And so he was. His next album would be his best, not his last one.
Plot Buckley's musical pathway from beginning to end and you'll be left struggling to predict where it might have arrived had he not died of an overdose at age 28. From the flowery folk-rock of his 1966 self-titled debut to the wildly experimental free-jazz of Starsailor and the oily sex-funk of Greetings From LA, Sefronia and Look At The Fool, his albums repel as many listeners as they attract.
To say he is an acquired taste is like saying the same thing of cheese. Which cheese? Mild cheddar or a weeping, maggot-ridden Casu Marzu?
Buckley certainly embraced the notion of the tortured artist. In 1968, following the release of second album Goodbye And Hello, he told Eye magazine: "Being a human being is suffering. There's pain in getting things out. Communicating can be as hard as death."
With that in mind, the singer's wordless, multi-octave ululations take on clearer meaning as one man's attempt to better express ideas of beauty and suffering.
Goodbye And Hello is safe but rewarding territory for someone new to Buckley's catalogue to start. Both the high point in his period as a folk-rock troubadour, and the place at which the allure of psychedelia and the avant-garde began pulling his music away from its Greenwich Village roots, the album is noteworthy for the breadth of the then 20-year-old's reach.
Anti-war ballads sit alongside intensely personal reflections and highly stylised madrigals, with Buckley's pure, unique and transcendent voice adding depth to the poetic tales of life, love and loss.
For some, this album will be enough. For others, it will mark the beginning of a tempestuous affair with Buckley's work.
