During 1969, Buckley began to write and record material for three albums, "Blue Afternoon", "Lorca", and "Starsailor". Inspired by the singing of avant-garde musician Cathy Berberian, he integrated the ideas of composers such as Luciano Berio and Iannis Xenakis in an avant-garde rock genre. Buckley selected eight songs for "Blue Afternoon", an album similar to "Happy Sad" in style. In a 1977 article for "DownBeat" magazine, Lee Underwood wrote that Buckley's heart was not in "Blue Afternoon" and that the album was a perfunctory response to please his business partners.