JudyBuckley

I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct the following interview with Tim’s wife Judy. She answered my questions on audio tape and Judy’s husband Llew transcribed them for us. For that I am deeply appreciative. I know what it’s like to transcribe from tape to keyboard and it can be a trying experience. I’d also like to thank Llew for all his help with the editing as well.

*********************************************************** JACK… Thank you for participating in our forum, Judy. I’d like to begin by asking you, when and under what circumstances did you and Tim meet?

JUDY…The very first time I met Tim, my first husband Darrell and I were introduced by our mutual friend Molly LeMay, who brought him to our house. That was when he first started his career I guess. He wore love beads and had a great big bushy Afro.

JACK… What did you think of him?

JUDY…I didn’t. I thought that perhaps he was a homeless person with his guitar strapped on his back. I had my baby (Taylor) and my dog and stuff. Molly knew a lot of strange people.

JACK… So, when did you begin to take an interest in each other?

JUDY…He wrote to me after I got out of the hospital. (Note: Judy was hospitalized for an extensive period after an automobile accident in Mexico that claimed the life of her archeologist husband Darrell Sutcliffe. Their son Taylor was slightly injured)

Molly had been in touch with my dad in 1969, about a year and a half after I recovered and my dad arranged for me to come out to California for a vacation. Tim came to Molly’s house and he had changed. We were both a bit older and he was very bright and we took long walks on the beach, just talking as friends. We would walk up as far as his friend Dan Gordon’s house, but we wouldn’t go in, we would just talk. He took me to see Ray Charles. I wanted to pay for the tickets, I felt bad for him. I had no idea that he had any money. He just had these funny old corduroy pants and this holey sweater.

JACK…You weren’t aware of his success?

JUDY… No. I hadn’t listened to any of his music. We would go to this great little jazz club on the beach in Santa Monica, in an old hotel that was on the boardwalk. It had an amazing jukebox and he would sit in with some of the people there at times with that incredible voice, doing old standards, but I didn’t hear him play or anything and he never had lots of music people around him.

He told me that he had a band, and they had been to Europe. I just ended up spending time with him. He had this great little Arts and Crafts house with nothing in it except his guitars and a tape machine… the kind with the big reels. Miles Davis’ “In A Silent Way” on it and that was it. There were no chairs or sofas or carpets, no pictures or paintings. There was a table and chairs in the dining room and in the bedroom there was a bed. He did talk about how he was married when he was young and his little boy.

We went out to eat and listened to that Miles Davis tape, which was all he would listen to. We went to all kinds of jazz and blues clubs. I had no idea that there were so many. We took cabs because he didn’t have a car. I remember going downtown somewhere and we walked into a club and Carmen McRae started singing “Bye-Bye Black Bird” and I wanted to leave. Tim said: “Let’s have one drink and then we’ll leave.”

JACK… You ended up staying?

Judy…Yes, because he broke the ice by ordering a drink. I heard that song and I was ready to go.

Poor Molly, I went to a concert and she never saw me again! No one did. After about three weeks I left and went back to Taylor. Tim wanted to talk about the future and wanted me to come right back, but we made an agreement not to talk for three months.

My dad… I had told my father that I had spent those weeks there with Tim and he went out to see if he could find an album, because that’s what this guy said he did. He did find “Blue Afternoon” and brought it home and I was blown away! I was really surprised. It was quite nice.

It was strange because it was three months to the day, I realized that I had been keeping track, that morning the phone rang and my father went to answer it and I said, “I think that it’s for me…” I just knew.

Taylor came back with me to LA for a “trial run”. I had met Tim’s mom Elaine, and she just wanted to make wedding plans! Taylor was about six and a half years old and at the airport he was testy. He remembered his father, He was getting defensive, even though he was small when everything had happened. Elaine told him that we were already married and he called her Grandma from the very beginning.

