Kirstiecat | Blog

Dream Brother, by David Browne, is the story of musicians Jeff Buckley and his father, Tim Buckley. Browne does a thorough job of exloring the curious circumstances behind their deaths as well as their music, relations with the music industry, and their personal lives. Browne also provides a comprehensive index in order to help the reader re-locate key places, albums, and people within the biography.

Dream Brother begins with Jeff and the night of his drowning in Wolf River of Memphis. With his friend Foti, Jeff swam out fully clothed singing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” They wouldn’t find his body for almost a week later washed ashore on the slope of Beale Street. The details surrounding most of the circumstances of Jeff’s death are actually returned to at the end of the biography but what Browne does by starting with the experiential details of context is to set a tone of tragedy for the rest of the book until the full circle comes around again and both deaths are discussed at greater length.

Tracing the ancestory of the Buckleys back to Ireland, Browne talks about the Buckleys as hedgemasters and about their immigration to upstate NY and later to California, where Tim Buckley spent the later half of his childhood. Browne continuously alternates between the lives of Tim and Jeff and we have a chance to glimpse into Tim’s early family life as well as Jeff’s (or “Scottie’s” as he informally went by as a younger age) upbringing. Both experienced their share of family issues, with Tim’s father often full of temper and Jeff experiencing the scatterbrained moving to and fro with his mother Mary Guibert, who we can at least thank for spending what little money was available to her on musical instruments for her son. Meanwhile, as Mary struggled to raise her son and deal with the new relationships she had with other men, Tim was basically MIA from their lives for the majority of the time. Tragic are also the small moments described when Jeff would pull out his father Tim’s records for friends and they told him they had never heard of Tim Buckley.

Browne carefully uses quotes from those still alive (as well as past quotes from Tim and Jeff and reports from friends of things they said) and there is some discrepancy between what Tim told others and what Mary Guibert claims. My own personal feeling from reading the book is that Tim tried to rationalize his behavior and was unfortunately not a good father figure to Jeff. It seems entirely clear the only thing really stopping him from taking a more active role in Jeff’s life was his own lack of volition with the matter. Ostensibly, Tim enjoyed playing the victim amongst friends and family. He wasn’t faithful to his many loves, either, even though he expected them to be faithful to him. He is presented as insecure and self absorbed. I love Tim’s music but I’m awfully glad I didn’t know him as a person.

Along with discussing early friends and start up bands Jeff had when he was younger (as well as his very eclectic music influences), Browne gives us some glimpses into Jeff as a person too. We see him start fairly happy and become increasingly moody and more difficult to decipher and predict as time nears on to the end of his life. He seems to treat the loves in his life better than Tim but is still very much a tortured individual in many ways. Unlike as in the case of Tim, you might actually want to take Jeff home with you and try to make it all better. (Both had this needing to be loved and nurtured effect on women but I have the feeling Tim would hurt women more. Or maybe it’s because I’ve listened too much to the live cover version of Jeff’s “Hallelujah” recorded in Paris a little too much.)

As far as the musical details, both father and son struggled tremendously. Tim struggled because he wanted to create something that was filled with artistic merit. At some points, according to Browne, he even felt that his songs were only good if others did not like them and if they weren’t commercial successes. Yet, Tim reached a point of poverty in which he struggled to support himself and even secure small gigs. Because of this, he eventually decided to make something radio friendly and from that emerged later albums like 1972’s Greetings from LA. Unfortunately, this served to mainly alienate the small but devoted group of fans and didn’t win him very many new ones.

Jeff was similarily tortured in that he didn’t want to have a career because of who is father was and also didn’t want to end up sounding like his father. I can imagine it must have been further frustrating that he had mainly his father’s looks (pictures of both Tim and Jeff are provided about midway through the book in which it’s difficult to tell in some whether it is Tim or Jeff Buckley you are looking at.) Although Columbia insisted that Jeff secured his contract on the merits of his own talents, it is likely that being Tim’s son didn’t hurt in this respect. Jeff was just as talented as his father with an incredible vocal range and may have developed as many solid albums with a longer lifespan. It is clear that Tim Buckley was more focused on making records and music in general than his son Jeff, however. Tim had produced nine full length studio albums by the time of his death and Jeff, outliving him by only a couple of years, produced only two (counting Sketches for my Sweeheart the Drunk which was released after his death). Although, it is important to note that there was significant live material released before and after Jeff Buckley’s death (and in Songs to No One 1991-1992, a mix of studio sessions, home tapes, and club performances were releaed.) In the one studio album Jeff completed while he was alive, Grace, he brings new life to many different covers but as a result we don’t see as much development of original material, which was Tim’s forte.

Relatively speaking to modern times, one senses that the record companies did try to support the Buckleys. Browne made the point about how during Tim’s time, the major record companies weren’t looking for just one hit wonders and it was more like a long term relationship and investment. Yet, even during Jeff’s career, Columbia is much more patient with him than they were others at the time, investing more financially than what was typical for musicians who had sold the same amount of records and allowing Jeff longer recording time frames and artistic control.

Dream Brother is an essential read for anyone who enjoys the music of Tim and/or Jeff Buckley. There are a few details of their personalities and lives that remain elusive but Browne’s biography is full of insights and, because of that, is highly recommended reading.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 6:59 am and is filed under Interviews, books, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.