BUDDY HELM   Drummer and Friend

As many of you are well aware Buddy Helm played the drums in Tim Buckley's band from 1972 until Tim's final performance at the Bastille Room in Houston Texas on June 29th 1975. Buddy took the time to answer some of my questions about his relationship with Tim both professional and personal. There are 17 questions in all and through his answers Buddy provides us with an overwhelming amount of thought provoking recollections of life on the road and on the stage with Tim. I began this interview by thanking Buddy for allowing me to pick his brain. I then asked the following 5 questions and Buddy decided to answer them in one long fabulous essay. Afterwhich, he answered the remaining 12 questions one at a time. One other question that I asked Buddy was if he would share any anecdotes or funny stories that he could recall. What he did was weave the anecdotes into the answers as he went along. If you decide to print out this interview it would probably take 15 pages depending on the sizes of your margins. The first five questions were as follows: (1).Could we begin the questions with an account of the musical events that transpired in your life just before and then leading up to your first meeting or association with Tim? (2).Were you a fan of Tim's before you began playing drums in the band? 3).Can you tell me which album or albums of Tim's, that you liked to listen to the most? (4).How and when did you become a member of Tim's band? (5).What was the musical atmosphere like in the early seventies from where you stood? BUDDY: Okay. I was in Florida in '69 playing with Bethlehem Asylum, we were touring the South and had to get a new road manager while we were in Dothan, Alabama. Our old road manager had been Otis Redding's road manager. Terry broke down in a coffee shop when the waitress asked him what he wanted. He had spent all our money on cocaine and confessed to the waitress. I had to fire him and get a new road manager. I had no idea what Cocaine was all about. I just knew that it made people into idiots. The South was a hostile place for long hairs even though it is the home of the blues and the source of inspiration for American music, it was still very dangerous for us. We were an integrated band too. For some unknown reason, we were told to pick up our "new Road manager" at the airport in Jackson, Mississippi. It turned out to be Tim Buckley's road manager. (I forgot his name). He toured with us for several months. He was very tall and was a real California/Woodstock kind of Hippie. High profile and full of fun. He rolled cigarettes while driving the car and regailed us with Tim Buckely stories. That was the first that I had heard about Tim Buckley other than his records and one TV appearance when I saw him on the Tonight show where he defended himself quite well against the conservative establishment guests. I was impressed that a young curly haired charmer with a big grin could be so confident and articulate when confronted with angry resentful cynical mainstream TV personalities. He was capabale of defending his antiwar stand on national TV. He was the first real "flower child" I had seen. One of our fans in St. Petersburg, Florida had played me "Goodbye And Hello" before that and I was curious. After I left Coconut Grove, I lived on a landing craft houseboat in Saulsalito, CA. offshore, writing and rowing in only to get water. The only way to reach me was to call Shell Silverstein's boat tied up at Gate 5, then he would row out and tell me. Doctor Hook's Medicine band was rehearsing on Shell's huge funky but lavish houseboat. I hung out in the studio with them while they cut the gold record, "On the Cover of the Rolling Stone" I was upset about Duane Allman being killed and then also Barry Oakley and didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't really fit in anywhere in the West Coast music scene. Peggy, a crazy girlfriend of Asylum guitarist, Danny Finley(Panama Red) from Coconut Grove, asked me to come down to L.A. and get back into the music biz. When I arrived in L.A. in '71, the first thing Peggy did was take me to Tower Records and made me buy "Greetings from L.A." I liked it alot. When I finished the first sessions I did at Capitol records that week for an old folkie friend from the Grove "Vince Martin" I listened to "Greetings" alot. I was staying in Brentwood at a big mansion of some movie starlet, Tiffany Bolling, and was not impressed with the Hollywood thing. I was unsure what to do with my life. Vince is an old folkie from Greenwich Village. He took me around to meet his friends. Maria Muldaur was playing at the Ashgrove with the Jim Kweskin jug band, Joni Mitchell was playing at the Troubadour and we hung out in the dressing room with her. I was very shy and she was very gracious to me. I also met Van Dyke Parks, John Sebastian, Lowell George and Frank Zappa, all within a few days. I had my pick of gigs. Lowell was just starting Little Feat. When I walked out of the rehearsal with Zappa which included the "Overnight Sensation" band, George Duke, Jean Luc Ponte, Ruth Underwood, etc. I met Timmy standing outside manager Herb Cohen's office. I didn't recognize him. He grinned at me as we waited for Herb to talk to us. He acted