Yeah it doesn’t mention that in the book. I think it says Judy, his second wife, asked if he could come stay but that it didn’t occur due to the plan not getting ironed out before he died. Correction. I went and peaked at the book and it does show that it happened not long after that show. His mother was flipping through a paper and saw that Tim was playing and took him and Judy made t the request after the show. I don’t know if anything especially this situation is always negative or not but i imagine it’s got to be weirdly complex for him. I think he must have harbored some anger at his father who didn’t make him a part of his life even by sending letters or checking up on his well being in a simple phone call. I imagine he was also proud and inspired by his father and his music and it’s reputation as well as recognizing some sort of connection to the man in there desire to make music. It’s this contrast that makes the situation so unique and interesting and tragic. To be haunted and unable to escape a person who was absent your entire life whom you probably resent on some level is weird especially when it maybe opens doors for you as well. To not only be haunted and unable to escape ape when other people compare you but carrying them around and recognizing them when you look at yourself or hear yourself. Being haunted not by memories of them but by similarities you see in yourself but can’t even confirm because you never knew them. It’s a strange situation. Buckley’s music is often described as having a wounded haunting quality to it, which is where it gains a lot of its potency, and it’s hard to resist reading this description or interpretation as resulting or at least having roots in his and his fathers failed non relationship. Even in last goodbye where he’s saying goodbye to a love who’s about to marry his best friend there’s this sense of abandonment and continued affection that plays out to heart wrenching effect seems a similar old situation repeating
it's difficult to say whether he felt haunted and angered at the same time by his father. he never said so, and if so, it would have indeed been a troublesome attachment. i guess there are many ways of how children deal with absent parents. to many, i think, they become a nonentity, just like any other uncle or aunt one hasnt seen in decades, maybe even less. seems that jeff had never developed a real interest in his father until he stayed with him for a week shortly before tims death. probably his death triggered off some emotions in jeff, that of any child for a parent, no matter how well-acquainted they've been before, no matter if there had been some love or not. he must have been affected by his mother's reaction to tim's death, too.
i think what haunted jeff b. most were the narratives that people, especially the old tim b. fans, attached to him, of him being so much like his father, and thus a tragic child, both closely connected forever. he would have been better off without it, but couldnt escape it after having entered the music business. so this foreign narrative, that he hadnt grown up with, became part of his public persona, and he must have struggled hard against it. it became one of the main conflicts in his life, as he says in the video, he resisted peoples' trivialization of his music and them assuming that he had never had a mind of his own.
i see his death of drowning in the mississippi river as highly symbolical in this context. after having finished grace and most likely in a phase of post-album depression and completely burnt out, he was too weak to follow his own path any longer and got into an artist's block. in this emotionally exhausted state of mind, the tragic son narrative took over and occupied his mind, and then eventually drowned him in the river. six days later his corpse was ejected by the waves at the end of beale street, no drugs, no alcohol, just a mind that had to give in to the voices that had never known him and had never cared about to see him independently from his father. maybe he should have spent some years on a remote farm in a desert and sink a well instead.
i agree with what you call the wounded haunted quality of his music and that of tim. but rather i see its source in some common traits of their personality, not so much their failed relationship. this yearning which they express is not only the source of their creativity but also of their addictions in life. its a connection with something deeper that cannot be answered for in our life of superficiality unless you take to drugs like tim eventually did.
