1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 149. Tim Buckley – Happy Sad (1969)

 

Ah, Timothy Buckley, you may have been a rubbish father to Jeff, but you wrote some good songs. And perhaps there’s some small consolation that he’s known as “Father of Jeff” rather than Jeff known as “Son of Tim”.

First thing before starting the album up, that I see it’s a 45 minute run time with only six songs, so either we’ve got a load of ca. 7 minute monsters, or a few standard 3-4 minutes songs and a couple of epics. Which makes me miss vinyl, where you could see at a glance if there was a big solid wodge that meant a long track, which was usually either joy or boredom. And spawning off *that* thought was that pretty much so far all of the long tracks have either been a song with a lot of verses (e.g. Dylan’s Visions of Johanna) or something with a lengthy jam session in the middle; there’s not really been one that’s built up in the equivalent of movements. Maybe The End by The Doors.

Anyway. To Buckley Sr. This is a different style to Hello and Goodbye, despite a similar title composed of opposites. To answer my earlier question about track length – it's a bit of both. Three medium-long tracks on the A side, one longer and two shorter on the B side. The tracks tend towards a more simplified musical backing with Buckley’s vocal over the top, not unlike Leonard Cohen or Fred Neil in places. Buzzin’ Fly has a very jazzy beat, something like John Coltrane, very contrapuntal to Buckley’s vocal.

Some of it felt like it was addressed to his son, and yes, Dream Letter certainly is, a song about regret and isolation. Love From Room 109 addresses similar sentiments, but isn’t described as specifically being about his relationship with Jeff. The longest track, Gypsy Woman (and how many songs have that name or a variant, I wonder), is a lengthy funky jam with what sounds like a marimba and congos while Buckley does his best Jim Morrisson impression and uses his voice more like a percussion instrument than a melody. Which answers another point of mine above. Lengthy jam.

Maybe because it sounds like bits of lots of other people, as my notes above make plain, it’s not as satisfying to me as Hello and Goodbye. Buckley severed his relationship with his prior songwriting partner and this is more about the music and less political. Only the last track, Sing A Song For You, feels like previous Buckley (T).