like we were in high school. "What did you get sent to the principal for?" was the first thing he said to me with a goofy grin. "I can't work with Frank" I said. He laughed. "I need a drummer". "Who are you?" I said bluntly. He introduced himself and I said "You're much taller on record". He laughed even though it was an unintentional insult. I have this habit of saying exactly what's on my mind. We rehearsed even though I didn't know his songs. He asked me to go on the road. I asked for copies of his albums to learn the songs. He said "Don't bother. Just play what you want. It sounds great." We did the "Dolphin Song" which is a Freddie Neil song I knew from Coconut Grove. It has an odd 6/8 time signature that very few people could get right. I was a snob and insisted on doing it like Freddie had done it and Tim appreciated the effort. I decided to work with Tim because he had heart in his music and he made me laugh. I tended to be serious a lot of the time. Plus he was very intelligent and well read and I was trying to expand my literary horizons. Tim was re-entering the music biz after a couple of years sitting it out in Venice. He was motivated and very clean and healthy. I brought my Afro-Cuban Southern-fried soul and salsa rhythms to his poetry and we both found the sound very exciting. Tim worked all over while Disco dominated the air waves. We worked clubs and auditoriums all over the U.S., Canada, and Europe. It was brilliantly inspired music that was always dangerously close to falling apart on stage but always exciting to play. Tim had a four octave range that he yodelled with, sang in tongues, Swahili, anything that came into him. He was a conduit for passion and I was just pumping him along on the drum set. Sometimes Carter Collins sat in and even Lee Underwood, but this last band of Tim's was more like rock and R & B but with a change- up into a ballad that Tim would do in the middle of the set. He'd pull out an old song and let his baritone voice just wash out over the adoring fans. He would screetch high and then drop into a middle bass all in a single phrase sometimes. He did have a way of making love to the audience with his voice. Our first gig was the Boarding House in San Francisco and all his old fans were waiting to see what this new band would be like after his hiatus. It was very emotional. People cherished Tim as their own little secret singer/songwriter/poet and didn't want him to gain too wide of a mainstream popularity. Some folks called him a sell-out at that first week of shows but he insisted on doing what he wanted to do which was hotter and had more drive than what his older folkie fans expected. He had a lot of pressure on him to pack the house. Herb Cohen (Tim's manager) was calling and nervously asking me "Is he yodelling?" Herb hated Tim's experimental vocal gymnastics. I told Herb that he was. Herb wanted Tim to do the ballads. Herb told me that Tim had "gotten confused" by playing with a bunch of elitist jazz type players like Lee Underwood, Maury Baker and Emmit Chapman.(Star Sailor stuff) At one point, Tim stopped playing on stage at the Boarding House and went into a Lenny Bruce type of monologue which blew my mind. He told the people why he wanted to do this new kind of music and why he thought they should appreciate it. I loved working with Tim. He let me play whatever I wanted to. The encores evolved into just vocal and drums. He would go into an ecstatic trance and just let the sounds tumble out of his mouth. I was in heaven. The trance drumming that had so affected me in the Caribbean as a very young drummer was where my heart was. Tim instinctively went there. We made magic on stage together. I am a very lucky guy. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> JACK: (6) I heard Tim say once in an interview, during a promotion tour for the album "Sefronia", that there was a long musical interlude in the middle of the song "Sefronia" when he first recorded it. Did you play drums on the missing instrumental portion? BUDDY:We did the Sefronia sessions in Paramount Studios on Santa Monica Blvd. We also did some other tracks in New York at Record Fctory, I think Kenny Randal produced? I wasn't impressed with the various songs but the tone poem Sefronia intrigued me because it was outside the mold of pop songs. Tim always wanted to be free enough to try stuff outside the mold. I don't recall the session note for note. It would be great if I could. As far as an extended instrumental section that was cut out; that was just cold blooded commercial editing, I think. The energy that we were generating on the road was what we were about. Tim tried to capture that feeling of inventiveness in the studio by just playing the groove and seeing what came up. Budget anxiety from Managers makes that kind of jamming very precious. Plus the pressure from producer and manager to force Tim into what they thought would be a commercial sound made jamming unlikely. On stage, we could and did play around the arrangements of some of the songs or a new idea.. Tim kept it interesting that way. I think it was a real breath of fresh air for Tim to have that freedom to improvise in the studio. If he mentioned it, it was because he enjoyed being a part of the musical