligence that found him rejecting the notion of, in the author's words, "concocting commercially formulated decorations to flatter audience preconceptions." Instead, through his songs, writes Underwood, Buckley gave us "the core of his life, the soul of his being, a cry of love from the heart."
Life was carefree in those early days, recalls Underwood, "full of hope and possibilities wide open for the taking," yet Buckley's inner conflicts were never far below the surface and, in the author's view, had their roots in an unsupportive father, a World War II veteran and ex-paratrooper whose growing mental instability made him "a volatile presence who left a huge emotional emptiness in Tim's life." The late senior Buckley, a self-described "loner" who viewed society as hostile to artists in general, derided his son's artistic ambitions even as he harbored similar unrealized dreams of his own. He counts among the fascinating cast of supporting characters found in these pages.
In a book that strongly focuses on Buckley's music, there is effusive praise for a man whose desire for exploring new musical directions took him further from the more mainstream work of his early folk-rock leanings to the realm of the avant-garde with 1970's Starsailor. Buckley's choices alienated both his fans and his critics, but, as Underwood writes, Buckley courageously stuck to his guns. "When he had to walk in dark isolation because of his choices, he went ahead and walked in dark isolation, sometimes for years on end."
The author also takes to task Buckley's critics who "think [Buckley] should have catered to their tastes instead of aspiring to realize his own visionary explorations in new musical domains." One can sense Underwood's frustration all these years later toward an audience who, rather than rejecting Buckley's work, "could have felt respected, challenged and astonished" by his increasingly more adventurous output. "Buckley gave them diamonds," sums up the author, "the crowd wanted pebbles."
Buckley's growing unhappiness and self-doubt in the wake of the failure of his more ambitious work lends Buckley's story a certain poignancy. His return to a more conventional song structure in 1972's Greetings From L.A. seemed almost an admission of defeat. As Buckley's wife Judy saw it, he was "happy doing it, but there was so much more he had to offer that nobody wanted." In Underwood's view, Buckley's more commercially acceptable fare was motivated by a desire to continue recording and even then he brought as much "grace, style, passion and creative imagination" to the process as he could.
Underwood's exploration of Buckley's death on June 19, 1975, at the age of 28 of a lethal combination of heroin and alcohol (in which he is careful to point out that Buckley was not a regular heroin user) is presented in the same insightful, clear-eye manner that he brings to the whole of Buckley'' creative efforts in this deeply penetrating book.
Rating:
Summary: Review in Goldmine music magazine
Review: Writer Tierney Smith gave Blue Melody an insightful review in Goldmine magazine, July 25, 2003-- When Lee Underwood met an aspiring singer/songwriter named Tim Buckley in Greenwich Village in 1966, the latter had already secured a contract with Elektra Records and seemed well on his way to a promising musical career. In the end, commercial success proved elusive, though Buckley did achieve an impressive cult-level status.
Underwood was Buckley's lead guitarist for seven years, and together they formed a bond so close that Buckley once said of their friendship, "We didn't have sex, but we were married." Still, the author, who interviewed Buckley's family members, bandmates and friends for this project, insists that he's not "blinded by friendship" and can maintain his objectivity toward the man he calls "one of the most interesting, complex and stimulating persons I ever met."
Given Underwood's flair for insightful analysis (of both Buckley himself and the music in question) and his wonderfully descriptive prose - he brings the fast-paced world of New York and the colorful kaleidoscope of Venice, Calif., to life with a vividness that feels almost cinematic in scope - Buckley could hardly have asked for a more eloquent writer to tell his story.
Underwood paints a portrait of a "brilliantly funny" man who disdained the banal conversation of more conventional minds, an intellectual who seemed to find a kindred spirit in the author, who introduced Buckley to the poetry of Western mystics such as William Blake and Rainer Maria Rilke and discussed with him the poetry of Dylan Thomas and Delmore Schwartz.
Buckley, who channeled his musical and literary influences into his art, possessed a musical intelligence that found him rejecting the notion of, in the author's words, "concocting commercially formulated decorations to flatter audience preconceptions." Instead, through his songs, writes Underwood, Buckley gave us "the core of his life, the soul of his being, a cry of love from the heart."
Life was carefree in those early days, recalls Underwood, "full of hope and possibilities wide open for the taking," yet Buckley's inner conflicts were never far below the surface and, in the author's view, had their roots in an unsupportive father, a World War II veteran and ex-paratrooper whose growing mental instability made him "a volatile presence who left a huge emotional emptiness in Tim's life." The late senior Buckley, a self-described "loner" who viewed society as hostile to artists in general, derided his son's artistic ambitions even as he harbored similar unrealized dreams of his own. He counts among the fascinating cast of supporting characters found in these pages.
In a book that strongly focuses on Buckley's music, there is effusive praise for a man whose desire for exploring new musical directions took him further from the more mainstream work of his early folk-rock leanings to the realm of the avant-garde with 1970's Starsailor. Buckley's choices alienated both his fans and his critics, but, as Underwood writes, Buckley courageously stuck to his guns. "When he had to walk in dark isolation because of his choices, he went ahead and walked in dark isolation, sometimes for years on end."
The author also takes to task Buckley's critics who "think [Buckley] should have catered to their tastes instead of aspiring to realize his own visionary explorations in new musical domains." One can sense Underwood's frustration all these years later toward an audience who, rather than rejecting Buckley's work, "could have felt respected, challenged and astonished" by his increasingly more adventurous output. "Buckley gave them diamonds," sums up the author, "the crowd wanted pebbles."
Buckley's growing unhappiness and self-doubt in the wake of the failure of his more ambitious work lends Buckley's story a certain poignancy. His return to a more conventional song structure in 1972's Greetings From L.A. seemed almost an admission of defeat. As Buckley's wife Judy saw it, he was "happy doing it, but there was so much more he had to offer that nobody wanted." In Underwood's view, Buckley's more commercially acceptable fare was motivated by a desire to continue recording and even then he brought as much "grace, style, passion and creative imagination" to the process as he could.
Underwood's exploration of Buckley's death on June 19, 1975, at the age of 28 of a lethal combination of heroin and alcohol (in which he is careful to point out that Buckley was not a regular heroin user) is presented in the same insightful, clear-eye manner that he brings to the whole of Buckley'' creative efforts in this deeply penetrating book.
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