The Lives & Music of Jeff & Tim Buckley
by David Browne
Although the father and son barely laid eyes on each other in life, Tim Buckley and his son Jeff had a lot in common. It wasn't just their looks, although Jeff had the same wavy brown hair and grew into his father's handsome cleft-chinned face and dreamy poet's eyes. More hauntingly, Jeff took on his late father's love for guitar, his expressive, wide-ranging voice and his ability to write beautiful songs. Both men became acclaimed musicians, and both of their lives ended tragically: the father's as a result of a drug overdose in 1975 at 28, the son's in a freak drowning at 30, in 1997. These eerie similarities provide more than enough material for a gripping dual biography. And Browne, a music critic for ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY (which, like PEOPLE, is owned by AOL Time Warner), rises to the occasion. His intricate reporting (which includes many of the younger Buckley's letters) creates a vibrantly detailed portrait of two very different eras. And Browne's decision to tell the stories in alternating chapters draws out the dramatic tension. Tim's troubled relationship with his own father, for example, is recapitulated when he abandons Jeff as an infant along with Jeff's teenaged mother. As poetic and probing as its subjects, Dream Brother delves skillfully into the unquenchable compulsions that lead as easily to triumph as to tragedy. (HarperCollins, $25)
Bottom Line: Well-wrought bio of ill-starred musical family
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