50 years ago today: Tim Buckley died, aged 28 – "He's one of the most complete artists I've ever come across"

Brendan Perry
Dead Can Dance

"For me, Tim Buckley encapsulates a lot of qualities which I admire. He can really open his soul up. He's not frightened to talk about personal things. He's also intrigued by the nature of what love is the dark side and the light side. He has a lot of colour and sun in his music as well as darkness. There's lots of shades. His voice explores such a wide vocal range. You can really hear multiple personalities within him. He's one of the most complete artists I've ever come across."
(1999)

Liam Ó Maonlaí
Hothouse Flowers

“Tim Buckley was interesting for me. I remember one night being at a party, stoned again, sort of on my own in this crowd, and I heard this voice singing this mad voodoo song. Just funky, funky, funky – just like a chicken’s head had been taken off and there was all this sound just pouring out. And it was Tim Buckley, a song called ‘Get On Top’. That’s a very clear moment in my life where I went, ‘I recognise that – I could do something like that. That’s a mantle I could put on.’”
(2004)

James Walsh
Starsailor

On naming his band after Tim Buckley's 1970 album:

"To be honest, Starsailor was the only Tim Buckley album that could be used as a band name. We could hardly call ourselves Greetings From L.A., or Goodbye and Hello or Look At The Fool could we? It's also one of his rarest albums – you won't find that one in the racks at your local HMV."
(2001)

Neil Hamburger

"The final episode [of The Monkees TV show] has one of my all-time heroes, Tim Buckley, in it. Micky introduces him and he comes out and sings a song – which is crazy but in keeping with the anarchic feel of the show.”
(2024)

Mary Guibert
Tim Buckley's first wife, and the mother of his son, singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley

“We were two kids suffering from the same kinds of problems and the same kinds of disassociation from our parents. Being married and having a pregnant wife expecting a child was really very overwhelming, especially for an 18-year-old kid who was suddenly discovered and ready to make a name for himself.

"Tim went off and continued in this crazy business – which didn’t make his life any more enjoyable I don’t think.”

On taking Jeff to see Tim in concert, in the spring of 1975:

“It was a little club that Tim was playing at, Easter vacation, late April early May, just two months before he died.

"Jeff hadn’t seen his father, didn’t have a memory of him. My second marriage had broken up the year before, and so I was having some feelings about how this boy was missing out on his father and vice versa, so when I opened the newspaper and saw that he was playing one night I just did a dangerous thing and called up during soundcheck and asked if he might want to see us, and he said yes.

"So we went to that performance and Jeff ended up staying with his dad for three or four days after that. And then the following June his dad was gone.”
(2002)