It was strange (at the beginning). Taylor and Tim would go down to the beach and Taylor would kick sand at Tim and pull away from him and wouldn’t let him touch him. Tim rented one of those VW vans because he thought Taylor would like it. Taylor would be so awful to him, but when Tim went to leave, Taylor would have hidden the car keys in his room, so Tim couldn’t leave. It was amazing to watch. He didn’t want him to go.

Part of me started to fall in love with this guy who was giving so much love to my child. The light bulb came on and I knew! He made me laugh again, he showed me that the heart doesn’t forget, but it can make room for someone else.

JACK… When did you marry? Who was Tim’s best man and who was your maid of honor?

JUDY…We got married on April 9th 1970 at The Little Red Chapel on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. A little red chapel with a white picket fence. Danny Gordon and Elaine(Tim’s mother) were the witnesses.

JACK… When you and Tim tied the knot, what phase of Tim’s career was in progress?

JUDY…I think that he had just finished “Lorca” and was about to start “Starsailor”

He drove me down to Laguna and handed me a set of keys for a beautiful house for a wedding present. He was going to work on an album called “Starsailor.” He asked me if it bothered me if he would work on something strange and non-commercial. I remember laughing and saying, “Who am I? This is your career and your life. Do want you want to do”

JACK… What was he like when the two of you were home together? Did he watch much TV and if so, what types of programs were his favorites? Did he watch sports at all?

JUDY…He loved nature films
He liked sports. He played tennis and golf. It surprised people that he was athletic, we had a basketball hoop. Timmy played shortstop on a softball team that he and Frank Zappa had going and they were very good. Flo and Eddie (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan) of the Turtles were on the team as well. They were rowdy, “batter, batter, batter “and all that. You can imagine what Zappa and all those guys looked like. It was an effort to get them in some sort of uniforms and they played in Levis with the bottoms rolled up and matching dark blue T-shirts. Black tennis shoes. They looked like the Bowery Boys or the Dead End Kids. It was the very beginning of the record company teams. I remember when they played the United Artists team and they all had matching uniforms with the socks and were lined up tossing the ball warming up and Zappa’s team won… and they won a lot.

We never missed a Laker’s game during the two years that they were in the playoffs. We would fly back to New York watch them play the Knicks. It was fun to go to the road games. Tim would get really rowdy, which he liked to do. He really did love rooting for the Lakers in another city, where it would really be apparent.

I got to see every Mohammed Ali fight; Tim really followed him. He always had tickets for the closed circuit showings at a theatre.

JACK… What were Tim’s writing habits like and did he have any eccentric personality traits that you would care to divulge?

JUDY…He would write on hotel pads and things, cocktail napkins, tissues. He would grab something out of my purse if he had an idea, a line or a couple of lines. When he got home and clicked into that mode, he would gather up all these little bits and pieces. He would play his guitar, I would hear him vamping repeatedly on a piece, really focused and trying things out.

He liked to play in the spare bathroom in the Laguna house, because it was completely tiled and sounded good.

When he wrote with Beckett, it was on the telephone. He had this Laz-E-Boy chair and he would be in his thermal underwear and a black robe with his guitar and be on the phone for hours! He would need a shave and it would crack me up. He would have the TV tuned to a baseball game or a football game, but no sound. If people only knew!

There was the Newport shopping center that had these huge chimes that a Japanese artist had done. We must have sat there for an hour and a half just listening. Those huge church organs fascinated him.

Then he bought an upright piano home and had all the guts taken out. All he wanted was the harp and he hung it from the thirty-foot ceiling.

The house that we bought in Laguna was next door to Ozzie and Harriet (Nelson) but they never really came there. I just know that it destroyed him that he could never go and talk over the fence to them

JACK… Was he superstitious or did he believe in any of the occult arts (e.g. astrology etc.)

JUDY…No, not at all. That was one of the classic questions in the Seventies …“What sign are you?” He used to say that he was born under the sign of the Badger.

JACK… Was Tim capable of putting music and his career on the back burner in an effort to relax?

