1. Tim BuckleyBlue Afternoon
When I first appeared, after I did this EP in 1982 with Robert Wyatt [Summer Into Winter], I got a feature in the Melody Maker. The headline was something-or-other "in a blue afternoon". I was likened to him, but had never heard him – I was just a teenager when I made it, after all – and it took my years to find the actual album. It took years to find anything back then. Also, it’d been out of print for years, but eventually I found it, and still love it. It’s only been since I’ve got older that I’ve thought about the roots of that culture, about these men like Fred Neil, Tim Hardin and Tim Buckley who grew up in that New York 1960s culture clash between jazz, folk and the blues, playing supperclubs, smoking weed. This is the first album Buckley produced himself, and it sounds like it. It’s got the sense of someone reaching for something beyond his capabilities at that point. It doesn’t always work, it’s not always perfect, but it’s all about human ambition, in its feel and it execution. I love that. All the best albums have that.
