THE GREAT SECRET
RUSSELL S. BUDDY HELM
A MEMOIR
1986. Sitting in my office at Lorimar Telepictures. Culver City, L.A. Post Production supervisor; Dallas, Knotts Landing, Falconcrest, Hunter, etc. A good looking woman walks into my office and smiles: “You don’t know who I am.” She says. “I do know who you are.” I said. “You are a film inspector.” She nodded, ‘I am also a spy for the front office. They like you, they don’t want you leave. They know you are planning on quitting. They want to make you a vice president.” She smiled again.
“I have to leave.” I said.
“Why?” She says.
“Cause I just received some bootleg tapes of my drumming with Tim Buckley from his widow, from back in the Seventies and it’s really good.”
Her dark eyes lit up. “You are a drummer?”
Back then it was dangerous to admit that I was a drummer. People mistrusted the idea of drummers in the high end corporate film industry. “Yeah. I was.”
“We knew you were different. You could dance- when we had the buy-out party from Turner on the lot. Where did you grow up?
“All over, last place was Miami. I played the drumset, congas, ”
“Are you a Congero?
“Si. y Timbalero.”
She smiled “Lets go dancing some time.”
“I’d like that a lot. But I’m still leaving Lorimar. I have to go back to playing the drums- or something connected with music. I don’t know what.”
“Good luck Mr. Helm. I’ll miss you.”
Then the life path grew very steep. It took years to understand what kind of drumming I was supposed to be doing. Because it did not exist back then. There were no shamanic drummers working with communities and groups. There was primarily pop music. And Jazz. That’s it. So I decided to do something foolhardy but necessary, teach groove meditation drumming. It was different than anything else. It was not music. it was more important than that. Creating it out of thin air.
When I realized that was my secret, then everything else got easier.
THE GREAT SECRET
CH. 2
Love Song for a Drummer
Sometimes I don’t know I am being loved. Oblivious to the quality of love coming at me from a variety of different people. Distracted in trying to understand my own life. Some kinds of love have to be constrained, because of the cultural context. Such as love between men that is non-sexual. Being in a band is like that. Intimate but not homosexual. The first time I played with Tim was after I walked out on Frank Zappa. I was angry and confused and wanted something else out of music. Something with inspiration. Something with Heart. Tim and Joe, his lead guitar player/ producer and me on a drumset from Studio Instrument Rentals because I didn’t have one with me was a moment where things clicked. He had rented the drumset on faith that I was a good drummer. Sure we knew Freddie Neil and the same people back in Coconut Grove, but we just knew it would work. After we played his songs I realized his voice was what I was looking for. A celestial voice. Something to sing to the Gods and Goddesses. He nodded and said, “You want to go on tour with us?”
“OK. Just give me your albums so I can learn your arangements.”
“No. You play whatever you want to play.”
I took it for granted that L.A. just worked that way. It doesn’t. But with Tim Buckley there was a trust coming from him which I endeavored to prove well founded. I liked the arrangement. Our touring and recording lasted several years. Until I decided to move on and leave the music business.
“Why are you leaving?”
“You need to get a better band.” He didn’t defend himself. He just listened.
“It’s about as inspirational as putting AM radios into Pintos on the assembly line in Detroit.” Detroit had been one of our big venues. So we always had our in jokes.
“Also, I can’t work with your manager.”
He nodded sadly. And I got out of the limo and onto a trailways bus in Palo Alto after our last gig with Loggins and Messina at Stanford. The guitar play smiled wryly, “Write if you get work.”
Tim showed up on the campus of San Jose State 8 months later performing with a new band. He pulled me backstage and filled me in.
“We went through every drummer in LA. No one could do what you do. We broke the management contract, got a new record deal, you can co write with me now and get credit. And I got a new band.”
I felt wanted in a way that I was willing to accept. The strings were all mine. His request was unconditional.
“What do want to get paid?” He asked.
I told him. He nodded right away. “Fine”
I felt stupid for not asking for more.
The next six months were like a honeymoon. Great gigs, critical acclaim- even a movie; Bound for Glory” the Woodie Guthrie story. As close to happy as you can get. The celestial voice and my trance drumming was evolving into the new music. We recorded the new songs and knew we were making important new music. Many years later Johnny Rotten was asked who his vocal influence was and he stated without a pause. “Tim Buckley” Tim had been voted best male vocalist by New Musical Express in London during our British tour.
It all ended in six months when Tim was murdered in Venice, CA after our triumphant return from a great tour that ended in Houston at a Jazz club with a great reputation where the newspaper review stated that Tim had found his own music and it was great. I decided things then and there that I did not understand for many years. Feelings of mistrust and resentment, anger. You name it. I had the feelings. Tim’s final dedication to me was his death. It forced me to learn what my great secrets were.