JUDY…Absolutely. One time we took Taylor and spent a week and a half driving to San Francisco from LA, stopping at different places. We did the same going from Laguna to San Diego. He would take Taylor to Capistrano to watch the swallows. But I knew that he was always thinking about stuff. He didn’t take his guitar with him, but I’m sure that he was.

I was overwhelmed the first time I saw him play. I can’t exactly remember where it was, perhaps Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. I was blown away. I didn’t expect it.

JACK…You didn’t see him play until after you were married?

JUDY…Yes! It was a quite a while after we were married. He was so incredible. I could see that it was an extension of him. He loved it. He loved performing. He connected personally with everyone. It was amazing. It was wonderful.

JACK… In your opinion, did Tim have any musical mentor’s to speak of ?

JUDY…Everyone is influenced by the music that you grow up with. We had dinner with Frank Zappa and Frank said that from the beginning of time everyone is a thief and that is how music grows. I think that if you have a gift and the light goes on, you express that which you know and move it on a bit.

JACK… Can you name some singers that he liked?

JUDY…Fred Neil, Peggy Lee, and Ella Fitzgerald. Tim took Elaine and I to see her when she played with the Count Basie big band. He liked classical music and opera. We would go and he would wear his moccasins!

JACK… What music was he listening to at home?

JUDY…He didn’t listen to music at home. We went out to see people a lot. He didn’t play the stereo or the radio very much, but he liked different things. He liked any one with a good voice. Hank Williams, The Beach Boys songs with all the different harmonies on Pet Sounds. He loved funky music like Marvin Gaye. We would go to hear all kinds of music. The Japanese conductor, who is so famous now when he was first starting out, shows at USC or UCLA. Al Green in New Orleans. Some of the stuff I didn’t care for, one jazz guy who was hammering on a piano. It was very frightening.
It was mostly blues and jazz clubs; he never really went to see his contemporaries. Never.

JACK… Some people have said that Tim was always looking for approval from musical peers and close friends. Did you find this to be true?

JUDY…Possibly. Perhaps before me, I didn’t see it. They certainly were not at my house. That “Starsailor” period was so short lived. They let him produce it and then went crazy when they heard it. They took away every little bit of power they had given him after that.

JACK… Was Tim comfortable with his career decisions or did he have any regrets later?

JUDY…Never.

They were all different, he liked doing them, each thing was different. I saw him enjoy doing “Greetings From LA” no matter what I read or heard said. When he was into each thing he was having a good time.

One album he didn’t care for too much was “Look at the Fool” because there were songs on it that he wanted to fix. That album was really to be called “Tijuana Moon”, which you can see from the cover.

The audiences really don’t like the artist to change too much, and I would see that they would want to have the choirboy come out from the first albums. He was only 27 when he died and it was incredible how he would listen to music. He was a sponge. He could listen to music and really understand it. He was really open to different things. He was ready to do something different, always. At times the audience wanted to hear some very old stuff and he wouldn’t want to do that. I have to say that at the end of the show he would pull them round and they would be listening. It was the record labels too. It confused them, because they weren’t around him all the time. He could change so quickly. They didn’t see the process. His voice had changed.

He was comfortable with older people, He loved going into places where they didn’t know him at all. I remember going into Hollywood to Molly Malone's on St Patrick’s Day. I know that it’s popular now with younger people, but it wasn’t then. They were older working class Irish. It was just amazing. He had a couple of Jack Daniels and got up and sang “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and had these old women crying. He loved doing stuff like that, just sitting in and being a part of it. He liked to see what other people were like. He’d get them to tell him stories, and because I had learned that Tim was a “thief of mouth”, I could tell that one of these stories would eventually turn up in a song in the future. That was his way of doing it. He didn’t need that fame around him, which I liked. He made me feel safe and I made him a home. He liked that.

JACK… Which of Tim’s albums are your favorites?

JUDY…I do like “Greetings” and “Blue Afternoon”. His mom and I always thought that Sinatra should have done “Blue Melody”.
“Such a blue….”

