He ran away to Mexico with a vivacious, dark-skinned dancer named Jennifer Stace and traveled on to San Francisco, where he wrote his own folk songs and sang them in North Beach clubs and coffee houses.
Listening: Odetta, Pete Seeger, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, Howlin' Wolf, Spider John Koerner, Tom Rush, Gordon Lightfoot.
When he felt ready, he headed for New York, where a new chapter of his life opened. Odyssean explorations beckoned, sometimes delightful and thrilling, sometimes dangerous, always alluring, and for a few years revelatory. . .
In the spring of 1966 in Greenwich Village, he met a 19-year-old singer/songwriter named Tim Buckley. Buckley liked Lee's guitar playing. Lee liked Buckley's voice and songs. They teamed up. Throughout the late '60s and early '70s, Lee played lead guitar with Tim on seven of the nine albums Buckley recorded while alive, including Goodbye and Hello, Happy Sad, and Starsailor.
Listening: Miles Davis, Gabor Szabo, Bill Evans, Roland Kirk, Jim Hall; Aretha Franklin, Dr. John, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby Stills & Nash, Pink Floyd; Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy; Luciano Berio, Cathy Berberian, Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen, Penderecki.
He toured America and Europe with Buckley for seven years, and remained one of the singer's best friends until Buckley's untimely death in 1975 from an accidental overdose of alcohol and heroin. Lee later appeared on many CDs issued after Buckley's demise, including Dream Letter: Live In London, Works In Progress, and Once I Was. Lee's book, Blue Melody: Tim Buckley Remembered (Backbeat, 2002), is a combination biography and memoir that celebrates Buckley's life and music and the years Lee spent with him. Britain’s Uncut music magazine voted Blue Melody one of the ten best music books of 2003.