band, not just the front man. It was odd for him though. He was being forced to be a star. The same crap happened to Jeff Buckley, from what I gathered from some of his people; the label just got more and more pushy and insistant on forcing the artist into doing what the bean counters think is commercial. It's why coporate music never works as a form of art. It may sell tampons but it's not worth remembering. JACK: (7) The album "Sefronia" seemed to be an attempt by Tim to record some music for the masses. Do you think that he might have felt restricted in any way? BUDDY: Safaronia, Commercial? Yes. It was a blatant attempt by management to force Tim into doing some boring tripe that Herb and his henchmen thought would sell. It was a bozo time for radio airplay. Disco was almost hitting and arena rock already sucked. Nobody was sure what the "next big thing" was going to be. So, instead of just letting the artist do what they do, the manager has to tell the artist what NOT to do. The tunes for Sefronia were a version of Tim succumbing to the managers of bad taste. He was committed to doing it because he was an honorable man and he wanted to provide for his family. I know that sounds wierd, but the family that I knew of Tim's was his adopted family, Judy and her son Taylor. Tim legally adopted Taylor after his real father was killed in a car crash that nearly killed Judy and Taylor also. Judy and Tim made a good couple and Taylor was a good kid. Tim was going on the road to pay for his school. He showed me pics of Taylor happy and child-like in some country school with horses. I know that Jeff had a lot of anger about Tim's missing presence in his life but, I only saw Jeff once and I don't think mommy and daddy got along too well. If Tim had his own way, he would have been even more of an experimental song writer. He was a rat in a cage in some respects. He had to do what he was told. The fat guy was paying his rent. JACK: (8) Larry Beckett had a hand in writing two of the album's songs. Did you meet Larry at all, and if so how would you describe his personality? Did he come around to visit a lot or rarely or never? BUDDY: Beckett was like some visiting saint that I never got the permission to see. I'm sure I met him but nothing sticks. I had met a lot of pretentious bohos in the Village and Coconut Grove. He was also reputed to be living in Seattle which was a big point against him in my mind. I could be wrong though. I'm sorry, I'm sounding like Kinky Friedman or something.... Larry was an interesting person although I don't recall ever talking to him, seeing him, or getting fucked up with him. This is not to mean that Larry might not remember something. I hope I didn't offend him. I had a tendency to do that. JACK: (9) Do you know what the lyrics to "Pleasant Street" mean? BUDDY: Sorry Pleasant Street wasn't explained to me, but it was a mix of different relationships I think and he did live on a pleasant street, or something? I can't remember. He did show me where he lived on top of the merry-go-round Carousel on the Santa Monica Boardwalk. JACK:(10) I understand that you were only 21 when you went to work for Tim; what kind of an impression did he make on you when you watched him in action for the first time as a member of the band? BUDDY: I was 21 and full of beans. I had just come from listening to Duane play live almost every night. Nothing could impress me. But I was intimidated by everyone I met. There was a kind of music that I wanted to play and Tim was doing it. I decided to work with him because he had heart in his music. He was struggling with it. For other guys I could have worked with, the energy was more manipulated and thought out. Tim was balls to the wall, let's just take off. When I first played with him, he didn't tell me what to play. That was a relief. He preferred what I played over what was on his albums. That was a great vote of confidence to me, a paranoid from a small town. Tim had a professional calmness that came from years of already dealing with the "biz." I wanted a singer and he was the best I could find. I knew that to make it in the biz, for me as a drummer, I had to have a good singer in front of me. The heaven's brought me to Tim. I wasn't impressed with his homework though in the blues area. He had a snobbishness that was a cover up for his own insecurities about not being a "trained" musician. That bothered him. He was sensitive about his own writing and musical ability. He had complete confidence in his own voice. I wanted him to write songs, himself. I wanted to read his poetry. His writing was in a book that he didn't let anyone read but was lost when his guitar was stolen at an airport. He was more upset about loosing his novel than his guitar. The fact that Beckett was writing words for Tim wasn't any of my business. I was treated like the hired help by most of the old school gang Tim had around him. Only when we got on the road and all those old hippies were gone, did Tim really start to open up as a real artist, not just a performer. The road was where he could sing and create right on stage with the band messing around behind him. I supported him on that kind of song writing all the way. If we were in some low key gig, he would whip out a lick and I would settle in behind him to make it sound like a song. The rest of the band had to come along or look like a chickenshit. Many times we bullshitted our way through some pretty interesting creations right in front of an adoring audience. Just the way it should be... Of course word would get back to the manager..and Tim would be suitably restrained for the next "upscale" gig. Although he wasn't above pulling a tantrum and just wailing wierd at some big operation where record industry types were drinking off of his royalties. