From Bowie to Big Thief: The extraordinary life of Tucker Zimmerman
Poet and songwriter Tucker Zimmerman shot to newfound fame this year - at 83.
Tucker Zimmerman's acclaimed 2024 album Dance of Love is a collaboration with some fans who tracked him down in Belgium - American folk-rockers of the moment, Big Thief.
It's Zimmerman's 15th album from a recording career that stretches back to 1968.
Tucker Zimmerman told RNZ's Mark Amery about his remarkable career and unexpected late fame.
Album artwork for Dance of Love
4AD
Tucker Zimmerman
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As a teen in 1950s San Francisco, Zimmerman hung out with the Beat Generation, performing his first poems at the City Light Bookshop.
He stayed on for the Haight Ashbury hippie scene (almost joining the Grateful Dead) but then, dodging the Vietnam War draft, got a scholarship to study composition in Rome.
By the '70s, Zimmerman was an early adopter of synthesisers, all the while avoiding the mainstream, living in a cottage in Belgium away from the industry.
Zimmerman released his debut album Ten Songs By Tucker Zimmerman in 1969.
It was produced in London with producer Tony Visconti while another fan - David Bowie - waited in the corridor outside.
In 2003, Bowie told Vanity Fair that Zimmerman's Ten Songs By Tucker Zimmerman was one of his favourite albums, and wondered what ever happened to that young musician.
Big Thief and 4AD have resolutely answered that question with Dance of Love.
