Background
Beckett was born in Glendale, California where his father was an English and speech teacher and his mother worked in the career counseling industry.
Beckett was born in Glendale, California where his father was an English and speech teacher and his mother worked in the career counseling industry.
Larry Beckett attended Loara High School where he developed a passion for writing and poetry.
In the 21st century, he is emerging as a poet and literary critic. The Becketts moved around for the first decade of Larry Beckett"s life, first to Ashland, Oregon, then back down south to Downey, California and eventually settling in nearby Anaheim when Larry was 10 years old. The adolescent friends would frequent Hollywood where they were introduced to the area"s art and music scene.
They recorded a demo for Elektra Records, but the company was only interested in Buckley as a solo artist, not the group.
Beckett contributed to Buckley"s first two albums, Tim Buckley and Goodbye and Hello, both as co-songwriter and as a collaborator on arrangements. The songs which Beckett co-wrote, such as "Morning Glory" and "Song to the Siren", were characterised by the literary tone of his lyrics.
The title track of "Goodbye and Hello" was originally constructed by Beckett as a piece in which two voices would sing different words and melodies. Beckett and Buckley resumed their songwriting partnership for Starsailor in 1970, and Beckett was sporadically involved in Buckley"s later work until Buckley"s death in 1975.
He has remained a poet and songwriter while working as a computer programmer and analyst, based in Portland, Oregon.
He reads two of his 1966 poems, “Foundation at the Scene of a Rendezvous that Failed” and “Birth Day”, on the Rhino Handmade reissue of Tim Buckley, to which he contributed liner notes. He recites “Song to the Siren” and an essay on its composition on the MVDvisual Digital Video Disc Tim Buckley: My Fleeting House. Beckett is married to photographer Laura Fletcher and they have two children - Susannah Beckett (born 1990) and Liam Beckett (born 1999).
Beckett’s lyrics and poems were published in Songs and Sonnets, 2002, by Rainy Day Women Press.
Beat Poetry, 2012, from Beatdom Books, included Beat Generation poems with his commentaries. In 2014, Beckett began working with a group of musicians from Lancaster, England, The Long Lost Band.
He toured with them in the United Kingdom in 2015, and contributed poetry and song lyrics to a full-length studio album, One More Mademoiselle (Miss) Foreign 44 years, Beckett has been at work on, a series of long poems: United States Rivers: Highway 1, Old California, Paul Bunyan, Chief Joseph, Wyatt Earp, P. T. Barnum, Amelia Earhart, Blue Ridge, United States Rivers: Route 66.
Buckley and Beckett started writing together in the mid-1960s, when both were members of Southern California group The Bohemians, in which Beckett played drums and Jim Fielder (later of Blood, Sweat & Tears) played bass.