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> JACK: (11) Were you shocked at all by Tim's personality or his life style, or were you impressed? BUDDY: Impressed? Sure I was. When I came into Frank's rehearsal, I was impressed. Zappa had a whole army of butt kissers as well as great mercenary musicians and every toy in the world. All I could think of was that this was what it was like to have a perfect Christmas. He had the red wagon and it was full of every kind of musical toy available. When I worked with Tim in the same soundstage, he played through a Fender Twin Reverb and his 12 string Fender. The same kind of monster guitar that Johnny Winter was playing. It had a log for a neck and it was heavy plus it was a bitch to tune. But it had a full sound that Tim felt comfortable with. As a single folk singer, the 12string is great. It gives lots of overtones and filling sounds that aren't there with a 6 string acoustical. But when you get a band behind an electric 12 string then there is a lot of conflicting sounds going out. It was a different sound and I wanted Tim to play less with a band than what he would play by himself. When he would stop in the middle of a set and do a ballad just by himself, you could see the tears in the eyes of the people. That was his strong suit. I enjoyed just playing softly behind him that way, because what he did to the audience was very special. His voice was like a big acoustical vibrator. He would go low and then go high. But, it was something only he could do. I was surprised and pleased at how clean Tim was when it came to drugs. On the road he was a pro. He didn't even drink a beer unless he had a two day break to recover. At one point he was having tonsil problems and I got him biosalts from a then rare health food store. He took them all at the same time. We laughed about it but it was a great respect he had for his former tendencies. When I worked with him, I never saw him stoned or fucked up. When I spent time with him not working, I only saw him get a little tight on a few beers on a special occasion. The heavy drug user did not exist. Tim did not do drugs when I was working with him up until the end of his life. JACK (12) What was it like performing live with Tim? The "Honeyman" album is simply fantastic. BUDDY: Playing with Tim was like sex. Sometimes sex is good, sometimes it's great, sometimes you wish that you hadn't even done it(rarely). Tim was singing from his crotch most of the time. He was the only singer I wouldn't laugh at when he hit himself in the chest like king kong. He embarassed me too, like the time he trashed Colin Blunstone's English wimp band at the Troubadour. Tim was doing a little fag baiting on stage which I thought would end in a rumble with the other band. Colin was the singer in the Zombies. "She's not there" He had gotten a better review from the very sympathetic L.A. Times reviewer who liked glam boys and their tight butts. Tim was trying to get to a deeper funkier, hetero groove while this gay awareness thing, ala David Bowie was just starting to gain some popularity. Tim wore mostly black on stage. He had gay friends so it wasn't really about being homophobic.. The world was starting to get tarted up with spandex and sequins so Tim was not feeling particularly in vogue and he let loose on stage. Colin and his band reacted by each band member loading up with two chicks and making a big scene of leaving the Troubadour, only to drop the chicks off after everyone else had left the club, "Hey? where's the party?" the girls were saying as Colin's roadie dropped them off in the alley behind the club as I loaded out my drums. Tim once said that he thought being gay was the easy way out. He thought that many times, a guy who is gay is just too lazy to work for it and deal with a woman and all of what that entails. He was capable of hitting a person on a sexual level that they responded to no matter what their preference was. Playing with Tim was very strenuous. That's the way I liked it. He would get built up, develop a head of steam and energy. He'd sweat a lot on stage. We all did. It was a sign that we were working at the top of our abilities. That is a wonderful place to be and to get paid to be there was a blessing. There was anger in people, but there was no voice on stage articulating that anger. Bruce had yet to cop Tim's act and make it his own. I say that in a half-joking and half-serious way. We had just gotten out of a very violent, vocal debate in this country. The war was ending but with great reluctance. President Nixon was getting caught with his dick in the cookie jar. The conservative forces were believing the fantasy that the Left would take over America and force