Long before his son Jeff Buckley became a musical legend in his own right, Tim Buckley was chasing fame in the music industry and creating chaos along the way. And just like his son, he met a tragic end. Before he was famous, Tim Buckley met Mary Guibert in high school and married her shortly after, but the relationship was doomed from the start. When Mary discovered she was pregnant in 1966, Tim was already distracted by flings with a new girlfriend in New York.
They divorced before their son Jeff was born, and Tim eventually abandoned the family entirely, preferring to focus on music instead. By his own account, however, guilt over that decision seemed to eat away at him. Take, for example, the song “I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain,” which Jeff later performed as a tribute to his father. Tim continued down a path of casual relationships and drug use, and although he should have enjoyed a long and prolific career, it all ended after a wild and reckless night in 1975.
At just twenty-eight years old, Tim died of a fatal accidental overdose. His son Jeff grew up to become an iconic musician in his own right, and in the 1990s, he performed his father’s famous song “I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain. ” Sadly, the lyrics “I’m drowning back to you” proved to be an ominous prophecy, as Jeff died just a few years later, accidentally drowning while swimming in the Wolf River.