The “Golden Hits Of The 70s”
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BUOYS
“TIMOTHY”
(Rupert Holmes)
Scepter 12275
No. 17 May 1, 1971
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‘”Timothy’ is not about cannibalism,” said Florence Greenberg, owner of Scepter/Wand Records in an
exclusive interview. “The writer… assured me it was about a mule, or something. Frankly, I don’t know
of the record. It must have been done in the office without me. I can’t remember the thing at all. I must
have been out of the country… to let that thing out.”
Cannibalism! Surely a song about the bodily consumption of a poor fellow named Timothy would not be
tolerated on the top reaches of Billboard’s Hot 100. A call to Rupert Holmes–the tune’s creator, and
previously a writer/arranger for artists like the Drifters, the Platters, and Gene Pitney–seemed in order.
“The Buoys were from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and were so named to conjure images of cleanliness,
you know, like Lifebuoy soap. Michael Wright, a junior engineer at Scepter Recording Studios, discovered
them. Mike and I were buddies, so he came to me for advice. He really liked the group and wanted to
record them, but he told me that Scepter didn’t take the group seriously. I said, ‘I think you should record
a song that will get banned–that way, you can take the Buoys to another label and say ‘This is the band
that everyone is talking about.’ Mike asked me if I could write some thing that would get the group
banned.
“I wasn’t going to write about drugs, and everything that tould be said on the air about sex had been said
already. At the time, I was working on an arrangement of ’16 Tons’ for Andy Kim, and in this kind of
‘Proud Mary’ guitar groove. In the other room there was this TV on. The show was ‘The Galloping
Gourmet’ with Graham Kerr. I started singing the lyrics: ‘Some people say a man is made out of mud/A
coal man is made out of muscle and blood/Muscle and blood and skin and bones.’ I thought, ‘God, that
sounds like a recipe: I said, ‘Yeah, muscle and blood and skin and bones: bake in a moderate oven for
three hours. That’s it! Cannibalism and mining.
I just turned out this story song about three boys who were trapped in a mine. And when they’re pulled
out, there’s only two of them left. They don’t know what happened to the third one, but they know that
they’re not hungry anymore!”
The Buoys–which consisted of Fran Brozena (key boards), Chris Hanlon (guitar), Gerry Hludzik (a.k.a.
Joe Jerry, bass), Bill Kelly (lead vocals), and formerly of Glass Prism, Carl Siracuse (drums)–gathered in
the studio. Rupert played piano on the track. Bill Kelly sang lead. Scepter issued the disk and no one
noticed, not even the label, for 14 months. A part-time promo man at the company finally took it into his
own hands to drum up interest in the disk, particularly on college stations–in short order, gatherings of
the “Timothy for Lunch Bunch” were being reported in university tabloids.
“The label copped out on the cannibalism,” said Holmes. “They started this rumor that Timothy was
actually a mule, so it wasn’t so bad for these survivors to eat him. I was offended at the very idea of this
pure defenseless mule being eaten. To this day, people come up and ask me, ‘Was Timothy a mule?’ I tell
them, ‘No, he was a man–and they ate him.”
The group formed in the summer of 1964 in Wyoming, Pennsylvania; they were first the Escorts, then the
Moffets. When Bill Buchanan, DJ at WBAX in Wilkes-Barre, became their manager, they were relabeled
the Buoys. Their line-up changed some. With the brief addition of Bob O’Connell (keyboards) in 1969, the
Buoys got the chance to affiliate with Michael Wright and to record for Scepter.
The Buoys followed their Top 40 hit with other tall tales of death and what not. There was “Give Up Your
Guns” (#84, 1971), about a Tex/Mex showdown, followed by “Bloodknot,” about some reform-school ritu
al. Both were written by Rupert, who likewise penned most of the tunes for the Buoys’ 1971 Portfolio LP.
After Scepter folded in 1972, the Buoys and Rupert signed with Polydor, where two further singles were
issued (“Don’t Try to Run” and “Liza’s Last Ride”). Holmes, however, wrote neither of these numbers and
neither was noticed by the media, even a mite. One final effort, “Don’t Cry Blue”–produced by Michael
Kamen of the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble–was put out by Ransom in 1977. With an ever-changing
line-up, the Buoys name carried on into 1987.
Rupert Holmes continued writing, producing, and arranging. He also launched a solo career that eventu
ally led to chart success–with singles like “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” (#1, 1979) and “Him” (#6,
1980) and the Partners in Crime (1980) album. His 1986 Broadway musical, The Mystery of Edwin
Drood, won five Tony Awards, including “Best Musical.” The following year, the Jets topped the Adult-
Contemporary charts with his “You Got It All.”
In 1978, Bill Kelly and Gerry Hludzik resurfaced as Jerry Kelly with a album on Epic, Somebody Else’s
Dream; two years later, as Dakota and a self-titled LP on Columbia Records, they worked as the opening
act for Queen’s “The Game” tour. A second album was issued in 1984. Dakota called it quits in 1987.
Kelly and Hludzik had success as producers of JIMMY HARNEN’s “Where Are You Now?” Both continue
as tunesmiths; two Hludzik compositions have been cut by the Oak Ridge Boys.
Incredibly, it is reported that the Buoys’ follow-up flop, “Give Up Your Guns;’ became a Top 10 hit in Hol
land in 1979, after extensive use in a tire commercial.