everyone to smoke dope and screw. The hammer was coming down ever so slowly that most folks wouldn't realize that the society of America changed fundamentally at that time. Personal freedoms were being modified to fit the upcoming yuppie free market slave clones of today's coporate earth. I apologize for the seditious rhetoric, it's me and not Tim. Tim was very aware politcally but the kids had been shot at Kent State. We played there soon after that and the feeling was very grey and suppressed. The beginning of the greying of the psychedelic American dream was being instituted and Tim as a performer and as an American Voice, was compelled to speak up. Only when he did, he was afraid. He asked someone once, "If I get political will you kill me like you did Janis and Jimi?" The guy just took a sip off his Vodka gimlet and looked at me. Tim said, "When Buddy picks up a gun, then everyone goes to prison." Tim laughed as hard as he could. JACK: (13) Did the guys in the band hang out together a lot or was Tim more of a loner? BUDDY: I stayed with Tim and Judy in Venice once in a while. They were private people. He didn't go out much at that time. When we traveled, many times he would not "hang with the band". On more than one occasion, he would ask me where I was going when we were sitting in some city. I usually went to the museums or galleries, I am a painter. Tim would go occasionally but in general he had to do some interview while I got to be anonymous and hit the museums. He wanted to go with me many times but couldn't. Years later, Judy showed me letters that he had written to her while on the road. Many times he referred to our conversations as the most interesting thing going on. It flattered me more than anything that I could think of. He was very well read and I felt like a country bumpkin around him. He would argue about writers and philosophers and become frustrated if I couldn't keep up with his own intellectual experience. In a sense he was a father figure. He was also a big brother too. Although, more than once I had to pull him out of a fight where he angered a bouncer or a club owner enough to risk getting punched or his hands getting broken. I was taller and had a certain level of rumble energy ready, so Tim liked to push it sometimes and see if he could generate some kind of real energy from people. The mood was changing though and Tim could see that what he had been doing was no longer working on a lot of creative levels. He was like a bird dog sniffing out the next groove, the next phrase, the next wail. He was focused on his art and how it fit into the world. I felt like when all the biz and politics were out of the way, and we just played, then we created something unique and exciting. JACK:(14) What was it like when Lee came back into the picture for that short period of time? BUDDY: I respect Lee as a musician, writer and critic...we did one tour with him. Lee was from a previous era of Tim's life. I think Herb didn't like those guys. He had mentioned that the "Jazzers" had rendered Tim's music totally uncommercial. Lee had a sway over Tim because of his attitude. Lee thought himself a great mind of the twentieth century. I took the rental car and drove as far away from Louisville just so I wouldn't get into an argument with Lee. Tim enjoyed our sparks. But underneath he was comparing personal politics. Lee seemed a bit precious with his music. On stage he hammered the strings with the ends of his fingers to get overtones that weren't possible by just plucking the strings. He got a good response from the audience. They knew who he was. He had a good following with Tim's fans. I didn't resent it too much... It pulled Tim back into a place where he had been before. I respected that but didn't like it much. They tied one on for old time's sake in Louisville or St. Louis...they had a bottle of Jack Daniel's and were sneaking around like a couple of old ladies. They were giggling and sipping this bottle of Jack with COCA COLA! They asked if I wanted to drink with them. I took a few pulls off the bottle and gave them some shit about ruining the taste with Coca Cola. They got the feeling that it wouldn't be a good idea to get me going on Jack. It was like jet fuel. I tried to stay away from it otherwise. I'd wake up with a bill for something I did't remember breaking. On stage in Dallas at Liberty Hall, Tim was revelling in the rekindled adoration of his fans. Lee was shining too. The crowd was big and it was full of new people. I was working my butt off. Tim took the usual encore. The band left the stage, leaving Tim and me. Tim had forgotten to introduce the band. He had fallen back into this old star thing. I was sitting in the dark, pumping along while Tim did his vocal gymnastics. It was great fun to trade licks with him. That was the highest point of the set and it was just the two of us. Usually, I took a break and let him milk the crowd all by himself, then I would come back in and build it to a big ending. Only this night, I was in the dark during the whole encore, tired, the band had not been introduced, Tim was acting like some rock star, so I took my usual little break at the end of the encore and I walked off the stage and up to the dressing room. Tim had no