It’s still hard for me to listen to Tim’s music, but I have learned to appreciate the lists that people have made that touch on different albums. I wish that it didn’t make me sad. Perhaps that’s why I can listen to “Greetings” because it is more up and I can listen to that.

JACK… Which of his songs are your favorites?
JUDY… “Song To A Siren”… Tim would sing that at home. It is such a beautiful melancholy song. It’s very touching. The strangest thing is that the record company didn’t want it on the album. It’s just a short song, but they didn’t want it. When it became a song that generated so much interest a few years ago, Donna (Donna Young, long time friend of Judy and Tim, now administrator of Tim Buckley Music) and I looked at each other and said “Hello!” Of any song that had to come through… it’s pretty eerie. This short little song that he really fought for and he really wasn’t much of a fighter.

JACK… Were there any personal references to you and Taylor in any of Tim’s songs?

JUDY…“Moulin Rouge.” I had told Tim the story that that was the movie I had seen on my very first date and when he was in Paris he bought me a portfolio of Toulouse Lautrec's drawings. It was just a little song, but I didn’t hear it until the project was done. I had never heard him working on it.

JACK… How close was Taylor with Tim?

JUDY…The day that Tim officially adopted Taylor they didn’t want Elaine and I there. It was their day in court. .

Taylor liked being outdoors and Tim found this great school where they had horses and stuff like that. Taylor won a ribbon for horsemanship and we went up to see him get it. Tim and I were standing under a tree and he was looking around, then looked at me and said “I need concrete”. I have a picture of that moment.

Tim had bought this hat. It was supposed to belong to Abe Lincoln, but I don’t think that it really did. It was a beaver top hat in a leather case. A fan had made him a woolen scarf and every time it was washed it got a little longer. He had bought these slippers in Canada made of bear fur. They had the claws on the toes, so when you put them on they looked just like bear feet.

I remember coming back to the house and looking for the two of them and they were on the beach flying a kite. Taylor had the kite, and was saying “Look, Father” and Tim was slowly walking along with his hands behind his back, wearing a thermal underwear shirt, baggy corduroy pants, the bear feet, the neck scarf that hung down to the ground and Lincoln’s hat. He was probably telling Taylor a story, I could tell by the way his shoulders moved and he always punctuated with his hands. Now Tim didn’t think that any of this was strange at all and neither did Taylor. I’ll never forget that image.

JACK… How do you feel about the new interest in Tim’s music which I suppose is largely due to the internet, and of course Jeff’s success and unfortunate passing?

JUDY…I’m happy that Tim is getting the respect that is due. I think that it may have gone both ways, I hope so. I hope that they are getting to know one another.

JACK… Did Tim discuss his plans for the future with you, or was he introverted in that regard?

JUDY…Everything was moving along. He thought that there were options for new record deals and we were looking at homes in the Malibu area. He was in the process of doing “Bound for Glory” and was enjoying the process of learning about acting. He had no idea if he would like it or not. He was never afraid of anything, but I think that he would have been an excellent actor, without a doubt. He would study people all the time. He was happy. He was talking about the film, and talking to Donna Young about taking control of his publishing.

JACK… Jerry Yester told me that Tim had called him two months before he died and that Tim asked him if wanted to get back together again on his next project. Do you have any idea of what direction Tim wanted to take his music?

JUDY…I don’t really know, everything could have changed. He loved Al Green and reggae was just starting. We would be at (movie director) Carol Ballard’s place on Third Street where we were staying and he had this amazing sound system. So, Tim would actually start buying things. Carroll was away making the “Black Stallion”, so we sublet from him. Tim liked Toots and the Maytals and Yma Sumac! He loved rhythms and voices.

JACK… Are there any matters related to Tim’s death that you would like to address?

JUDY…I feel that it was a horrible, horrible accident and a lot of people lost a good friend, including Richard Keeling.

Tim made me feel loved.

Let’s let him rest in peace.

JACK…Thank you so much Judy, for sharing such warm and wonderful memories with us.

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