idea, he was so engrossed in the spotlight. The guys in the dressing room just shit when I walked in. We could still hear Tim yodelling on stage. Then Tim anticipated my re-ntry into the encore, and the thrilling finale with Drums and Vocal Armegeddon, only tonight he had to finish the set all by himself. It was a mixed bag of applause. Tim came steaming into the dressing room ready to go to war with me coz I had deserted him. I said, "Don't ever do that again." He stopped and couldn't get it. "What?" "You didn't introduce the band." I said. So after all those years when I heard Tim say on the Starwood Bootleg, "my good friend from Coconut Grove, it meant a whole lot." <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> JACK: (15) What happened after that? BUDDY: I played with Tim for a while until things got frustrating for me. I wanted to share songwriting credit and feel that what we had was a band and not just me being a back-up musician. Tim respected that. I didn't like working with his management team. We did Europe, then Central Park, then a break and a gig at Stanford. I had met a girl in Santa Cruz area, a great painter, Katherine Huffaker, and decided to live there awhile. I decided I would leave after the gig we played at Stanford with Loggins and Messina. Carter played Congas with us and it was great. He and I finally found a way to play together. After the gig, a girl asked Carter if his name was Buddy. He almost got angry at her then he just nodded to me. I loved it. She was a friend of my girlfriend and they were eager to get together. They worked at Stanford Research Institute, close by. After the gig, in the limo, I asked Tim to drop me off at the Trailways bus station. I told him it was getting as exciting for me as installing AM radios in Pintos and I got out of the Limo at the bus station. Art Greene, the guitar player on that one, called out, "Write if you get work". They couldn't believe it. I got on the bus and rode down into the country to the ranch that Katherine and I had rented. I went to art school at San Jose State and didn't tell anyone I had been Tim's drummer. I was burned out and I became someone else. The intensity of being on the road affects people in different ways. It is a tough way to live. Then over six months later, Tim performed on campus at San Jose State IN THE CAFETERIA. I sat in the audience like everybody else and listened to his new band. They were good. John Herron on keyboards and Jeff Eyrich on bass. The crowd loved them of course. As the crowd was clapping, Tim came down off the stage into the audience and montioned for me to come with him. He looked pissed. I got up and excused myself and went back to the dressing room with the band. Only one of the teachers knew that I had been Tim's drummer. No one else knew that I was even a musician at all. They were totally amazed. In the dressing room they told me how dissatisfied they were with their current drummer. He was slumping over dejectedly nursing a cold. I sat down next to him, "Did they insult you this way?" he asked. "No." I said. Joe said they had gone through nineteen drummers in L.A. and no one was satisfactory. Tim told me that he had broken his contract with management. They were booking themselves. He asked me to go out on the road with them. We agreed and it was great. I went on the road 3-4 days a week then I went back and finished some art classes the rest of the week. I was living a dream. A friend who taught at the San Francisco Art Institute came down with a bunch of teachers writers and artists to our ranch/farm for a picnic bar-b-que about six months later. He picked me up at the San Jose Airport. I had just flown in from LAX. We'd just come back from playing the Bastille Room in Houston. It had been a critically acclaimed show as well and a sold out house. The Houston newspaper had a great review of the show describing Tim in a very complementary way, bridging folk, jazz, rock, blues, great musicianship, strong performance, etc. A great review. Tim was due to start production on the movie "Bound for Glory, the Woodie Guthrie Story". Tim was going to play Woodie Guthrie. He had the script and I read it. We had arrived at LAX in the morning. We had a week or so off then would meet in Tahoe for a gig. I jumped on a another flight up to San Jose for the picnic. Tim was in great spirits. We stood in the cold white hallway at LAX and he turned to me as we went our separate ways. "See ya later, Babe." was the last thing he said to me and he was smiling. The next day, at the picnic, a friend asked me, "What happens if the bubble pops?" Joe called about the same time and told me Tim was in a coma. He died that night. JACK:(16) Do you ever listen to Tim's music anymore? BUDDY:I was just in Florida, seeing family and drumming with old chums from high school. They all went on to become succesful Vietnam war vets with their own businesses and families. One of them played "Once I was". Tim's music is not the kind of strumming that most people can sit around and just jam on. I was amazed that he could sing it. He was self conscious but it made me stop and wonder what Tim's early stuff sounded like after all this time. I'll have "Pleasant Street" going through my head for the rest of my life. We worked every night for years. The stuff is so ingrained that I still hear it playing back in my head at odd times. The stuff I would like to hear is the last things we did in L.A at Wally Heider studio. It was a band generated sound but alas there were no lyrics recorded. The sound was very fresh and predated New Wave, Punk,... whatever. I had refused to listen to it for years. It was too painful. I heard it on a radio station in San Jose once in a health food store and it took me the longest time to figure out why I was so bothered. 1985, I was wearing a suit being a Post production supervisor at Lorimar, a big film/tv conglomerate. I hated the life but it was a respectable job and I was married. John Herron called me, the keyboard player on some of the last tours with Tim dating back to seventy five. He said that Judy had gotten bootleg albums from Europe and I was on them. Could we go to the label and get some help with royalties? I didn't want to listen to the stuff but one night I got back from the office, I poured myself a snifter of VSOP for old times sake, shut the bedroom door and listened to the stuff all by myself. It broke my heart all over again. It was some of the greatest sounds I'd ever heard. Recorded live from the crowd, the sound was cheap and thin but the spirit of the music was there. There was another one from a different live venue in L.A. the Starwood, which is pretty much the same as what's on "Honeyman". Different recordings I think. It was very hard for me to put on a tie the next morning. It got more and more difficult. At one point an old film editor mentioned that he had seen LeadBelly live in Chicago when he was a young man. He had also seen Woody Guthrie play. Unsolicited, he said that the person who would have best played Woody Guthrie in the movie would have been Tim Buckley. "Did I know who Tim Buckley was?" he asked. I had been living undercover for so long that I had forgotten who I was. I quit. Everything. In conclusion...I hope that Tim's life is made a little more real for whoever wants to read this. Sorry about the bitter remarks. Nothing personal or intended to insult anyone interested in Tim's story. I suppose I let go of some of that old bizness. The one thing that gets me about Tim is his loyal fans. The ones who always loved him no matter how wierd his music got. I loved him coz he was a musician, an artist, a poet, a feeling man and a gentle soul in a violent world. He always had a sense of humor. He saw Peter Falk in the Airport once. Tim was wearing a trenchcoat alot then coz he liked Columbo. Tim walked up to Peter Falk and did his Columbo impersonation for him in the middle of LAX. It was great and also very embarassing. Peter didn't know who he was. It didn't matter though. Tim was living theatre. Nice talking with you. Anything else just let me know. Thanks for being interested in Tim. He was a very special person to a lot of people. I miss him. Good luck, Buddy Helm JACK:(17) So what is Buddy Helm up to these days? BUDDY: Llewellyn Publishing Company is printing my latest book entitled, "Let the Goddess Dance" there will be a CD included where I am singing original songs and also performing meditational pieces that I recorded over the last few years. There is a pic of Tim and me playing one of our last gigs together at the Starwood in L.A. I have been doing drumming workshops around the country to help people get in touch with their own sense of healing power and rhythm. Tim was the last great artist I worked with. I was spoiled after his death and could not work as a mercenary drummer for the likes of any of the plastic phoney entertainers that courted me. I grew somewhat bitter and watched the music scene change knowing that the music that we had done was still the cutting edge. Johnny Rotten said his vocal influence was Tim Buckley. I worked in the film biz in production for over ten years for George Lucas, Lorimar, ABC and many others but Tim's widow, Judy contacted me and sent me several bootleg CD's of Tim's live band that were recorded in Europe in '73 and also at the Starwood in L.A. After hearing the music, I finally quit a very successful career in the film biz and tried to get back to what I loved most which is music. Judy asked me to try to get Royalties from the Bootleg albums from Warner Bros. but they just blew us off and said that there was not enough money there to even bother. All the while I was getting xeroxes of articles "Tim Buckley-Godfather of New Wave" from Germany, Sweden, France and England from people who still loved Tim. Tim had come to me many times in my dreams over the years and I tried to write down his dream melodies but I was too emotionally shattered to trust the music biz. The new songs are written on 12 string acoustical guitar that I bought in a pawn shop in Clearwater, Florida last year. I was unsure about buying the guitar but Tim came to me in a dream that night and told me to buy it. He was in the middle of large pond and was very happy. He told me to "jump in." MR. BUDDY HELM...I APPLAUD YOUR CANDOR AND YOUR SINCERITY. I'D LIKE TO THANK YOU VERY MUCH AND I WISH YOU GOOD LUCK IN ALL YOUR FUTURE ENDEAVOURS....JACK a.k.a. Jzero

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